How did the "George Orwell is a conservative" meme become so widespread, when there's so much proof to the contrary?

Animal Farm is commonly held to be a "DEM RUSKIES IS DUMB AND BAYD" book, but the capitalists get just as much shit in it. I don't think it's really pro-leftwing either, though.

If anything it's a melancholy blackpill book about man being a crooked timber of which no straight thing can be built.

Orwell used to describe himself as a "Tory Anarchist" in his early years if I'm not mistaken and he kept some of these sentiments well into his dabbling with democratic socialism

pg.12

it's a good meme, that's why

b-but.. Academia is left wing… Sargon said so!

I had an right-wing Christian ancap friend back in highschool who was very into Orwell, when I told them Orwell was a literal Socialist their head almost exploded. Now they're a shitty idpol liberal, still anti-communist though, it is the one thing ancaps and liberals have in common, loving porky.

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The meme took off when liberals became much more tyrannical than their political opponents.

sux brah

could you please explain what you mean with the word "liberals"?
i hope it is just a semantic misunderstanding on my side (i am in europe), but really i cannot understand how those liberals are supposed to be more tyrannical than their opponents (i guess you mean conservatives?) …

Because a lot of people are stupid and don't bother to read at least a wikipedia page. I don't see how one can read Animal Farm and think capitalists look good, considering they are portrayed as indistinguishable from the Pig Dictators.

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A bit of clarification on the word "liberal":
Enlightenment, secularism, humanism, rationalism, positivism. Ran the gamut from capitalism/republicanism, through democracy, to anarchism/hedonism.
Socdem usually?
Anything even slightly left of center
Sarcastic meme used to lump together and disparage everything and everyone we hate that calls itself "leftist". Idpol, lifestylism, PC, virtue signaling, postmodernism, moralism, capitalist apologism, "humanitarian" interventionist warhawking, revisionism, etc.

A few related terms:
Anarchism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-capitalism
Rightist
Big government for porkbarrel embezzlement by the rich, war for conquest and empire, open borders for trade and cheap migrants

Not true, mostly just Anglo-Europe and countries closely related to the anglosphere.
Germany had a Liberal (right-libertarian) Party all the way to the 2010s.
Liberals are also openly right-wing in:
-The Netherlands
-Switzerland
-Austria
-The Nords
-Most of Eastern Europe
Also in the UK the LibDems made a coalition with Tories for massive austerity and in Spain Ciudadanos is quickly building into a right-libertarian party.
Also Australian Liberals are right-wing and in Canada Liberals only became the left in the 60s, after the Conservatives had preached protectionist and pro-labour policies for a long time.

Liberalism is only seen as the legitimate left in Burgerland

Facts don't matter to the state. Orwell was a useful propaganda tool against "communism" so that's what he became.

P I C R E L A T E D

Checks out

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This is the way Leftists and Socialist have used the term Liberal from Lenin all the way to Bookchin, Holla Forums did not invent this meme, who do you think Lenin is constantly railing against when he talks about liberals? A Liberal is just anyone who falls for the Enlightenment meme, private property is a right, markets are the "invisible hands" of society, "representative" government, all that shit. Postmodernists are still Liberals because even though they reject the Enlightenment and rational thought they also very firmly reject Socialism as well, because they see it as a project of "Modernity", but all this leads them to is a sort of bland complicity with the NeoLiberal order. Foucault himself was practically an advocate of NeoLiberalism towards the end of his life. Also, in Europe Liberal is not synonymous with SocDems, it's synonymous with center-right NeoLiberalism, then SocDems are the center-left, and literal Fascists and literal Communists round out the actual Right and Left.

Why is it that every Libertarian I've met irl is always some kind of Christian nut? Are there any two ideologies on the face of the planet less compatible then Christianity and Capitalism?

Idk. There's a famous passage in the Bible that says a camel has an easier time fitting through the eye of an neddle than a rich person has getting to heaven. Now that y'all mention it, there's an orthodox christian (/pol type dude) in my class that loves Capitalism.

We do call our systems "liberal democracies" but we are referring to a Social Democracy, yes.

