I tend to agree with the premise of the article, but found this line from a self described "big government" type, funny:
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
EDIT: to add, I thought that Orwell actually wrote an essay called "I am on the left" although I can't now find it. He was definitely not right wing - he was just very critical of communism as a supposedly left wing system.
Within the Communist side, there were further factions (NKVD:Stalinist, POUM:other Marxist). Orwell joined POUM. As a result, he was condemned by Stalinists and had to flee back to England. He spent much of his career warning against Stalinism, from a position on what might be called the social democrat left.
[1] It's obviously not called that, and it may be a square not a street, but I remember the street sign. :)
In short, while I think communism is roughly the worst idea ever, that book gave me an understanding of the world he lived in and why he was quite rational to view radically left-wing ideas as the best option for that time and place. A functioning, reasonably fair capitalist society like we have in the US today would have been unimaginable or unbelievable based on his life experiences.