Orwell’s Assessment of Yeats as an Occult Fascist Anonymous College

In George Orwell’s critical essay on W.B Yeats, he analyzes the tendencies of fascism present in Yeats’ works and his predispositions towards occultism. Orwell states that imagery in literature can be used to infer into the writer’s social-political inclinations. In the essay, which is a review of V. K. Narayana Menon’s The Development of William Butler Yeats, Orwell deduces that Yeats exhibits a rather menacing outlook on life through his style of writing in several of his poems. Yeats whose political leanings were elitist and believed democracy was a threat to public order and good governance, Orwell critiques his works to highlight these fascist affinities. He explains that the imagery in Yeats’ works tends to be outdated and demonstrate tendencies of hatred towards democracy, modernism, human equality, and the concept of progress. In the essay, Orwell links the concepts of occultism and fascism by stating their comparisons. Thus, Orwell affirms that the literary tendencies in Yeats’ works translate into occult fascism as they showcase Yeats to be acceptant of a totalitarian civilization and the limitation of progression.

Orwell highlights Yeats’ “The Second Coming” as a reference to his fascist tendencies; the passage...