291–300 of 600 posts
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"made the 'world leaders' less enthusiastic about sending the young people off to die in wars in the name of national patriotism and defense of the country." Not supported by current events.
Less enthusiastic != Completely against NATO os certainly very reluctant to send forces into Russia, or even Ukraine for that matter. They can only send weapons to Ukraine.
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That is true, but also that tend to be true in multi-party voting system in general. Having over 50% is not routine at all. Generally, the leading party must make coalition of some sort. I think that if you want to attack legitimacy of that election, going through the street violence and voter intimidation Nazi party produced is closer to mark. Also communists were actual communists alien with Russian communist party…
By the time of the KPD-SPD split, Stalin was not in power. In fact, the KPD split from the SPD in 1918, when the USSR was still being born. And far from taking orders from the Bolsheviks, they actually had a fair amount of influence on them. The idea that they split because the meek SPD was afraid of the Stalinists is revisionist history, and the SPD itself at various points in its history was far from above purges a…
By the time of elections of 1933, Russia was full totalitarian and that is what communist party wanted for Germany.
this is tangentially related, but i've always loved reading this critique of orwell & 1984 by asimov: http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm i've always thought it a valid critique, and it makes me think less of orwell's writings
> The great Orwellian contribution to future technology is that the television set is two-way, and that the people who are forced to hear and see the television screen can themselves be heard and seen at all times and are under constant supervision even while sleeping or in the bathroom. Hence, the meaning of the phrase 'Big Brother is watching you'. This is an extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping everyone under control. To have a person being watched at all times means that some other person must be doing the watching at all times (at least in the Orwellian society) and must be doing so very narrowly, for there is a great development of the art of interpreting gesture and facial expression.
> One person cannot watch more than one person in full concentration, and can only do so for a comparatively short time before attention begins to wander. I should guess, in short, that there may have to be five watchers for every person watched.
Except as I sit here and write this now with tape over my webcam "television set is two-way" hardly seems like an idea worthy of derision.
Nor does the idea of government mass surveillance seem laughably impractical.
Of course, we have computers now that make this type of mass surveillance possible, Isacc couldn't conceive of the advances in computer and ML that have unlocked these terrifying government capacities.
In this way it was Asimov not Orwell lacking imagination.
And he takes George to task for not mentioning computers:
> Orwell was unable to conceive of computers or robots, or he would have placed everyone under non-human surveillance. Our own computers to some extent do this in the IRS, in credit files, and so on, but that does not take us towards 1984, except in fevered imaginations. Computers and tyranny do not necessarily go hand in hand. Tyrannies have worked very well without computers (consider the Nazis) and the most computerised nations in today's world are also the least tyrannical.
Oh the irony.
As for the rest of the review he dresses down Orwell for not envisioning the rise of new drugs (vices) or the liberated role of women in society.
These are only flaws if you assume Orwell's goal was to accurately predict the future.
Personally I don't.
I wouldn't criticize Animal Farm for not having the most accurate of farm equipment in its depiction and I don't read 1984, especially now, to get a sense of what the world will actually be like in 1984.
It's a silly and unfair framing of the objective.
I read both Animal Farm and 1984 as allegorical retellings of historical events which separated from the specific details of those events allow us to see general patterns and apply them to our own societies.
Animal Farm isn't less of a book because Stalin was not literally a pig and 1984 is not less of a book because gin wasn't the primary vice of the youth in the literal year 1984.
To dismiss the book for saying so is to miss the point completely.
this is tangentially related, but i've always loved reading this critique of orwell & 1984 by asimov: http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm i've always thought it a valid critique, and it makes me think less of orwell's writings
>Tyrannies have worked very well without computers (consider the Nazis) and the most computerised nations in today's world are also the least tyrannical.
Which is very not true as punch cards (hollerith machines) were very important to the Nazis, and the second part is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps no relationship actually exists there.
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> The answer to this is sports. War is competition through violence. Absolutely not. Sports is competition through violence, as well. Watch a game of American football, or ice hockey, or basketball for that matter and be able to say otherwise with a straight face. The answer is cooperative, not competitive, activities.
Calling football or hockey "violence" dilutes the meaning of the word. May as well call a high five violence.
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Any group with unpalatable views to the general public don't want to have their views expressed in the open. There isn't some grand parallel to be had here. The meetings in Davos are never televised despite their influence on the masses. Recently the Washington Post Doxxed the LibsOfTikTok account creator, who's only crime was posting the views of socially liberal people on tiktok. Once your uncommon views become mai…
I disagree however with your bigger point. The American far right in particular has gone through great lengths to be hidden. They financial backing is hidden through shell corporations and with protections they fought to carve out with Citizens United. Davos is widely publicized and the press covers it. Have you even heard of the Council for National Policy?
What I'm talking about is the subject of academic research, and is published
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1...
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2019.1...
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2020.18...
Right wing views are fine, in the context of following the law. I don't care about other people's politics to the extent they don't try to impose them on me. Seditious conspiracy is another story, and the American right is crossing into that territory recently.
> But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches … The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. A commenter here (and one on the original article) has noted that the part being elided appears to be the…
>The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. I think the magic ingredient is utter, palpable self conviction. Complete unwavering dedication to your own rightness, regardless of any counter argument, any prevarication, even evidence to the contrary, is intoxicating. You don't need to argue, you don't need to convince, you don't need reasons, you're just right by definition. The simplicity and lack…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The answer to this is sports. War is competition through violence. Absolutely not. Sports is competition through violence, as well. Watch a game of American football, or ice hockey, or basketball for that matter and be able to say otherwise with a straight face. The answer is cooperative, not competitive, activities.
Calling football or hockey "violence" dilutes the meaning of the word. May as well call a high five violence.
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>I sometimes wonder if I were not very smart, girlfriendless and a delivery rider if it wouldnt appeal to me too. How do you explain that 45% of votes for Nazis came from Women? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Nazi_Germany#Nazi_fem...