Orwell's Hate at a political meeting - excerpt

Coming up for Air (excerpt)
[Or what will the British do about the new fascism?]

Part 3, Chapter 1
...

At the beginning I wasn't exactly listening. The lecturer was
rather a mean-looking little chap, but a good speaker. White face,
very mobile mouth, and the rather grating voice that they get from
constant speaking. Of course he was pitching into Hitler and the
Nazis. I wasn't particularly keen to hear what he was saying--get
the same stuff in the News Chronicle every morning--but his voice
came across to me as a kind of burr-burr-burr, with now and again a
phrase that struck out and caught my attention.

'Bestial atrocities. . . . Hideous outbursts of sadism. . . .
Rubber truncheons. . . . Concentration camps. . . . Iniquitous
persecution of the Jews. . . . Back to the Dark Ages. . . .
European civilization. . . . Act before it is too late. . . .
Indignation of all decent peoples. . . . Alliance of the
democratic nations. . . . Firm stand. . . . Defence of
democracy. . . . Democracy. . . . Fascism. . . . Democracy. . . .
Fascism. . . . Democracy. . . .'

You know the line of talk. These chaps can churn it out by the
hour. Just like a gramophone. Turn the handle, press the button,
and it starts. Democracy, Fascism, Democracy. But somehow it
interested me to watch him. A rather mean little man, with a white
face and a bald head, standing on a platform, shooting out slogans.
What's he doing? Quite deliberately, and quite openly, he's
stirring up hatred. Doing his damnedest to make you hate certain
foreigners called Fascists. It's a queer thing, I thought, to be
known as 'Mr So-and-so, the well-known anti-Fascist'. A queer
trade, anti-Fascism. This fellow, I suppose, makes his living by
writing books against Hitler. But what did he do before Hitler
came along? And what'll he do if Hitler ever disappears? Same
question applies to doctors, detectives, rat-catchers, and so
forth, of course. But the grating voice went on and on, and
another thought struck me. He MEANS it. Not faking at all--feels
every word he's saying. He's trying to work up hatred in the
audience, but that's nothing to the hatred he feels himself. Every
slogan's gospel truth to him. If you cut him open all you'd find
inside would be Democracy-Fascism-Democracy. Interesting to know a
chap like that in private life. But does he have a private life?
Or does he only go round from platform to platform, working up
hatred? Perhaps even his dreams are slogans.

As well as I could from the back row I had a look at the audience.
I suppose, if you come to think of it, we people who'll turn out on
winter nights to sit in draughty halls listening to Left Book Club
lectures (and I consider that I'm entitled to the 'we', seeing that
I'd done it myself on this occasion) have a certain significance.
We're the West Bletchley revolutionaries. Doesn't look hopeful at
first sight. It struck me as I looked round the audience that only
about half a dozen of them had really grasped what the lecturer was
talking about, though by this time he'd been pitching into Hitler
and the Nazis for over half an hour. It's always like that with
meetings of this kind. Invariably half the people come away
without a notion of what it's all about. In his chair beside the
table Witchett was watching the lecturer with a delighted smile,
and his face looked a little like a pink geranium. You could hear
in advance the speech he'd make as soon as the lecturer sat down--
same speech as he makes at the end of the magic lantern lecture in
aid of trousers for the Melanesians: 'Express our thanks--voicing
the opinion of all of us--most interesting--give us all a lot to
think about--most stimulating evening!' In the front row Miss
Minns was sitting very upright, with her head cocked a little on
one side, like a bird. The lecturer had taken a sheet of paper
from under the tumbler and was reading out statistics about the
German suicide-rate. You could see by the look of Miss Minns's
long thin neck that she wasn't feeling happy. Was this improving
her mind, or wasn't it? If only she could make out what it was all
about! The other two were sitting there like lumps of pudding.
Next to them a little woman with red hair was knitting a jumper.
One plain, two purl, drop one, and knit two together. The lecturer
was describing how the Nazis chop people's heads off for treason
and sometimes the executioner makes a bosh shot. There was one
other woman in the audience, a girl with dark hair, one of the
teachers at the Council School. Unlike the other she was really
listening, sitting forward with her big round eyes fixed on the
lecturer and her mouth a little bit open, drinking it all in.

