Hi Ground Crew,
Orwell spent WW2 writing propaganda at the BBC, he is an excellent choice, although his work tends to be more allegorical. Orwell s desk at the BBC was in room 101, his job, to bring people's worst fears to life...
Malcolm Muggeridge is another, he was the Manchester Guardian's correspondent in Moscow, and traveled to the Ukraine to investigate rumours of fammine in 1933. He had his reports smuggled out in diplomatic bags. It was only with great reluctance that the grauniad published his reports of Stalin's regime deliberately starving 6 million. His novel, Winter in Moscow, bitterly describes cheer leading journalists gleefully and uncritically reporting what the regime wanted them to see. Potemkin villages and all.
Both had been lifelong Fabien socialists, until they weren't.
I absolutely agree about the false dichotomy of two parties. If you travel around, you find that what is considered a right wing policy in one place is a shibboleth of the left in another and vice versa.
When Orwell and Muggeridge each fell out of love with Stalin, and the Fabiens, they were derided as having become " right wing".
The same for people like Mencken, Hazzlitt and Flynn, in America. They were rejected by and rejected their pals in the old left, and hence were described as the "old right"
Rothbard was forever seeking alliances on the basis of common ground, with the palaeo left in opposition to foreign wars, with the palaeo right in opposition to inflationary monetary policies.
Neither side is entirely lacking in valid insights, but both agree on using violence to enforce their opinions onto others (wrong in my opinion).
