Colin Burrow · Ah, that s better: Orwell s Anti-Radicalism · LRB 5 October 2023 lrb.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lrb.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Russian politicians often refer to something called the Dulles Plan. This document purports to capture the future CIA chief Allen Dulles explaining, in 1948, the US strategy to destroy the moral foundations of the USSR and bring about ‘the death of the most intractable people on Earth… the definitive, irreversible dying out of its self-consciousness’.
If so many of the catchphrases from George Orwell’s dystopian classic seem cliched today, it’s because there is endless fodder for their application. And while not everything he feared came true, Orwell’s greatness lies not in predicting the future but in changing it.