Just behind her two old blokes from the local Labour Party were
sitting. One had grey hair cropped very short, the other had a
bald head and a droopy moustache. Both wearing their overcoats.
You know the type. Been in the Labour Party since the year dot.
Lives given up to the movement. Twenty years of being blacklisted
by employers, and another ten of badgering the Council to do
something about the slums. Suddenly everything's changed, the old
Labour Party stuff doesn't matter any longer. Find themselves
pitchforked into foreign politics--Hitler, Stalin, bombs, machine-
guns, rubber truncheons, Rome-Berlin axis, Popular Front, anti-
Comintern pact. Can't make head or tail of it. Immediately in
front of me the local Communist Party branch were sitting. All
three of them very young. One of them's got money and is something
in the Hesperides Estate Company, in fact I believe he's old Crum's
nephew. Another's a clerk at one of the banks. He cashes cheques
for me occasionally. A nice boy, with a round, very young, eager
face, blue eyes like a baby, and hair so fair that you'd think he
peroxided it. He only looks about seventeen, though I suppose he's
twenty. He was wearing a cheap blue suit and a bright blue tie
that went with his hair. Next to these three another Communist was
sitting. But this one, it seems, is a different kind of Communist
and not-quite, because he's what they call a Trotskyist. The
others have got a down on him. He's even younger, a very thin,
very dark, nervous-looking boy. Clever face. Jew, of course.
These four were taking the lecture quite differently from the
others. You knew they'd be on their feet the moment question-time
started. You could see them kind of twitching already. And the
little Trotskyist working himself from side to side on his bum in
his anxiety to get in ahead of the others.

I'd stopped listening to the actual words of the lecture. But
there are more ways than one of listening. I shut my eyes for a
moment. The effect of that was curious. I seemed to see the
fellow much better when I could only hear his voice.

It was a voice that sounded as if it could go on for a fortnight
without stopping. It's a ghastly thing, really, to have a sort of
human barrel-organ shooting propaganda at you by the hour. The
same thing over and over again. Hate, hate, hate. Let's all get
together and have a good hate. Over and over. It gives you the
feeling that something has got inside your skull and is hammering
down on your brain. But for a moment, with my eyes shut, I managed
to turn the tables on him. I got inside HIS skull. It was a
peculiar sensation. For about a second I was inside him, you might
almost say I WAS him. At any rate, I felt what he was feeling.

I saw the vision that he was seeing. And it wasn't at all the kind
of vision that can be talked about. What he's SAYING is merely
that Hitler's after us and we must all get together and have a good
hate. Doesn't go into details. Leaves it all respectable. But
what he's SEEING is something quite different. It's a picture of
himself smashing people's faces in with a spanner. Fascist faces,
of course. I KNOW that's what he was seeing. It was what I saw
myself for the second or two that I was inside him. Smash! Right
in the middle! The bones cave in like an eggshell and what was a
face a minute ago is just a great big blob of strawberry jam.
Smash! There goes another! That's what's in his mind, waking and
sleeping, and the more he thinks of it the more he likes it. And
it's all O.K. because the smashed faces belong to Fascists. You
could hear all that in the tone of his voice.

But why? Likeliest explanation, because he's scared. Every
thinking person nowadays is stiff with fright. This is merely a
chap who's got sufficient foresight to be a little more frightened
than the others. Hitler's after us! Quick! Let's all grab a
spanner and get together, and perhaps if we smash in enough faces
they won't smash ours. Gang up, choose your Leader. Hitler's
black and Stalin's white. But it might just as well be the other
way about, because in the little chap's mind both Hitler and Stalin
are the same. Both mean spanners and smashed faces.

War! I started thinking about it again. It's coming soon, that's
certain. But who's afraid of war? That's to say, who's afraid of
the bombs and the machine-guns? 'You are', you say. Yes, I am,
and so's anybody who's ever seen them. But it isn't the war that
matters, it's the after-war. The world we're going down into, the
kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed
wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric
light burns night and day, and the detectives watching you while
you sleep. And the processions and the posters with enormous
faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the
Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really
worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that
they want to puke. It's all going to happen. Or isn't it? Some
days I know it's impossible, other days I know it's inevitable.
That night, at any rate, I knew it was going to happen. It was all
in the sound of the little lecturer's voice.

So perhaps after all there IS a significance in this mingy little
crowd that'll turn out on a winter night to listen to a lecture of
this kind. Or at any rate in the five or six who can grasp what
it's all about. They're simply the outposts of an enormous army.
They're the long-sighted ones, the first rats to spot that the ship
is sinking. Quick, quick! The Fascists are coming! Spanners
ready, boys! Smash others or they'll smash you. So terrified of
the future that we're jumping straight into it like a rabbit diving
down a boa-constrictor's throat.

And what'll happen to chaps like me when we get Fascism in England?
The truth is it probably won't make the slightest difference. As
for the lecturer and those four Communists in the audience, yes,
it'll make plenty of difference to them. They'll be smashing
faces, or having their own smashed, according to who's winning.
But the ordinary middling chaps like me will be carrying on just as
usual. And yet it frightens me--I tell you it frightens me. I'd
just started to wonder why when the lecturer stopped and sat down.

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