Why did Orwell hate the Irish so much? >W.B. Yeats once said

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Why did Orwell hate the Irish so much?

>W.B. Yeats once said that a dog does not praise its fleas, but this is somewhat contradicted by the special status enjoyed in this country by Irish nationalist writers

>Actually, it’s simple. Orwell went to Spain to fight for his most deeply held belief, yes. Unfortunately, that belief wasn’t socialism but the nastiest, most puerile of the tribal hatreds English babies learn in the cradle: anti-Catholicism.

The revolution in Catalonia was unlike any other socialist rebellion before or since. Its fury was reserved for priests, nuns, churches and monasteries, and the anarchists Orwell loved were famous for inventing new ways to kill clerics. That’s what drew Orwell to Catalonia: the chance to help the men who were disemboweling priests in Barcelona and winding their guts around the altars. At last, a chance to smite the bloody Papists, the whore of Rome, Eric Blair’s oldest and dearest hate. Not since Cromwell had an English Papist-baiter had such an opportunity to torment the filthy priests. Naturally, Orwell was on the first ship he could catch. It wasn’t about socialism, it was about the chance to kill “a stinking RC” (Orwell’s description of Wyndham Lewis).

The Celtophobia starts in the very first line of 1984, the famous opening: “It was a cold, bright day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Oh the horror of the continental (Papist) 24-hour clock