Orwell was a socialist. He believed "true" socialism had been betrayed, and spent his life attacking the traitors (Stalin, Islington liberals etc). His book are about the "corruption" of the ideal.

If you haven't read the classics, then the best thing to do is do the metacognition: read around the subjects to get a feel for what to study. "Cynical Theories" and "Intellectual Imposters" are great first-reads.

• Hobbes: the world as a jungle
• Hume: reason vs morality
• Hegel: the origin of leftist totalitarianism
• Rousseau: the origin of the "black slate" and collectivism
• Marx: Hegel's bastard child trying to oppose Adam Smith
• Marcuse - the 60s students and their "liberation" from capitalism
• Bernays: Freud's ideas weaponised for corporations

For Bolshevism (Leninism) and Maoism (Marxist-Leninism), you have to look at Marx. For Marx, you have to look at Hegel. If Marx is the antichrist,. Hegel is Satan: all of it comes from him.

After you've looked at Marx, ask yourself if there were ideas other than his. There were. Look at the Austrian school (Pareto) and statistics.

Then look at Karl Popper and Bertrand Russell.

Put together Freud and Marx, and you have Critical Theory and Marcuse. Put Critical Theory into universities with dropout students, and you have "sociology" degrees. Add those students together and they pursue a "critical consciousness" (seeing society like a Marxist). Take away the church using atheism, and you have a new secular humanist religion they have transferred their instincts onto, one they are "born again" into, aka Woke (enlightened to their new critical theory Marxist consciousness).

Wokies believe they attained a new spiritual condition by seeing things (race, sex, gender etc) in a Marxist way, revealing a hidden set of systems and structures causing the world's injustices - which they must fix as a source of their purpose and meaning. Theirs is a revealed truth only they have learned to see. By.... seeing it in a Marxist way.

That all comes from Hegel.

Take out Hegel, Rousseau, Marx, and Freud, and it's all gone. There is no unconscious mind, so there goes "unconscious (invisible) bias training".

it goes like this:

• Hegel (theory of everything)
• Rousseau (we can remake society)
• Marx (Hegel + economics)
• Lenin (Marx + force)
• Freud (batshit psychology)
• Critical Theory (Marx + Freud)
• Mao (Marx + Lenin + extreme force)
• Derrida (it's all language)
• Marcuse (anti-vietnam students + see culture as Marxism)
• Foucault (Hegel + Freud)
• Critical Race Theory (race + Marx)
• Intersectionality (Hegel + Marx)
• Gender theory (Foucault + Hegel)

One warning: be careful when it comes to Bolshevism. Most of "Mein Kampf" rails against it, so when you're discussing the subject with Very Smart People owning lame philosophy degrees, they will call you a Nazi.

https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Its-Betrayal-Enemies-Liberty/dp/069115757X

Read your bible! There is not a single word which is subjective or relative. Christ claimed to be the objective and absolute truth, not as a thing, but as a person. It will read you.