Orwell’s vision grew from Mussolini’s totalitarian will in Italy

Evidence

Ultimately, as every reader knows, Winston’s stubborn soul is successfully “engineered.” Orwell’s chilling final passages fulfill the life of that dry seed planted at the turn of the century in Italy’s impoverished soil and nourished by war, deprivation, and humiliation to flower in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the apocalypse of Stalin’s Russia, finally to bear fruit in Orwell’s imagination: a testament for all time to what Mussolini had called the “ferocious totalitarian will” and the souls on which it feeds. Winston basks in serene elation, “his soul white as snow.… He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1183

Categorization

• XREF: Traces the genealogy of Orwell’s totalitarian conception back to Mussolini and interwar politics — roots the novel in real history. — connects to: Bureaucratic chaos and anti-Western irrationalism emotionally prepared Europe for totalitarianism — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 626

Broader Connections

• Bureaucratic chaos and anti-Western irrationalism emotionally prepared Europe for totalitarianism #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 626