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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

#381

Post by simonh »

dbcurtis wrote: post #86
simonh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

a.k.a. reality distortion field

If that’s a Jobs reference, I don’t think so. He talked about hiring smart people so they could tell him what to do, owned his mistakes, changed course when things didn’t work as expected. He said making mistakes was good as long as you learned something. Yes he could be an arse, but he was no Donald Trump.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#382

Post by alex_sf »

magicalist wrote: post #270
alex_sf wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing discontent The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing seems like a reasonable counter to that idea. Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.

> The mass shooting singular > and terrorism rate there increasing er, no? > Along with steady suicide rates So not growing, then. I don't think anyone's going to argue Norway has solved society but let's not twist things to try to fit someone's off the cuff head canon.

While I do love the quote line-by-line format, you are splitting up sentences and completely changing my post, which is, at least, in bad faith.

> singular ... er, no?

Mass shooting and terrorism _rate_. Are you familiar with the concept of a rate?

Also, 'mass shooting' is very much not singular, unless you have an exceptionally short memory.

> So not growing, then.

You are, again, changing what I wrote. Here, let me fix that for you:

> Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#383

Post by zweifuss »

bombcar wrote: post #170
schroeding wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Second-hand) Anecdata: My Grandpa was born in '39, was 6 when the war ended and lived very close to a big city / region that was bombed regularly by the Allies from '42-'45. He was old enough to remember this and the (light) fighting when the Americans arrived. After the war, he and the local kids played with live guns that the German soldiers just threw away. They used a Flak (anti aircraft cannon) as a carousel, p…

Adults are often more traumatized by it than children are; for them it's just the new normal, and something to play with.

As a small child in Essen, my mother lived through the bombing nights of 44/45 and the also harsh post-war period. The trauma that people close to her can suddenly disappear (e.g. suicide, abandonment, sometimes result of canibalism) still shapes her behavior today.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#384

Post by alex_sf »

rhizome31 wrote: post #267
alex_sf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate an opportunity to provide clarity when it seems like a point was missed. Whether it's circular or not isn't a meaningful property when bombs are dropping. In that spirit of providing clarity: what is your answer to the un-translated question I asked? > What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?

> What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem? With a 70–85 million death toll, I find it hard to describe it as a success. Saying there was no other choice seems fair but calling it a solution seems a bit far-fetched.

War stopped Hitler's germany. That's a solution.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#385

Post by mbg721 »

alex_sf wrote: post #384
rhizome31 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem? With a 70–85 million death toll, I find it hard to describe it as a success. Saying there was no other choice seems fair but calling it a solution seems a bit far-fetched.

War stopped Hitler's germany. That's a solution.

No post body was provided.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#386

Post by jhgb »

hef19898 wrote: post #363
jhgb wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 80% of German women voted for Henlein and SdP in 1938 long after Hitler had been in power and known for what he was. "Women just didn't like em that much" is pure fantasy.

Henlein's SdP, the Nazi-aligned party of the German minority in Chekoslovakia, got 90% of the vote of that minority in the last elections before the Sudetenland was absorbed by Naz-Germany in 1938. All German women never did vote for the SdP, basically becaise the SdP was a party in Chekoslovakia and not Germany. Also, by 1938, elections were no longer free and thus are a bad baseline. So, as a matter of fact, the on…

The May 1938 elections were absolutely free. Where did you get that they weren't free?

> And even there, women voted less for SdP than the overall German community did.

80% minimum is "less than overall German community"?

> That a German minority would be largely in favor joining Germany is propably not a big surprise, is it?

"Of course they voted for Nazis" is the exact opposite of "but they didn't vote for Nazis".

> And as said, even then women voted less for the SdP. So please stop posting unsubstantiated claims.

You yourself admit it's not unsubstantiated.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#387

Post by MomoXenosaga »

photochemsyn wrote: post #189

> "Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war." I think there's been a profound change in popular thinking on this since the end of W…

WW2 without nukes already made the entire European continent destitute. Thanks to Hitler the US could take over as a superpower.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#388

Post by yucky »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #323
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #240

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 suppo…

I think I agree with you. I don't think that the integrity of elections and democracy are the main point of this essay. Orwell wrote a lot about authoritarianism, and as you say, "communism" was the prime example at the time. What he hints at here is not only the fragility of democracy. It's about the fragility of civilization. It's about the "will to power" as defined by Nietzsche, and the power of belief systems, a…

Slavery pre-dates capitalism. Slavery is more a product of feudalism. In fact, it was the capitalist successes of the northern states in the US that drove the defeat of the southern slave states.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#389

Post by anigbrowl »

thrown_22 wrote: post #37
alangibson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many female dictators or mass shooters are you aware of?

Queen Victoria has a death count much higher than Hitlers. Something quite impressive considering the world had a quarter the population of 1940 when she started.

Factually correct, but as head of state her direct impact on policy was minor - I'm not aware of her dismissing governments of whose policies she disapproved, for example. Accepting the fruits of imperialistic tyranny is morally culpable, but it's also a systemic problem, distinctly different from the active application of executive power.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#390

Post by dalbasal »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #357
dalbasal wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must disagree. Orwell is not the bible, or an if-by-whiskey politician. Everybody reads him differently because they're combining hearsay, random quotes and attributions. If you read Orwell's essays or articles directly, he's extremely clear and unambiguous. The fact that people think Orwell agrees with them despite having polar opposite views is a testament to people's laziness, not Orwell's interpretability. On c…

Thanks for the reply. I have read Down&Out and the odd essay in addition to the ones I mentioned. I have heard the shortened trope "Orwell was a socialist, even fought in the Spanish civil war, then became a vocal critique and disillusioned socialist" often enough so that my reply partly argued against this simplification. There's some hard-to-explain background for my comments: 1) The above-mentioned simplification:…

>>I have heard the shortened trope "Orwell was a socialist, even fought in the Spanish civil war, then became a vocal critique and disillusioned socialist"

I don't think the last part is true. ASAIK, Orwell remained a socialist all his life. I don't think he was disillusioned, because he wasn't a kool aid kind of guy at any point.

Orwell died young, before the cold war so he didn't really weigh in on that dialogue. The terms and cliches we tend to use came after he died.

In my opinion fascism courted, supported and leaned on capitalists, not really capitalism. The ideological view of capitalism (in the Rand/Hayek/Neoliberalism sense) was still new ATT.

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