tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post856624508579660353..comments2024-02-26T00:59:26.907-08:00Comments on Ana the Imp: George Orwell on the Road to DamascusAnastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-53155030810185751042009-12-13T15:28:08.763-08:002009-12-13T15:28:08.763-08:00That's an intersting story, John, thanks.That's an intersting story, John, thanks.Anastasia F-Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-63914436520192117662009-12-13T01:27:46.792-08:002009-12-13T01:27:46.792-08:00I missed this somehow before. I like Orwell too. M...I missed this somehow before. I like Orwell too. My friend Pak Abu has followed a similar Orwellian path to the present day. He was encouraged towards a radical form of Socialism by stories of the Spanish Civil War. Almost joined the Communist Party in Indonesia after the revolution of 1945 and the war against the Dutch in which he fought and was imprisoned by the Dutch for three years. In the prison the Dutch kept Communist literature they had confiscated in a large shed. Abu broke into the shed and stole loads of it and read it all refining his English Dutch and French in the proccess. He never signed up to Communism completely for the same reasons as Orwell and for that matter me. Like me he was in China. He in 1956 in a cultural delegation from the Communist Party of Indonesia, me, twenty years younger than Abu, in 1963/4. I was also in Poland in 1967 and it was the same stultifying uniformity there that convinced me the ideology was wrong. Also the class war was stupid; dogmatic, wrong and just bloody stupid. This does not mean that Pak Abu and I became converts to far right wing ideologies as a reaction (Orwell didn't). We have not gone under; just adapted and seen how it is possible to apply socialist principles in a capitalist world.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com