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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3698 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 26, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Peter Kemp is like the mirror George Orwell. Both left interesting accounts which are valuable as primary sources, and they both get recommended incessantly by extremely online right-wingers and leftists respectively when books on the Spanish Civil War are requested. But if you're trying to actually understand the socio-political background/context of the SCW reading Orwell or Kemp will probably leave you less informed than you started, because both were Englishmen who knew next to nothing about the country or the war they had just volunteered to fight in and had a tendency to just uncritically believe propaganda from one or the other side.

Orwell does have a long and tedious chapter on the political side, mostly focused on the POUM faction that he fought for. It reads a bit like the "People's Front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front" but in Life of Brian.

Kemp barely mentions politics. His motivation was reading about the communists raping and murdering nuns and being so incensed that he decided to volunteer. He even met Franco personally but skims over it in a couple of paragraphs.

In terms of personality they were very different. Kemp was optimistic, confident and adventurous. I like him a lot more than Orwell even though Orwell was a better writer

I've been pondering an effort post about those two for a long time. As an outsider it feels like the English national character today is descended entirely from the Orwells and the Kemp archetype died with the Empire.

It’s been a while since I read either one. I just remember a part where Kemp repeats the Franco line about Guernica having been burnt by the republicans on retreat.

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