Speaking of Orwell, nonfiction though
I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
I’m not sure why you persist in this bad read of me, unless this is your way of trolling me. If I push the boundaries of good taste, it is because I think that decorum is the cudgel that centrism wields against the left and I feel no need to cater to those sensibilities. I’m not trying to be extreme. I believe what I write. Ask me and I will probably follow up with explanations of what I believe and why. I’m going to try to do less Twitter-esque drive-by snark and more long posts, perhaps verging into tl;dr masque de Z territory, when I mention violence. Of course, you’d probably just accuse me of trolling people by manufacturing walls of text.
I think that areas where people disagree with me are more interesting than areas where there is widespread agreement. I am not looking for an amen corner to make me feel better. I don’t crave affirmation. I’m looking to develop an ideology and political philosophy that has been decades in the making. If I get to the stage of writing a book about it, I’ll probably dedicate it to y’all.
You need more Orwell quotes (and Twain quotes).
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
Err, maybe not that one
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
That’s better
No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
Bingo
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
Ya burnt.
Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.
Hey, enough of that, you’re not helping
incrementalism?Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
ouch
Man, good luck recruiting volunteer mods if this is what’s expected of them. Goddamn, some of us just want to talk about politics and shoot the shit, that’s what this community’s always been about. If you guys want to be the vanguard of #The Resistance, maybe this isn’t the right venue for that.
You ever read this?
also this
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.
and what he understood democratic socialism to be is really socialism, but democratic rather than totalitarian - more or less Anarchism and the groups he supported in Spain (where he fought). He was wary, but not an incrimentalist reformer.
If you want to understand his quotes in context you should. Also, Homage to Catalonia is awesome. Should read Down and Out in Paris and London while you’re at it - also awesome. Both better and much more clear an understanding of Orwell than you get from 1984 and Animal Farm.
we need a thread for this… just riffing on language, writers, philosophy, ideas and perspectives, word associations with their meaning lol… not that I mind this derail one bit
protean kaleidoscopic
Of course he “said” this, though in a work of fiction and it was out of the mouth of O’Brien. The context is as an indictment of totalitarianism and authority much more than of revolution per se.
Not really a bingo and also “Emmanuel Goldstein” said this. A fictional character from a piece of propaganda in a work of fiction.
This was basically a criticism of #TheResistence liberal types.
The warmongering to which the English intelligentsia gave themselves up in the period 1935-9 was largely based on a sense of personal immunity.
That’s who he was talking about, not revolutionaries.
He didn’t say this.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_famous_misquotations
(I had quoted that briefly before your post, but it didn’t sound right)
abjure sounds very right. it is a luxurious word. luxuriate to the touch of velvet Elvis
the post above IS an Orwell quote
whoda thunk it?
This is kind of Orwell saying it, but it’s kind of his description of the type of revolutionary writing, such as it was, of Charles Dickens. Also, so?
Again, this isn’t a criticism of revolutionaries or the real socialists that he fought with in Spain, but of middle class English posers.
with whom he fought rolls off the tongue better
I can see how my post may be taken as snarky but everything in it was in jest, making fun of me making fun of some of the proclivities of the forum, everything except that you do need to up your quote game, so recently re-dipping into the two terrors Twain passage.
I’d be lying if I said I ever got deep into Homage to Catalonia, although at some point I’ll try again.
Jesus Hyperion Christ you posted 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 replies to it, okay, we need some music.
I put it in rainbow text, this is to poke fun at the hyperventilation over incrementalism here with a tempering thought, not to assert that Orwell was an incrementalist.
There is nothing outside the text -- Derrida^ although a) that itself is apparently mistranslated b) I don’t even believe that, and c) I appreciate you taking some time to provide some context
Ok, maybe Eric Blair said it?
I’m glad I subliminally sent out the MissileDog signal.
Not sure how much good it did but eh.