Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Ethics, Philosophy, Economics, Books, Science, Business, Courses, Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Interviews, Education, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2009

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Christopher Hitchens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell. Drawing on his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens talks about Orwell's opposition to imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, his moral courage, and his devotion to language. Along the way, Hitchens makes the case for why Orwell matters.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:12.5	I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover
0:17.3	Institution.
0:18.7	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast,
0:25.8	and find links to other information related to today's conversation.
0:29.9	Our email address is mailadicontalk.org, we'd love to hear from you.
0:38.6	Today is August 7th, 2009, and my guest is Christopher Hitchens.
0:42.7	He's the author of many books essays and articles, including the book Why Orwell Matters,
0:47.2	which is our topic for today.
0:48.9	Welcome to Econ Talk.
0:49.9	I'm not just going to have me.
0:52.1	You start by saying that Orwell was right about the three big issues of the 20th century,
0:56.5	imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism.
0:59.8	Give us a flavor of what he was right about.
1:03.0	Well, to take them in that order, which is the order in which they occur, and also I
1:06.1	think probably the necessary order.
1:08.9	Orwell's first rebellion against power, illegitimate power, as he thought of it, was against
1:13.7	the assumption that the world would be ruled indefinitely by white Europeans, and that
1:18.6	Indians, Africans, Chinese, Latin Americans, people like that would just have to lump it.
1:25.0	He saw, with great questions, that wasn't going to last very much longer anyway, whether
1:29.3	it was a justifiable or not.
1:31.7	He'd also, as a colonial policeman in Burma, which is then part of the British Empire
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.