George Orwell read Anew

John Zmirak is known to many from his years at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and his frequent essays at The Stream. For many the truth about Soviet Russia became evident from the writing of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and George Orwell’s 1984. Zmirak’s recent essay about George Orwell explains how very deep was Orwell’s understanding of the danger of our ignorance about the power of ideas.

That two works of fiction immediately expressed the reality of totalitarianism in ways that were not previously apparent,says a lot about our intellectual classes: if you want to influence how they think, tell a story.