Sunday, April 12, 2009

Pigs 1, Orwell 0

"We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the current time."
-- T.S. Eliot, an editor at British publisher Faber & Faber in 1944, in a letter rejecting George Orwell's Animal Farm

3 comments:

  1. George Orwell sucked bit time. Only in today's twisted rhetorical environment could a 100% orthodox Communist be considered a conservative. The Stalinist position was to portray anyone, but especially other communists and socialists, who opposed them as secret agents of the enemy. And they succeded with Orwell as with no one else.

    Orwell wrote very approvingly in "Homage to Catalonia" of the murder of priests and the bourgeosie and the desecration of churches. He was what the Stalinists called a Trotskyite, which is any communist who they and not Stalin's crew should be running the show trials and executions.

    It's a testament to the strength of the Popular Front's "no enemies to the left" rule that hardly anyone but Orwell ever violated it, and two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union the rule stands strong.

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  2. Um, as a newbie, help me out. Does Thrasymachus relate back to the "trolls" post? Anyway, if my memory of sixth grade literature serves me correctly, didn't Orwell speak at length about the subversion of speech for political purposes? Like instead of "terrorists" we now have "really nice people of a different perspective who, therefore, want us dead."

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  3. When I posted this a few weeks ago, I headlined it "Noted Paleocon Ever Vigilant Against Creeping Trotskyism."

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