Orwell visualised racial prejudice as a nerve that might go unnoticed until it was prodded. Ideologies such as Nazism activated that nerve for their own ends, but a dictatorship could only function if the mass of people went along with it, whether through malice, apathy or fear. Orwell’s belief in self-criticism on both a personal and a national level meant acknowledging that totalitarianism was not a disease unique to Germany and Russia but one with the potential to seize any society on Earth. Everybody is wired to believe themselves righteous and to defend their positions with whatever
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