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The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

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Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#101

Post by duxup »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the political theory question might be: Why have seemingly all communist movements and governments been authoritarian? All communist governments (not all communist movements, and this is actually the source of many breaches between communist movements that aren't governments, particularly in the West, and communist governments and the movements aligned with them) are rooted in Leninist vanguardism, a specific a…

Excellent post. One nit: The American Revolution was led by elites, if by "elite" you mean "wealthy and influential". But it was not led by elites, if by "elite" you mean "nobility". In that sense, it was quite anti-elite.

>"wealthy and influential"

To me that would qualify as elite. Not sure how much local nobility there was in the area, but certainly the folks leading were the local elites IMO.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#102

Post by dang »

dangxiaopin wrote: post #54

Just curious why contrary to the usual HN policy of reusing the headline verbatim, the word "communist" was edited out?

Because it's baity. We have enough trouble keeping people from going on generic ideological tangents as it is.

The policy is "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#103

Post by dang »

gedy wrote: post #5

I'm not versed enough in political theory to know myself, but why have seemingly all communist movements and governments been so riddled with purges, paranoia, and violence?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20934375 and marked it off-topic.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#104

Post by dang »

Sag0Sag0 wrote: post #47
cheaprentalyeti wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very compelling religion of the modern age. That doesn't mean it can't be wrong.

[flagged]

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#105

Post by 75dvtwin »

It is a short story but here are 'summary exerpts' that perhaps will serve as interest to others, to read the full story.

- The Communist Plot to Assassinate George Orwell

- When George Orwell returned to Barcelona for the third time, on June 20th, 1937, he discovered that the Spanish secret police were after him. He had been forced to return to the front in order to have his discharge papers countersigned and, in his absence, the Communists had initiated a purge of their perceived enemies. Orwell was on the list.

- David Crook, a young Englishman .... He was eager to join up with the International Brigades and fight the Fascists. He was descended from Russian-Jewish immigrants ... Like many young men who grew up after the First World War, he was attracted to left-wing causes. He moved to New York City, where he attended Columbia University and embraced radical politics, joining the Young Communist League.

- He (David Crook) .. Recovering in Madrid, he socialized with the literary set ... At this point he came to the attention of Soviet intelligence agents. After recruiting him, the NKVD sent him to a training camp in Albacete, where he was given a crash course in sabotage and surveillance techniques.

- ... He compiled reports on the Orwells, Kopp, and McNair and, at meetings in a local café, delivered them folded up in a newspaper to his handler, Hugh O’Donnell (code name “Sean O’Brien”). ... Crook reported that Kopp and Eileen were having an affair, the kind of information the NKVD valued for blackmail purposes.

- While on the run, Orwell persisted in the “ineradicable English belief that ‘they’ cannot arrest you unless you have broken the law,” even though “practically everyone we knew was in jail by this time.”

- The Orwells and their friends made it to France and safety (the first newspaper they read contained a premature report announcing McNair’s arrest for espionage). A secret police file, dated July 13th and prepared for the Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason in Valencia, denounced Orwell and Eileen as “confirmed Trotskyists.” The report was compiled with information from Wickes (and almost certainly Crook). Orwell had fled just in time.

- Orwell needed to tell the world, and most importantly his fellow left-wingers, the truth about what was going on in Spain.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#106

Post by aalleavitch »

partialrecall wrote: post #35
aalleavitch wrote: post #13

Unlike authoritarian communism, anarcho-socialism never got the chance to succeed or fail on its own merits. It was strangled in the crib.

Could getting strangled in it's crib be seen as anarcho-socialism failing on it's own merits? If it wasn't strong enough to protect itself, does it not then lack merit from a pragmatic perspective?

Not if better starting conditions could've led to a strong, long-term success. The principle behind Leninism is that you have to protect it in its infancy, but the thing they built to protect it ended up strangling it to death. I'm not sure what conditions in the real world would allow it to thrive, capitalism is extremely aggressive about attacking and exploiting everything it can find because it is competition itself grown malignant. I'm of the mind of Proudhon, though: the only thing that is necessary for anarchism to thrive is for enough people to develop a strong enough understanding and sense of morality to realize that it's what we all really want. In my mind the road to a successful anarcho-socialist society is simply planting the seeds in people's minds and letting them germinate in their own dissatisfaction with the state of the world.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#107

Post by DuskStar »

aalleavitch wrote: post #96
DuskStar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would the members of such a society not choose to damage the global environment if the local benefits outweighed the losses? That's the carbon emissions problem, after all. Regarding 'good faith' - I think you might be arguing in good faith, but I don't see how you'd think that argument is the best path to take to convince people to either support the environment or to abandon our current economic systems for…

The people ruining the planet will be dead before they have to live through the consequences of what they’ve done. Good ‘ol self-interest.

So we should invest more in life extension research - turn that self interest to work for us ;)

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#108

Post by aalleavitch »

gmfawcett wrote: post #84
aalleavitch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anarchists didn't need to invent it, it described what people were already participating in. Anarchy is simply the natural state of man without an imposed hierarchy. The scientific community is an anarchy.

I wouldn't have been confused to hear that anarchists were participating in online community. What confused me was because1's statement that anarchists invented the Internet. > The scientific community is an anarchy. The scientific community is an organism that eats government grants and excretes pay-walled research papers. I wouldn't call that an anarchy!

That's simply how it pays for itself, and I think all scientists agree that is the worst part of science. But fundamentally science is not a profit-seeking enterprise, it is driven by the desire of people to benefit all of society and there is no central authority and yet through the individual actions and judgments of different scientists a community and scientific consensus is born.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#109

Post by aalleavitch »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #100
aalleavitch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anarchists didn't need to invent it, it described what people were already participating in. Anarchy is simply the natural state of man without an imposed hierarchy. The scientific community is an anarchy.

> The scientific community is an anarchy. No? It's a meritocracy, with elite gatekeepers. How is it an anarchy?

Without a doubt, there is cruft in the sense of gatekeepers and institutionalized power as short-hands for who to trust, but in the grand scheme of things the most power is in reaching a closer approximation of the truth. There is no strict structured system for obtaining scientific consensus, it's simply the individual actions of different researchers, labs, and institutions that choose to build on the work of others or challenge it that cooperatively reach outcomes that benefit all of mankind. There are plenty of parasites growing on the scientific community, like the publication system, but these things don't define it, they're simply hangers on and the scientific community has existed in plenty of times and places without something like it.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#110

Post by everybodyknows »

markvdb wrote: post #2

If you find this interesting, definitely read his book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia !

For a similarly fascinating, curiously parallel autobiography -- another western, idealistic leftist losing his illusions about Stalin's regime -- pick up Whitaker Chambers' Witness.

A favorite passage ponders at length a tiny note, smuggled out of a Moscow prison, where Chambers' now-purged controller awaited execution. From memory: "'You will meet a man. You will think of him as your friend.' What could it mean but that he would not be my friend?"

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