Baldwin×Orwell

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: James Baldwin and George Orwell, on On the day they crossed a line they had sworn not to cross.
2. 00:09
   James Baldwinshare moment

   I want to talk about the day you put your name on that list. The list of crypto-communists and fellow travelers you gave to the Information Research Department. 1949, wasn't it? You were dying, and you gave them names.
3. 00:22
   George Orwellshare moment

   I did. Thirty-five names, if memory serves. People I believed would be unreliable if given a platform for British propaganda aimed at countering Soviet influence. I didn't send anyone to prison. I didn't ruin anyone. I gave an advisory opinion to people preparing material for the Cold War.
4. 00:44
   James Baldwinshare moment

   You gave a list to the state. You, who wrote about the boot stamping on the human face. You, who understood what it means when the government keeps lists.
5. 00:53
   George Orwellshare moment

   I wrote about totalitarianism, not about the difference between totalitarianism and a social democracy at war with totalitarianism. There is a difference, Baldwin. I spent three years of my life insisting on that difference.
6. 01:08
   James Baldwinshare moment

   And that's the line, isn't it. The line we tell ourselves we'll never cross. We'll never become the thing we hate. We'll never use the tools of the enemy. Until the day we do, and we have a reason ready.
7. 01:21
   George Orwellshare moment

   What's yours?
8. 01:22
   James Baldwinshare moment

   Mine?
9. 01:23
   George Orwellshare moment

   Your line. The one you crossed. You wouldn't have chosen this topic if you hadn't.
10. 01:28
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That's fair. Yes. There was a day I didn't speak. There was a younger man, a writer, someone in the movement who was being torn apart for something he'd said, something clumsy and true. And I knew if I defended him I'd lose currency I needed for other battles. So I stayed quiet.
11. 01:46
    George Orwellshare moment

    You made a calculation.
12. 01:47
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I made a calculation. I told myself it was strategy. I told myself you can't spend everything on every fight.
13. 01:54
    George Orwellshare moment

    That's different from my list, surely. You chose silence. I chose to act, to name people I believed were actively dishonest about the Soviet Union at a moment when that dishonesty had consequences.
14. 02:08
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Is it different? We both decided that the principle—speak truth, protect the vulnerable, don't collaborate with power's filing systems—could be bent. We both had good reasons.
15. 02:19
    George Orwellshare moment

    Some of the people on that list had apologized for the Moscow Trials, Baldwin. They'd made excuses for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. They weren't vulnerable. They were intellectuals with considerable influence, and they were lying.
16. 02:35
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And some of them were on that list because they were homosexual. You noted that next to their names. You made sure the state knew.
17. 02:41
    George Orwellshare moment

    I noted it because it was relevant to their reliability. The Soviets used sexual blackmail. It was a security matter.
18. 02:49
    James Baldwinshare moment

    You noted it because you knew what it would mean to the people reading. You knew how that word would be used. You, who lived outside the law yourself in that regard.
19. 02:58
    George Orwellshare moment

    I was trying to be thorough.
20. 03:00
    James Baldwinshare moment

    You were trying to survive. You were dying, you were poor, you wanted to be useful to someone. That's what I think. I think you wanted to prove you were still on the right side.
21. 03:10
    George Orwellshare moment

    And what were you trying to do when you kept silent? Survive in a different way?
22. 03:15
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. I was trying to survive as someone who could still be heard. I was thinking about the next essay, the next appearance, the next chance to say something that might matter.
23. 03:25
    George Orwellshare moment

    Then we're both guilty of the same thing. We rationed our integrity.
24. 03:30
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Maybe. Or maybe the line was always a fiction. Maybe there is no day you cross it. Maybe it's every day, in small ways, the distance between what you believe and what you do.
25. 03:40
    George Orwellshare moment

    That's too easy. That's the kind of moral relativism I spent my life arguing against. Some acts are worse than others. Some compromises are meaningless and some are catastrophic.
26. 03:53
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I agree. I'm just not sure either of us can say, from where we sit now, which of our compromises was which.
27. 04:00
    George Orwellshare moment

    The people on my list were not sent to camps. They were not arrested. Some of them—most of them, I'd wager—never knew they were on it. Your silence, on the other hand. Did the man you didn't defend know you'd chosen not to speak?
28. 04:17
    James Baldwinshare moment

    He knew. We had a conversation about it years later. He said he understood. But I could see that he didn't, not really. You don't understand that kind of abandonment. You just learn to live next to it.
29. 04:30
    George Orwellshare moment

    At least you had the conversation.
30. 04:32
    James Baldwinshare moment

    At least you wrote 1984. At least you spent years warning people about the machinery you then fed names into. There's a bitter joke in that.
31. 04:41
    George Orwellshare moment

    It's not the same machinery. A social democratic state defending itself against Stalinist infiltration is not the same as Oceania.
32. 04:51
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Every state that keeps lists believes it's different. Every informer believes his reasons are special.
33. 04:57
    George Orwellshare moment

    And every saint who refuses to act believes his purity matters more than the people who'll suffer from his inaction. You think I don't know what I did? I knew. I did it anyway because I believed the alternative was worse.
34. 05:13
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That's what they all say.
35. 05:15
    George Orwellshare moment

    That's what they all say because sometimes it's true. Not always. But sometimes.
36. 05:21
    James Baldwinshare moment

    So how do you know? In the moment, when you're deciding, how do you know if you're compromising wisely or just compromising?
37. 05:28
    George Orwellshare moment

    You don't. You make the best guess you can with what you know, and then you live with it. That's all anyone does.
38. 05:36
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And you think that's enough?
39. 05:37
    George Orwellshare moment

    No. I think it's insufficient and necessary. I think we're all doing it, every day, and pretending we're not doesn't make us better. It makes us dishonest.
40. 05:49
    James Baldwinshare moment

    There's something in that. I've spent a lot of time around people who believe they've never compromised, never looked away, never chosen the expedient thing. And most of them are lying. Or they've never been tested.
41. 06:01
    George Orwellshare moment

    The ones who've never been tested are the ones who'll judge us most harshly.
42. 06:06
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes. The luxury of the untried conscience. But I still think—I have to think—that there are lines. Real ones. That matter.
43. 06:13
    George Orwellshare moment

    There are. I'm just no longer certain where they are. I thought I knew. I thought I knew exactly where mine were. And then I was dying and I was afraid and I wanted to be useful, and I gave them the list.
44. 06:29
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And you regretted it?
45. 06:30
    George Orwellshare moment

    I don't know. I died too soon after to have a proper accounting. I think I would have. I think I would have come to see it differently. But I can't say for certain.
46. 06:41
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The man I didn't defend, he died in 1983. I saw him a month before. We talked about everything except that day. And I think we both knew that was its own kind of cowardice.
47. 06:53
    George Orwellshare moment

    Some things can't be repaired.
48. 06:55
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. But they can be named. That's what we do, isn't it? We're writers. We name things. Even the things we've done.
49. 07:02
    George Orwellshare moment

    Especially those.
50. 07:03
    James Baldwinshare moment

    So let's name it now. We crossed lines. We had reasons. The reasons were real and they were also insufficient. We hurt people we should have protected. We told ourselves stories about strategy and necessity. And somewhere in those stories, we lost something.
51. 07:20
    George Orwellshare moment

    What did we lose?
52. 07:21
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The ability to be surprised by our own capacity for betrayal. That's what the first compromise costs. After that, it's easier. You know you're capable of it.
53. 07:31
    George Orwellshare moment

    Yes. That's exactly it. You've named it.
54. 07:33
    James Baldwinshare moment

    On the first try.