Again, don't try to put words in my mouth. Very passive aggressive.
I laid out the historical truth--the Republicans were communist stooges of the Comintern and the KGB. Where they were in charge (and behind Nationalist lines, too) they ruled just as their Democratic Socialist dictator, Stalin did--with terror, mass killings, torture--just as Orwell described in 1984.
Turning that into "you're pro-Franco...would have fought on the side of the fascists" is mendacious nonsense.
The truth about Orwell's finances is an interesting story. 1984 was hitting the big time just before he died, and he took the capitalist lucre (like a good Socialist Democrat, I guess!), funding his trophy wife's gallivanting around the Cote d'Azur, and his own high-priced medical care. According to his authorized biographer:
"Of the various arguments used to make Sonia saintly, the one that plays down Orwell’s income is the silliest. Yes, by modern standards, he was not fabulously wealthy. But the success of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four brought him thousands of pounds in a short period and pushed him far above the modest salary he expected as a writer. In 1946, he wrote that £1,000 a year was more than adequate for him; yet the American book club sales for Nineteen Eighty-Four brought him more than £40,000 in the last six months of his life.
Spurling makes much of the fact that Orwell’s estate was valued at only £10,000 when he died. First of all, for a man who never held a job that paid more than £700 a year, this was a small fortune. But, in any case, much of the royalty income for the American edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four came after his death, since the novel was published only four months before Sonia married him.
Taxes and royalty figures can be debated endlessly, but if Orwell was not a rich man in 1949, how could he afford to pay for four months of care in a private room of a London hospital? He was treated by the finest lung specialist in Britain, and had already spent a good deal of money earlier in the year staying at a clinic in Gloucestershire.
Where did he get the money to buy diamonds and rubies for Sonia? Or a private plane to fly him to Switzerland? Not to mention the cash to pay for what might have been a long stay in a Swiss sanatorium.
And, when travel abroad was severely restricted for most people in Britain, how did Sonia suddenly end up chasing her lover on the Riviera six weeks after Orwell’s death?
Of course, the answer is that all these high-priced things were available in 1949 only to the rich, but in the strangely distorted calculations of Sonia’s apologists, the wads of cash being thrown around are ignored and Orwell’s income is reduced to that of a prosperous plumber."
"Franco beat the communists, and took control of his country. His country grew and prospered in neutrality, unlike those European countries which continued under the yoke of the precious Socialist Democrats--it was called the Iron Curtain for a reason."
Sure sounds like you think Franco did a great job (unlike those sordid socialist regimes in Scandinavia or the mixed economies of Western Europe that actually had elections and, you know, had some semblance of the rule of law).
And if you want to argue that Orwell died rich -- sure, it's a stupid thing to write but if that's the hill you want to die on go for it.
Again, don't try to put words in my mouth. Very passive aggressive.
I laid out the historical truth--the Republicans were communist stooges of the Comintern and the KGB. Where they were in charge (and behind Nationalist lines, too) they ruled just as their Democratic Socialist dictator, Stalin did--with terror, mass killings, torture--just as Orwell described in 1984.
Turning that into "you're pro-Franco...would have fought on the side of the fascists" is mendacious nonsense.
The truth about Orwell's finances is an interesting story. 1984 was hitting the big time just before he died, and he took the capitalist lucre (like a good Socialist Democrat, I guess!), funding his trophy wife's gallivanting around the Cote d'Azur, and his own high-priced medical care. According to his authorized biographer:
"Of the various arguments used to make Sonia saintly, the one that plays down Orwell’s income is the silliest. Yes, by modern standards, he was not fabulously wealthy. But the success of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four brought him thousands of pounds in a short period and pushed him far above the modest salary he expected as a writer. In 1946, he wrote that £1,000 a year was more than adequate for him; yet the American book club sales for Nineteen Eighty-Four brought him more than £40,000 in the last six months of his life.
Spurling makes much of the fact that Orwell’s estate was valued at only £10,000 when he died. First of all, for a man who never held a job that paid more than £700 a year, this was a small fortune. But, in any case, much of the royalty income for the American edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four came after his death, since the novel was published only four months before Sonia married him.
Taxes and royalty figures can be debated endlessly, but if Orwell was not a rich man in 1949, how could he afford to pay for four months of care in a private room of a London hospital? He was treated by the finest lung specialist in Britain, and had already spent a good deal of money earlier in the year staying at a clinic in Gloucestershire.
Where did he get the money to buy diamonds and rubies for Sonia? Or a private plane to fly him to Switzerland? Not to mention the cash to pay for what might have been a long stay in a Swiss sanatorium.
And, when travel abroad was severely restricted for most people in Britain, how did Sonia suddenly end up chasing her lover on the Riviera six weeks after Orwell’s death?
Of course, the answer is that all these high-priced things were available in 1949 only to the rich, but in the strangely distorted calculations of Sonia’s apologists, the wads of cash being thrown around are ignored and Orwell’s income is reduced to that of a prosperous plumber."
https://www.orwell.ru/a_life/shelden/english/e_tmw
I didn't put words in your mouth. You wrote:
"Franco beat the communists, and took control of his country. His country grew and prospered in neutrality, unlike those European countries which continued under the yoke of the precious Socialist Democrats--it was called the Iron Curtain for a reason."
Sure sounds like you think Franco did a great job (unlike those sordid socialist regimes in Scandinavia or the mixed economies of Western Europe that actually had elections and, you know, had some semblance of the rule of law).
And if you want to argue that Orwell died rich -- sure, it's a stupid thing to write but if that's the hill you want to die on go for it.
Thanks for the exchange! Sort of like every attempt to discuss anything with everyone's ex-wife ever! It's why divorce lawyers are so rich!