The author claims Orwell had plenty of evidence the conflict wasn't winnable, which means it's a waste of life to fight it. Also that collectivism would have produced a worse tyranny, and potentially endangered representative democracy in Western Europe, given Spain would have had close ties to Moscow.

The thesis of the article is that Orwell is admired so much by all political sides because of his contradictions. He was against fascism, but he also recognized totalitarian tendencies in communism. Thus the line about some animals being more equal than others in Animal Farm.