Challenger
Gold Member
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George Orwell, arguably Britain's greatest 20th century polemicist, had so much to say about the pansy left during WWII, and about it's continuous attempts to disarm the populous: "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." He had a .303 hanging on the wall above his typewriter, and he advocated it's use against tyrannical government in no uncertain terms.
Utter drivel. Orwell was a Socialist throughout most of his life and that often misquoted piece about the "rifle on the wall" was from an article he wrote on 8th January 1941for the Evening Standard, entitled "Don't let Colonel Blimp ruin the Home Guard" In context the quotation should read, "Even as it stands, the Home Guard could only exist in a country where men feel themselves free. The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle hanging on the wall of the working class flat or labourer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see it stays there."---The Complete Works of George Orwell, volume 12 It was a diatribe against the influence on the Home Guard of old Conservative officers brought out of retirement to lead the volunteers and had nothing at all to do with a "pansy left" as you put it.