Nah, the libruls there are actually right of the y-axis.

We don't call anarchists here "libertarians", we call them anarchists.

Nah, famalam, there's still a state. It's just that the state is subject to bürgers.
Ye. basically the same as neoliberalism.

tell me how animal farm isn't critique of half-assed revolutions in general. It can be understood like anti-capitalist propaganda if you live in former socialist country

Well I mean it is meant to be a specific allegory of the Soviet Union, but that is a very good point.

Orwell was an MI5 infiltrator.

I've heard this before, is there any actual validity to the claim? Or is it just a meme?

He made a list of people he thought to be soviet-supporters; which seems in-character who was an anti-soviet leftist before it was cool.

Holy fuck, Orwell was literally a cointelpro agent, that's fucking hilarious, I will forever keep this in mind anytime he's invoked to BTFO Marxists.

Not really, it was bad mostly in principle than in practice. The real issue is that old Orwell fell for the nationalism meme. Which is worse.

this is tankie propaganda

I have no fucking clue how animal farm could be construed as right leaning. Snowball was a pig of the people, he made sure everyone got what they needed and everyone did their part. Napoleon took power and sold out the farm a la capitalism.

I'm normally not in favour of this kind of thing but that should be straight up illegal. That book is such blatant and ham-fisted propaganda its not even comparable to real fiction and is more like a political manifesto.

More then anything its just an allegory for how revolutions can be corrupted and betrayed. People confuse this with it being anti-revolutionary in general and thus think it is conservative.

exiledonline.com/big-brothers-george-orwell-and-christopher-hitchens-exposed/

What in the fuck

orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph

Cold war paranoia plus splitting.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

"He criticized (certain kinds of) commies, so he must be our guy!"

this abomination, for instance

youtube.com/watch?v=lDUwXFvTJfA

That's a pretty good find. I remember reading his article on Hitler (a review of Main Kampf, I think) where he clearly displayed some right-wing sensibilities, even if he never seemed right-wing in a more economic/structural level.

Nice trips. Orwell was sympathetic to left wing social and economic issues like you said but his loyalty was to the British empire. He got into fights with more dedicated leftists including Claud Cockburn, father of Patrick, Andrew, and the late great Alexander Cockburn.

Right wingers pretend to have read Orwell.

George Orwell was a Tavistock

Read his "Road to Wigan Pier".
His point is more or less that the socialism is ruined by the people who make up the movement. They don't care about the poor so much as they hate the rich.

Wasn't one of the big themes of 1984 the control of information whether it's true or not? A lot of people think that it's about surveillance, no? The irony of that is lost on them, probably.

Orwell was actually a leftist so he had good reason to report Red Fascists. Which is it imply he ever actually did it and it's not just fabricated by the gov.

People will unironically claim that Jesus' teachings were intentionally too difficult for any human being to adhere to, and that they served to show us that we need divine intervention to be saved in the face of our own depravity. It's the human nature argument all over again, except this time they're obligated by tradition to somehow salvage the teaching they're denying.

The story is very clearly a personal one. He's not excusing colonialism or justifying killing an elephant. If anything it's a cautionary tale of how public opinion can sway you to do the wrong thing. It's pretty shitty of you to selectively quote it to make it seem like he was an evil racist that thought they deserved to be enslaved.

this is what anarkiddies actually think :^)

If it's okay to snitch on Fascists to prevent the status quo from getting worse, then it doesn't matter what color the Fascist is :^)

Based Kant

hitler stole the symbol from the finnish air force

he made common cause with reactionaries in selling out the most dedicated commies.

fell for the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' meme that he himself always railed about.

So glad I found a fellow anarchist with some sense around here! Keep fighting the good fight comrade!

my understanding is that he was helping the government with its propaganda effort by making a list of people they might normally try to get involved who they shouldn't bother with since they liked the soviets

the main thing about it that stood out to me as an actual concept or theme was the epistemological stuff, mostly doublethink

But Orwell WAS an anti-communist, and he was a fucking snitch.

Apparently being a snitch is common anarchist behavior.

Wow, being an anarchist really is the least authoritarian ideology :^)