The Corner - National Review Online: "Because the trials were taking place behind a curtain of foreignness, parochial British readers might have thought that such things as old Bolsheviks confessing to having been Trotskyite saboteurs all along were inexplicable Russian oddities rather than the Big Lies characteristic of all totalitarianisms. So Orwell translates the trials into the terms of British political life of 1938 (when Neville Chamberlain was Tory prime minister and Winston Churchill a rebellious Conservative backbencher.) The result is as follows:Mr. Winston Churchill, now in exile in Portugal, is plotting to overthrow the British Empire and establish communism in England. By the use of unlimited Russian money he has succeeded in building up a huge Churchillite organization which includes members of Parliament, factory managers, Roman Catholic bishops, and practically the whole of the Primrose League [a highly respectable organization of Conservative ladies.] Almost every day some dastardly act of sabotage is laid bare — sometimes a plot to blow up the House of Lords, sometimes an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the Royal racing stables. Eighty percent of the Beefeaters in the Tower [of London] are discovered to be agents of the Comintern. . . . And meanwhile the Churchillites . . . never cease from proclaiming that it is they who are the real defenders of Capitalism and that Chamberlain and the rest of his gang are no more than a set of Bolsheviks in disguise. "
Welcome to Comrade O's world. Except substitute Sarah Palin for Trotsky.
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