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新闻自由：奥威尔为《动物农场》所写的未刊序言（1945）
Freedom of the Press: Orwell's Proposed Preface to Animal Farm (1945)
导读
这是奥威尔1945年为《动物农场》拟写的“新闻自由”序言，讨论出版审查、自我审查，以及“不合时宜”的观点为何难以被公平听见；文中也透出他清晰、口语化的写作方法。对写作者来说，它既是一篇关于政治写作伦理的样本，也能看到如何用精确语言抵抗套话和沉默。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
留意那些“没人明令禁止、但就是不能写”的边界，写作时先把这种自我审查识别出来。
- 02
用短句、口语节奏和清楚的标点组织论证，比堆砌抽象名词更能让观点有说服力。
- 03
对不受欢迎的判断，先准确说出它，再解释为什么它被排斥；不要用阵营正确代替事实。
- 04
讲故事的人也可以把语言和思想问题写进叙事，但要让结构服务故事，而不是压过故事。
HN 评论精选
以“捍卫民主”为名的极权论证会摧毁独立思考，政治写作要拆解这种逻辑。
评论引用了奥威尔一段今天仍适用的话：所谓“变节自由派”如今常主张，要捍卫民主就必须用极权手段粉碎敌人；而敌人不仅是公开攻击者，还包括“客观上”散布错误学说的人。这样一来，捍卫民主反而成了摧毁一切独立思考，这套论证曾为苏联清洗、左翼媒体在西班牙内战中的撒谎以及1943年攻击人身保护令辩护。评论者提醒：如果鼓励极权手段，就看不到自己正在毁掉所捍卫的东西。
CamperBob2查看英文原文
Some great passages in there. This one could have been written today: One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that 'bourgeois liberty' is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who 'objectively' endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of. but by holding heretical opinions they 'objectively' harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943. These people don't see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you...
不受欢迎的观点难获公平讨论，写作者要警惕知识界的从众和道德优越感。
评论认为，奥威尔说的“真正不合时宜的观点几乎得不到公平倾听”今天仍成立，而且知识分子往往最敌视异端。网页管理员的前言抱怨左派受苛待，恰好说明民主资本主义和启蒙价值仍多么不受欢迎；社会主义者仍自认道德优越，尽管其支持的运动造成数千万人死亡。奥威尔是左翼中极少数早早谴责苏联的人。
tjradcliffe查看英文原文
> A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. Still true today, as is the observation that it is intellectuals who are most hostile to heterodox ideas. The preface to the preface(not by Orwell, but by the webmaster) whining about how mean people were to leftists--who all went strangely quiet for a decade or more after the Soviet empire collapsed and the true extent of the horrors perpetrated could be fully exposed without a constant barrage of propaganda attempting to bury the details--is a nice illustration of how "truly unpopular" democratic capitalism and the Enlightenment values that underpin it remain. Socialists still steadfastly believe they have the moral high ground, even after they and those almost all of them actively or passively supported had piled up tens of millions of innocent dead. And their support went on for decades after the truth had been thoroughly documented by people like Robert Conquest and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Orwell stands today, still, as one of the very, very few voices on the Left who called out the Soviets for what they were. He did so early. Decades later most Western leftists were still quietly accepting Soviet hegemony, or actively defending the Soviet regime. So Orwell's voice is notable not just because of his insight and eloquence, but because so few of his comrades had the courage to follow his lead and condemn the Soviets or their puppets in other nations. The fact of his uniqueness is a far deeper condemnation of 20th century socialists than anything he actually wrote, and that's saying something.
奥威尔的清晰文体来自口语节奏、标点和敢破规则，同时揭示“不合规矩”的隐形审查。
评论说自己喜欢奥威尔多从技术角度：文字流畅清晰。他举例：“并非明令禁止说某事，而是‘不合规矩’说它，就像维多利亚中期在女士面前提裤子不合规矩。”评论者指出这话今天仍适用（如英国媒体和BBC对斯诺登的沉默）。他还列出写作特点：同句混用Every-one/everyone、用and/but开头、逗号多、单破折号代替括号、冒号后大写、用traduce等；并引用奥威尔：敌人是留声机式头脑，不管你是否同意当下放的唱片。
luxpir查看英文原文
I always enjoy reading Orwell's writing, mostly for the technical side. It is so fluid and clear. This was pleasing: It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. And as mentioned elsewhere, still applies today (i.e. the British media + the BBC's silence over Snowden, D-Notice or not). A few curiosities from a writing point of view, sticking to his advice about avoiding the traditional elementary school grammar rules: . 'Every-one' and 'everyone' in the same sentence. I can just about see how that could have a literary effect, but part of me thinks it could just be a quirk. . Starting sentences with 'and' and 'but'. Great! . A liberal use of commas. . The use of a single - dash - combo instead of brackets/parentheses. . The use of the now-American-only: Start everything after a colon with a capital letter. Nearly everything, anyway. . The editor's decision between s/or/of should IMO be 'of', if the style of the sentence is to match Orwell's style, and indeed if it is to make complete sense. . The use of 'traduce', to slander or defame, was fun. And educational... A quote to wrap up this rambling comment: The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment. I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. Well worth a read!
伟大讲故事者也能把语言和思想的结构化思考写进作品，增加叙事厚度。
评论回忆小时候读《1984》觉得语言论述很枯燥，青少年重读却发现比小说本身更有趣；少见的是，这么会讲故事的人也能分享许多有趣、成体系的思想。
peteretep查看英文原文
I remember reading 1984 when I was very young and finding all the linguistic stuff he'd written terribly dull. Coming back to it when I was a teenager, it was considerably more interesting than the book itself. Rare that such a great story teller also had so many interesting structured thoughts to share.
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