Animal Farm: A Communist Manifesto George Orwell's novel Animal Farm is subtitled "a fairy tale", a label that might make the book seem innocent and appropriate for children and the school environment. However the title is misleading. Animal Farm is a work of communist propaganda. It outlines and even encourages the overthrow of the government and explains how to create and maintain a communist state. It portrays the government as corrupt and the public as stupid and easily manipulated. Orwell himself oscillated between being a socialist and an anarchist. Considering the recent increasing aggressiveness of Communist China and the deterioration of relations between them and the United States, the dangers of this novel must be weighed carefully. It is often taught in schools, despite promoting anti-American and anti-capitalist views. With today's political tension, do we really want our young people to be exposed to literature that encourages them to distrust government and supports a communist revolution? Animal Farm is in fact communist propaganda. It describes how the animals overthrow the farmer and chase all humans from the farm. The animals create a set of laws, designed to eradicate all traces of humanity; humanity, of course, represents the capitalist government. The animals call each other "comrade", a clear reference to communism, and after the revolution the animals are described as "happy as they had never conceived it possible to be" (Orwell 46). The novel describes much of the procedure of running a communist state. It involves organizing committees and indoctrinating the public in the form of sheep. Snowball, one of the two pigs who lead the animals after the revolution, teaches the sheep to repeat the maxim "Four legs good, two legs bad", which according to him sums up the laws of their new system - completely against humans. Propaganda methods are also explored. Carrier pigeons are sent to nearby farms to tell heroic stories of the revolution and convert other farms to "Animalism": the domino effect in action. Internal propaganda is the responsibility of a pig called Squealer, whose main function is to convince the animals that the actions taken by the pigs are for their own good. This is a clear description of how to keep a communist regime in power: as long as the public is convinced that all actions are for their own good, they will agree to anything..