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| - Orwell published the text in his 1938 Spanish Civil War memoir, "Homage to Catalonia." The original line read, "One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
In March 2026, social media users shared a remark that they attributed to "1984" and "Animal Farm" novelist George Orwell. The quote read, "All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
For example, on March 3, an X user posted (archived) the alleged thought alongside a photo of Orwell. Just days before the post, the U.S. and Israel had begun strikes that sparked the war with Iran.
(@OutlawsPoetic/X)
People shared the supposed Orwell extract on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and X.
In short, the quote is correctly attributed to the British novelist. The passage appears in "Homage to Catalonia," Orwell's memoir for his time volunteering during the Spanish Civil War. The full sentence originally reads, "One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
The quote in 'Homage to Catalonia'
The in-question quote appears in the latter half of chapter five, with Orwell opining about political dishonesty in the journalism of war (emphasis in bold ours):
This, then, was what they were saying about us: we were Trotskyists, Fascists, traitors, murderers, cowards, spies, and so forth. I admit it was not pleasant, especially when we thought of some of the people who were responsible for it. It is not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher, with a dazed white face looking out from among the blankets, and to think of the sleek persons in London and Paris who are writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise. One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, at worst in the newspaper offices in Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification of the enemy — all these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right. I do earnestly feel that on our side — the Government side — this war was different from ordinary, imperialistic wars; but from the nature of the war-propaganda you would never have guessed it. The fighting had barely started when the newspapers of the Right and Left dived simultaneously into the same cesspool of abuse.
For further reading, we previously reported about whether Orwell wrote, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
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