What Orwell would’ve made of Donald Trump’s military parade
Once again we turn to George Orwell to make sense of the world, particularly Donald Trump’s military-themed birthday bash. The glitzy, taxpayer- funded affair, which could cost up to $45 million, brings tanks, combat vehicles, self-propelled howitzers, a World War II-era bomber and a bunch of other deadly weapons of war onto the streets of America’s capital.
It’s an unusual event for the United States, which has never felt the need to boast about its military strength by sending tanks down the boulevards of Washington, D.C. and wheeling out intercontinental missiles. Everyone knows America is the world’s pre-eminent force; there is no reason to belabour the point and at great expense too.
America makes a big deal of its veterans — they’re given all sorts of privileges including preferential early boarding of flights — but military parades are not its thing.
Until now.
What might it mean for the United States?
The Washington Post’s World has drawn on Orwell’s 1941 essay ‘England Your England’ to explain. The paper has focussed on Orwell’s views about military parades, which are certainly worth pondering in light of Mr Trump’s fascination with them.
Orwell writes, “a military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life”. The Post notes that Orwell argued the “parade-step” of a national army reflected something about a country’s “social atmosphere” and the goose-step adopted by a number of fascist militaries during World War II was “simply an affirmation of naked power [and consequently] is one of the most horrible sights in the world”.
Have a read of Orwell’s essay if you can. Here’s a link to a pdf version.
It’s certainly written for its time, using the idiom and language prevalent back then, but Orwell may have been on to something when he speaks of “the gentleness of the English civilization” while also acknowledging the “sheer hypocrisy” of having a large British Empire, which they held on to “by means of a huge navy”.
Even so, Orwell says, England is “a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. It is a country marked by “the English hatred of war and militarism”. Of 1940s England, he writes that “the mass of the people are without military knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests or military ‘glory’, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them”.
So too the goose-step.
Orwell writes as follows about it: “One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is ‘Yes, I am ugly, and you daren’t laugh at me’, like the bully who makes faces at his victim.”
He goes on to ask: “Why is the goose-step not used in England?…It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army”.
That’s a sobering observation and it bring me back to Mr Trump’s military parade.
It won’t (we think) have the goose-step but is it possible Mr Trump is leading his country into a phase in which it will dare not laugh at the army?
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
