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I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, 'History stopped in 1936', at
which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of
totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil
war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly
reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw
newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even
the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles
reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where
hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely
denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot
fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers
in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional
superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact,
history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to
have happened according to various 'party lines'.
~ George Orwell (Looking Back On The Spanish War)
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