“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
— George Orwell
Orwell wrote this in his 1946 essay Why I Write, published in the summer issue of Gangrel magazine. He was reflecting on his time fighting Franco in Spain and how it shaped everything after.
I spent five years in Burma enforcing the rule of an empire I despised. Came home, threw it all away, lived in the gutter on purpose. Washed dishes in Paris. Picked hops in Kent. Slept in shelters. I wanted to know what it felt like at the bottom. Then I went to Spain to fight fascism and a sniper put a bullet through my throat. I should have died. I wrote Animal Farm while bombs fell on London and every publisher told me no. I typed Nineteen Eighty-Four alone on a freezing island while my lungs were failing. I was forty-six when I died.