Photo Source Martin Pettitt | CC BY 2.0
In June the United States became the first and only nation to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which a Trump administration official called a “cesspool of political bias.”
Just the day before, the U.N. Human Rights office had called Trump’s detention of children separated from their parents at the U.S./Mexico border “unconscionable.” And when, three days later, the U.N. rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights delivered a blistering report on the United States, Trump’s envoy to the United Nations assailed that report as “biased,” “politically motivated,” and “patently ridiculous.”
George Orwell’s ghost, it seems, had come back to haunt Donald Trump.
I say that for non-standard reasons. While Orwell is invoked with reference to Trump with impressive regularity – an online “Orwell Trump” search yields nine million hits – what has gone unremarked so far is that Orwell defended the rights of both children and detainees with force and insistence. His views on that subject strikingly anticipate recent U.N. thinking as expressed by special rapporteur Philip Alston – the author of the report blasted by Trump’s soon-to-exit ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley. The views that so infuriate Trump today are nearly identical to the views that George Orwell voiced over 60 years ago.
Nor is that all. A recent archival discovery shows that, besides speaking up to defend the rights…