{"id":11072,"date":"2010-12-04T15:57:44","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T15:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/12\/04\/is-a-fascist-a-fascist-when-pulling-up-his-pants\/"},"modified":"2010-12-04T15:57:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T15:57:44","slug":"is-a-fascist-a-fascist-when-pulling-up-his-pants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/12\/04\/is-a-fascist-a-fascist-when-pulling-up-his-pants\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a Fascist a Fascist When Pulling Up His Pants?"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Orwell's humanity is on display in the following passage from "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943), reprinted in A Collection of Essays<\/em> (Harvest, 1981), pp. 193-194:<\/span><\/p>\n

     Early one morning another man and I had gone out to snipe at the<\/span>
     Fascists in the trenches outside Huesca. Their line and ours here<\/span>
     lay three hundred yards apart, at which range our aged rifles would<\/span>
     not shoot accurately, but by sneaking out to a spot about a hundred<\/span>
     yards from the Fascist trench you might, if you were lucky, get a<\/span>
     shot at someone through a gap in the parapet. Unfortunately the<\/span>
     ground between was a flat beet field with no cover except a few<\/span>
     ditches, and it was necessary to go out while it was still-dark and<\/span>
     return soon after dawn, before the light became too good. This time<\/span>
     no Fascists appeared, and we stayed too long and were caught by the<\/span>
     dawn. We were in a ditch, but behind us were two hundred yards of<\/span>
     flat ground with hardly enough cover for a rabbit. We were still<\/span>
     trying to nerve ourselves to make a dash for it when there was an<\/span>
     uproar and a blowing of whistles in the Fascist trench. Some of our<\/span>
     aeroplanes were coming over. At this moment, a man presumably<\/span>
     carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran<\/span>
     along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and<\/span>
     was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained<\/span>
     from shooting at him. It is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely<\/span>
     to hit a running man at a hundred yards, and also that I was<\/span>
     thinking chiefly about getting back to our trench while the<\/span>
     Fascists had their attention fixed on the aeroplanes. Still, I did<\/span>
     not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had<\/span>
     come here to shoot at \u00e2Fascists\u00e2; but a man who is holding up his<\/span>
     trousers isn't a Fascist, he is visibly a fellow-creature,<\/span>
     similar to yourself, and you don't feel like shooting at him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isn't there a scene in Homage to Catalonia<\/em> in which the same or a similar fascist is caught with his pants down at the latrine when all hell breaks loose? In death and as in defecation, all distinctions dissolve to reveal us as indigent mortals made of dust and about to return to dust.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Orwell's humanity is on display in the following passage from "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943), reprinted in A Collection of Essays (Harvest, 1981), pp. 193-194:      Early one morning another man and I had gone out to snipe at the     Fascists in the trenches outside Huesca. Their line and ours here     lay three … Continue reading “Is a Fascist a Fascist When Pulling Up His Pants?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,505],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-matters","category-orwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}