Diaries, by George Orwell

I have a deep admiration for George Orwell, he had an extremely lucid mind and a seldom equaled capacity of understanding and analyzing men and politics.

His diaries are a very interesting reading, he was extremely observant and interested in everything around him, from Moroccan customs to the life of miners and the habits of birds or the growth of vegetables. He was an obsessive compiler of lists and registers, and sometimes these diaries are tedious when it comes to the counting of eggs or the description of the weather. He was a kind of Renaissance man of the 20th century.

One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less proStalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten. So also with Franco, Mussolini, etc., should they ultimately come over to us. - 3.7.41

The English pacifist works himself up into frenzies about the concentration camps in the Isle of Man and forgets about those in Germany, etc., etc. One notices this in the case of people one disagrees with, such as Fascists or pacifists but in fact everyone is the same, at least everyone who has definite opinions. Everyone is dishonest, and everyone is utterly heartless towards people who are outside the immediate range of his own interests. What is most striking of all is the way sympathy can be turned on and off like a tap according to political expediency. All the pinks, or most of them, who flung themselves to and fro in their rage against Nazi atrocities before the war, forget all about these atrocities and obviously lost their sympathy with the Jews etc. as soon as the war began to bore them. Ditto with people who hated Russia like poison up to June 22 1941 and then suddenly forgot about the purges, the G.P.U. etc. the moment Russia came into the war. I am not thinking of lying for political ends, but in actual changes of subjective feeling. - 27.4.42