George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf • Hacker News Board

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#391

Post by hef19898 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #386

hef19898 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".…

Which elections were free? The once in Germany, which the SdP didn't participate in definitely were not.

The communal ebelctions in Sudetenland of 1938? Kind of free, but people bot supporting the Nazi allied SdP were already harassed and presured to vote SdP.

That under these circumstances women voted less for Nazis then men is kind of note-worthy.

But since I do not expect you to argue in good faith or to provide some facts, I'll stop it here. The Anschluss and the Munich Agreement, along with the history of the Sudetenland, is too conolex a topic to discuss in such a manner.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#392

Post by baybal2 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

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:…

No post body was provided.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#393

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

josh_fyi wrote: post #56

sillysaurusx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind explaining more what you mean? I’m half Jewish, so I feel confused because I didn’t get any antisemitic vibes from it at all. But I wasn’t raised in Jewish culture so I am still trying to learn about these aspects. It sounded like maybe you’re saying that since hitler’s focus was to eradicate my ancestors, Orwell should have at least mentioned that. But I don’t understand why it’s related to Orwell’s p…

Not antisemitic, just that it ignores Jews, who were Hitler's bête noire. There is a tendency to ignore the fact that Jews were a special target and say "Hitler did bad things to people." (The USSR was especially bad in this.) Kind of like "All Lives Matter" -- a fine slogan, but sometimes (not always) it holds a willful ignorance of specific suffering.

True, but recall that the holocaust hadn't happened at the time Orwell was writing and the extent of conditions for Jews inside Germany wasn't fully known to the degree that it is now. In 1940 it probably looked as if Hitler had leveraged antisemitism to get elected and consolidate power, but then moved on from oppressing minority groups to a broader program of international aggression.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#394

Post by hef19898 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

jhgb wrote: post #300

thrown_22 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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...

...or the 90-ish percent of votes for Henlein in the Sudeten? That would mean that at least 80% of all women voted for Henlein.

As stated in a sibling comment, the elctions you mention are, I assuke, the last communal (!) elections in the region before the Sudetenland became part of Germany in 1938. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split between men and women, and a SdP result of 90%, including 80% of the women (curious on were you got those numbers from so...) means close to 100% of men voted SdP.

In elections that involved quite a lot of harassment of non SdP voters, communal elections in a region in Chekoslovakia dominated by a German minority.

Well, I have to brake it to you so: women are by no means easier to come by in radical political movements than elesewhere.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#395

Post by jhgb » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #391

jhgb wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".…

Which elections were free? The once in Germany, which the SdP didn't participate in definitely were not. The communal ebelctions in Sudetenland of 1938? Kind of free, but people bot supporting the Nazi allied SdP were already harassed and presured to vote SdP. That under these circumstances women voted less for Nazis then men is kind of note-worthy. But since I do not expect you to argue in good faith or to provide s…

"Kind of free?" Are you kidding me?

The absolutely laughable claim above was that women were not to be blamed for the electoral victories of Nazis. The fact that at least 80% of German women in Czechoslovakia voted for Nazis in free elections demolishes that absurdity.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#396

Post by alex_sf » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

michaelchisari wrote: post #242

alex_sf wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, la…

I'm not arguing any societies were completely void of violence, obviously. There is a significant difference between a society where violence occurs and one in which violence is the defining principle and method of organization. Yet even in societies organized around violence and domination, the majority of people are not violent and do not commit acts of violence. At this point, it's not worth continuing the convers…

Those are certainly interesting books, but Graeber's work in particular has been widely criticized by his peers[1]. Dawn of Everything was a naked attempt at (further) politicizing the field, and was riddled with logical and historical errors. Much like his other writings.

> One review it’s known that he did read, because he wrote a response to it, is Kwame Anthony Appiah’s in the New York Review of Books. Entitled Digging for Utopia, it accuses the authors of making ideologically driven arguments at variance with the studies they cite.

> [historian David A Bell] referred to “an astounding collection of errors” and accused the authors of coming “perilously close to scholarly malpractice”.

You would be best served by not basing your opinions on fringe material.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/12/david-wengro...

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#397

Post by jhgb » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #394

jhgb wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...or the 90-ish percent of votes for Henlein in the Sudeten? That would mean that at least 80% of all women voted for Henlein.

As stated in a sibling comment, the elctions you mention are, I assuke, the last communal (!) elections in the region before the Sudetenland became part of Germany in 1938. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split between men and women, and a SdP result of 90%, including 80% of the women (curious on were you got those numbers from so...) means close to 100% of men voted SdP. In elections that involved quite a lot of harassment…

It's a lower bound estimate: Even if all "male losers" voted for the SdP, at least 80% of women would have to vote for the SdP, too, for SdP to get the results it did. So I assume you'd refer to them as "female losers", then...

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#398

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

josh_fyi wrote: post #48

soperj wrote: post #44

Quoted post unavailable.

The British Empire was more than "the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder". During the nineteenth century, the British army was absurdly small compared, for example, to the armies of continental powers. See e.g https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14218909

I don't think that's a useful comparison, since Britain's military instrument was (and continues to be) its navy, with a small but largely proportionate land force. By contrast, you never hear anything about, say, the Austrian navy because there isn't one that matters.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#399

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #57

soperj wrote: post #44

Quoted post unavailable.

I’m not a fan of this description because it’s reductionist to the point of stupidity. It can be applied to any empire, from the Romans to the USA.

Empires do tend to have a lot of features in common and run into the same difficulties. I recommend The Fate of Empires by John Bagot Glubb for a concise statement of the problem.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#400

Post by moritzwarhier » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #390

moritzwarhier wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

Yes that all makes sense to me.

In hindsight I made some vague points partly because I misread your original comment.

I am myself annoyed by some popular misconceptions about Orwell and his work.

I had read some nuanced articles about him as well and they didn't all paint him in the way that I put in quotes.

Regarding capitalism and fascism, I misleadingly wrote "you hint at it", but maybe we disagree here at least partly.