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George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

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Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#231

Post by alex_sf »

michaelchisari wrote: post #201
alex_sf wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> universal, inherent state It's not a universal, inherent state in any humans that survive. It's an aberration. That being said, I'm not actually aware of any of these abundant/common peaceful/pacifist societies you're referencing. It's entirely possible I'm ignorant of them, but I'm suspicious that they weren't actually 'peaceful'. Can you name a few of them?

| It's an aberration. It's common enough to disprove the statement "Human nature is inherently violent". It shows that understanding humanity is simply too complex to boil down to pat remarks like that. | I'm not actually aware Anthropology has documented plenty. The Kung! come to mind. And this is not the early-days "noble savage" anthropology, the perspective that there have been many civilizations that operate thr…

> It's common enough to disprove the statement "Human nature is inherently violent". It shows that understanding humanity is simply too complex to boil down to pat remarks like that.

If we accept every aberration as disproving human nature, then there is no such thing as human nature. There are exceptions to any possible definition of it. Suicide disproves self-preservation, childless adults disprove reproduction, laziness disproves innovation.

I'm not actually opposed to that argument, but it is, as mentioned and in context, semantics.

> Anthropology has documented plenty. The Kung! come to mind. And this is not the early-days "noble savage" anthropology, the perspective that there have been many civilizations that operate through cooperation and peaceful negotiation is not controversial in modern anthropology.

!Kung society absolutely had violence and homicide[1][2]. It's very much noble savage anthropology. They did not operate through cooperation and peaceful negotiation: they were just isolated hundreds of kilometers from anyone else, so the scale was smaller.

If anything, the !Kung disprove your argument. They spoke the same language, had the same beliefs, had a fair division of resources, were geographically isolated, and still killed each other.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/680660 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#232

Post by etempleton »

johnfn wrote: post #51
tomkat0789 wrote: post #30

I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.” The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These da…

I don't know; I loved SimCity as a kid. I tend to think this sort of thing rather signifies a lack of imagination on the part of video game authors.

I loved city builders and tycoon games as a kid. I think many of them tend to follow the same formula and so the returns becoming increasingly diminished.

I am excitedly looking forward to a follow up to Cities Skylines.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#233

Post by ncr100 »

motohagiography wrote: post #123

> [...] because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’tonly want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. One wonders whether this desire for struggle, self-sacrifice, drums, flags and loyalty-para…

>[my civilization offers support] so long as you don't challenge its weaknesses and falsehoods

Yowch. To be clear, just challenging it results in the blanket ripped from one's bed? Romania?

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#234

Post by yrgulation »

superb-owl wrote: post #211
yrgulation wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government might be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort and our need for adventure. Any government that will satisfy my need of adventure and struggle in colonising the solar system and exploiting the endless amounts of resources it has and harnessing the virtually unlimited energy of our star will have my vote. But people prefer tribal adventures and…

You should read the Parable books by Octavia Butler. By the sound of it maybe you have already!

Thanks for this - havent heard of her books, but after a quick google search they do sound like something i should read!

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#235

Post by scifibestfi »

notRobot wrote: post #216
rossdavidh wrote: post #186

So, there's a lot to be said about Hitler and fascism and propaganda and all the other fascinating topics Orwell brings up here, but I'd just like to point out how routinely excellent Orwell's analysis is. Of course I mostly see the best bits brought out and dusted off, no doubt he did mediocre stuff as well, but it is worth noticing how often it turns out that Orwell, nearly a century on, still has plenty in his wri…

Any recommendations for other writings and analyses by Orwell?

Politics and the English Language, Animal Farm, 1984

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#236

Post by cato_the_elder »

>[...] at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”

Orwell's attribution of the quote here seems to be incorrect.

While it's true that Hitler used the saying in his speeches [1], it predates him by many decades, and is often attributed to Ferdinand von Schill (the guy who unsuccessfully rebelled against Napoleon). [2][3]

[1]: https://comicism.tripod.com/341108.html

[2]: https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lieber_ein_Ende_mit_Schreck...

[3]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6564585-better-an-end-with-...

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#237

Post by tgv »

InTheArena wrote: post #77
soperj wrote: post #44

Quoted post unavailable.

I find this statement deeply ignorant of history. I am no defender of imperialism in general, however, Hitler started his conquest with the idea of a systematic genocide of anyone not of the master race. He started with Jews and polish and had plans to mass murder Slavs, and eventually all the mixed races of the world. Britain’s empires (there were more then one) were usually accidental and commercial in nature. They…

That's not entirely true. The systematic killing of the Jews was formalized in 1942. Before that, there were other plans, such as evicting them to Madagascar, and even Palestine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#240

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

Orwell omitted a few details: Hitler never had a majority in the Reichstag/german parliament - he benefited from the enmity between the Social democrats and the Communist. I mean a popular front, like in France of 1936 would have stopped them. The German soial dems and communist were mortal enemies, because the social dems shot a lot of communists in the aftermath of the Kapp putsch.

Also Hitler had the massive support of German industrialists, they bailed him out in 1932, and both Thyssen and Schlacht urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler. They all thought that they would control Hitler, von Papen certainly thought so.

Also the social dems were very passive (to say the least). Von Papen dissolved the Prussian state, where they social dems were the government - that was the state with the largest police force in the country. What did the social dems do? They went to court, when they should have called a general strike (they did exactly that during the Kapp putsch, some thirteen years earlier)

Hitler wasn't acting alone, I wonder why Orwell didn't mention that. I think Orwell didn't like the idea of a popular front, because of his negative experience with the communists during the Spanish civil war.

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