@jointed said:
It's funny how leftists, the side who's ideas most closely resembles that of 1984, have the nerve to coin terms such as Newspeak. Especially since the government in the novel is socialist.
So like.... do you pay attention to these things? I know there is this weird breed of liberal that wants to be progressive but seems to take the actions of the religious right, but this is new. At least it being a common narrative and something you often hear, is fairly new. Im sure there have always been crazies who have absurd things, but this sect of democrat just rose up to 10-15% of the party recently and became vocal.
That said, we've had the religious right wing for decades, which by its own nature defines totalitarianism and authoritarian. Its hard to even compare the two in America because even though its the same extremist mechanism, id still say the Christian right (which is about 40% of the American right wing) goes even further beyond the control the leftists propose. While the extremists on the left tend to want to control speech, so do those on the right, but they take it a step further and want to control who you love, who you sleep with, how you sleep with them, if you can love yourself, etc. I think the obvious difference here is with the left, you have to bastardize and alter the democratic positions to get where the crazies have gotten. With the right, that has more people and has been established longer and has a stronger hold on the general right wing voter (i just feel the need to again point that out), its inherent, its what it is.
I often find many of the people who read Orwell never understood what he wrote about or they try to politicize it in their favor and ignore reality. 1984 was not a book about the "left", it was a book about how governments go corrupt and become totalitarian (of course, one should never read 1984 without reading animal farm first as they are sister novels). He covered many types of government in his various novels and how they can go wrong, with the common theme generally being that nothing is safe, there is no perfect system that can go unchecked, its not about parties or one ideology being better than another.
The government in 1984 was not socialist, it was communist...if you dont know the difference or cant tell the difference i highly suggest you stop having these conversations and read more Orwell. But, that would not matter as if you take his work seriously, you'll understand he wrote about all governments and all types of power. Including Capitalism, which he actually felt was possibly the worst system one could implement (so if you're a staunch capitalist, try not to cite his work). That said, Orwell himself felt that there was no better type of government than democratic socialism as its easier to keep in check. With the worst types being communism, capitalism and we are to assume fascism.. I say assume because its the definition of many of the corruptions he writes about, but he never specifically wrote about the subject. He did however take a bullet in an attempt to stop it. So its safe to say he disliked it.
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art.
My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice.
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.
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