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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

#451

Post by int_19h »

sudosysgen wrote: post #443
masswerk wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is often forgotten, by the early 1930s, the split between SPD and KPD (which dates back to Marx and Engels and the condemnation of the "Bernsteinian revisionism" on the one hand and the SPD not being a revolutionary party after 1903) had become an abyss: to the KPD the SPD was a "social-fascist movement" and the SPD had adopted the three-arrows symbol, which symbolized an equidistance to fascism, communism and m…

The rift dates to WW1, not the 1930s, and considering the three arrows to be a better marking of the rift than the SPD literally giving the order to murder KPD is nonsensical. There was no split in 1903 - the SPD simply had both a revolutionary and electoral faction. And Bernsteinian revisionism wasn't about taking power through elections or through revolution (which is what the SPD took position on in 1903), it was…

Nazis in their past Freikorps incarnation also killed plenty of communists. It did not prevent KPD from doing joint strikes with them.

So I find it very dubious that KPD and SPD couldn't have made a single united front, if instructions from Moscow weren't towards the opposite.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#452

Post by magpi3 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #421
sillysaurusx wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? You say it like it’s a bad thing to use rhetoric. But even pg has his own sharp set of rhetorical tools.

it's a bad thing to mistake rhetorical skill for profundity. The same is true for pg. Most of what he writes is trite but he's popular because he's mastered the skill of talking to his audience in a tone that has convinced them they're all secret geniuses with access to forbidden knowledge. If Orwell was alive today, he'd probably have a thriving substack. In reality much of Orwell's output was the result of his pers…

Do you really thing a book like 1984 is "not that deep"?

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#453

Post by int_19h »

kruuuder wrote: post #142
refurb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much this. Humans are not peaceful by nature. And when one group of humans want something another group of humans don’t want them to have, violence is the ultimate option to solving that conflict. Thankfully many countries see the cost of solving conflict through violence and seek to avoid it, but it’s always there.

> Humans are not peaceful by nature I also believed this until recently when I finished reading "Humankind: A Hopeful History" by Rutger Bregman. What an amazing book ... Bregman analyzes why we commonly believe that humans are not peaceful and that this assumption turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there is surprisingly little evidence that being aggressive or violent is in our nature, pretty much the opposi…

I don't see how this squares with all the violent primitive societies (which are more common than the non-violent variety).

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#454

Post by InTheArena »

tgv wrote: post #237
InTheArena wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It the plan to wipe out the Slavs predates that - and pretty much was there for anyone to read in Mein Kampf

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#455

Post by pukexxr »

lostlogin wrote: post #356
mikaeluman wrote: post #335

Just have to admit to being impressed by how succinct and clear yet deep this writing was. Easy to read and understand, and certainly gets the point across.

Reading the comments below the article (generally a bad idea) show that a paragraph of the article seems to have been ‘redacted’. Sources are quoted but I don’t see a reason for the change. “I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power - till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter - I have reflected that I wo…

>>Sources are quoted but I don’t see a reason for the change.

Redacted [by who?] If this was removed by Orwell then it isn't for you to see a reason or not. If removed by the editors of the abve site, then I'd agree that that's a questionable choice; at any rate an ellipsis would be called for.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#456

Post by jgwil2 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #287
landryraccoon wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eh, war is simply fun. Well an idealized version of war that’s designed to glorify it could be fun. Is actual war fun? Is the Ukraine war fun? I doubt it’s fun for any of the participants. It’s not fun for Ukrainian soldiers, it’s not fun for Russian soldiers, and it’s not fun for Russian or Ukrainian civilians. Maybe it’s fun for some onlookers that like to cheer and spectate, but I would argue that speaks more to…

There's a video floating around of Ukrainian soldiers managing the unusual feat of destroying a helicopter (and obviously its pilot) using a Stugna-P anti-tank guided missile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8Um69fbHA Fun might not be the right word for it but you can't tell me that the cheer from the soldiers when the missile struck home wasn't born of positive emotion, even in the midst of the hell of war.

Yes, victory is a great thrill. Especially, I'm sure, a rare victory against a powerful enemy that has invaded your homeland. That doesn't mean that in the aggregate war is great fun.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#457

Post by unmole »

dcolkitt wrote: post #32
superb-owl wrote: post #9

> Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice This fact has been the downfall of every utopian ideology, and ignoring creates a vacuum that fascist regimes readily fill. I wonder what…

The counterpoint is that regional support for the Nazis generally indicates the opposite. Their weakest electoral performance was in the West and South, which generally was the wealthiest and most liberal part of Germany. By contrast their base of support was the Prussian hinterlands which was already the most militaristic part of the country to begin with, as well as having a weak region economy. I think it’s under-…

> I think it’s under-appreciated how much the rise of the Nazis was a direct result of Germany’s loss in World War One.

Huh? Even school textbooks talk about how the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles lead to the rise of Hitler. Or as my high school history teacher joked: WW2 started in 1919.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#458

Post by adventured »

magpi3 wrote: post #452
Barrin92 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a bad thing to mistake rhetorical skill for profundity. The same is true for pg. Most of what he writes is trite but he's popular because he's mastered the skill of talking to his audience in a tone that has convinced them they're all secret geniuses with access to forbidden knowledge. If Orwell was alive today, he'd probably have a thriving substack. In reality much of Orwell's output was the result of his pers…

Do you really thing a book like 1984 is "not that deep"?

1984 is a particularly shallow book. It borders on being so simplistic as to cater to a teen equivalent crowd intellectually. It'd be deep for a 12 year old reading it for the first time, maybe. It's a cartoonish dystopia, laughably absurd in structure; although it gets his points across, which is obviously important. Orwell paints the kind of fantasy dystopia one might envision if one knew absolutely nothing about totalitarianism firsthand. Its popularity over the decades owes primarily to being shallow, simplistic. People that otherwise can't or won't approach complex ideas can read 1984 and get it. It's also not very original, even Ayn Rand took a shot at the premise a decade before Orwell with her book Anthem (1984 is a better book however).

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#459

Post by krebby »

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?

One of my favorites is The Road to Wigan Pier, which investigates living conditions of the British working classes. He fairly deftly draws a line between wages and social reforms in part 1, and why the working class largely don't identify as socialists in part 2. Fantastic read.

Re: George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

#460

Post by avodonosov »

helloworld11 wrote: post #414

>Probably, in Hitler's own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia's turn will come when England is out of the picture—that, no…

You mean Hitler really turned to Russia after he defeated England?
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