Just like Orwell’s pigs in “Animal Farm,” Sanders essentially said that rules are for others. Everyone is equal, but some remain more equal than others.

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This week marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” which remains enduringly relevant for its tragic parable of government oppression and hypocrisy.  

Separately but not wholly unrelated, a recent public opinion survey somehow rates socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I – Vermont) as one of the more popular public figures among Americans.  

That should unsettle Orwell devotees, because few public figures offer a better living illustration of Orwell’s grim warning than the hypocritical millionaire Sanders.  

Published as World War II concluded in August 1945, Orwell’s classic offers the central message that revolutions promising equality rather than individual freedom devolve into oppressive hierarchies of privilege and abuse.  It tells the tale of agitated farm animals overthrowing the human farmer, only to find themselves governed by a cabal of pigs who prove even more cruel and oppressive than the human they replaced.  

Those ruling pigs, led by the cunning Napoleon, continually promise a new utopia in which all animals enjoy equality.  As the days pass, however, the pigs ruthlessly consolidate power, distort the truth and live lives of luxury while the animals under their rule toil harder than ever.  Orwell captured that tragedy with the trademark line, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”  

“Animal Farm” endures because it exposes the corruption and privilege that ensue when government becomes too powerful and select leaders impose their will on others, while rationalizing that hypocrisy.  Although Orwell’s tale emerged from his disillusionment with communism and Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union, it also provides a cautionary tale about human nature and excessive government power in every age.  Those leaders who rail most loudly against alleged privilege and inequality often indulge in privilege after they gain power themselves.  

Which brings us to Bernie Sanders, who has spent his public life decrying wealth, free markets and what he slurs as the “millionaire and billionaire” class.  Throughout that time, Sanders cultivated this false persona of a humble, selfless public servant.  

As Orwell warned, however, such rhetoric must always be measured against reality.  

After all, while Sanders spent his life in politics rather than the private sector, he has curiously managed to amass a personal fortune, becoming a millionaire himself.  

That dissonant reality calls Sanders’s endless tirades against America’s free market economic system into question.  

Offering a perfect illustration, Sanders decried the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act during President Trump’s first term, insisting that it offered nothing more than a handout to millionaires who sought to escape paying their “fair share.”  When it came to filing his own tax returns, however, the millionaire Sanders filed under Trump’s new, lower rates.  

In other words, Sanders happily exploited the law that he claimed to oppose, and the rates that he preached shouldn’t exist.  

In 2019, Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum confronted Sanders about that contradiction during a televised townhall, asking him the obvious question:  If Sanders truly believed in higher rates for millionaires like himself, why didn’t he comport with the preceding rates?  

Sanders didn’t even attempt to explain or reconcile that obvious hypocrisy.  He simply scoffed, waved the question aside and changed the subject.  

Just like Orwell’s pigs in “Animal Farm,” Sanders essentially said that rules are for others.  Everyone is equal, but some remain more equal than others.  

Eight decades on, Orwell’s masterpiece retains its sting because human nature, which remains the downfall of socialism and communism, doesn’t change.  The leftist allure of preaching equality while practicing privilege remains as potent as ever.  While their slogans may change – from “workers of the world unite” to “millionaires and billionaires aren’t paying their fair share” – the reality remains the same.  Communist rulers and people like Bernie Sanders thrive within the system while excusing themselves from the standards they preach.  

The working animals on Orwell’s fictional farm learned too late that they’d been duped, that their sacrifices merely paved the way for a new elite class repeating egalitarian slogans.  Orwell’s warning thus remains:  Beware leaders who preach most loudly of equality, because they typically make themselves “more equal” than the rest of us when given too much power.  

The question is whether Americans recognize that illusion and awaken to the Bernie Sanders hypocrisy in better time.