It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984, and it has been thirty years since we saw the creepiest example of educated and free people willingly walking into a living dystopia. November 18, 1978, three decades ago, 918 people drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Jim Jones, the communist leader of Jonestown, Guyana, had become "Big Brother." Soviet and Communist Chinese propaganda films and condemnations of capitalist and imperialist America blared continually to the subjects of this island of Leftist Hell.............

Spot on.

"Immutable oppressors are the final nasty element in dystopia. Hitler blamed Jews for everything. Stalin blamed kulaks and his enemies in the party for everything. Subjects of Orwell's Oceania saw Emmanuel Goldstein as the eternal, immutable enemy of the party. Today there is a drearily predictable list of oppressors. Christians, men, white people, the "rich" (whatever that is supposed to mean), America, and Israel are oppressors and nothing can ever change that.


Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984: "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians." (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.) Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth" (at least truth de jour.)"

1984 was, in fact, not about the future but the then present, 1948.

quote:

Originally posted by enfieldspares:
1984 was, in fact, not about the future but the then present, 1948.

We have that straight from The Ministry of Truth.

Didn't know they had two-way viewing screens in every house back then.

quote:

Originally posted by enfieldspares:
1984 was, in fact, not about the future but the then present, 1948.

Orwell's 1984, along with Animal Farm, were actually tracts against Stalinist communism; I know Animal Farm was, anyway.

In other words, he wasn't particularly an anti-communist, but he was an anti-Stalinist.

Orwell's politics were considerably leftward.

There sure were/are a lot of "ism's" and "ist's" in that bunch.

Orwell described himself as anti-totalitarian. He also described himself as a "democratic-socialist as he understood the word" and has been described as an anarchist by others. He did fight against fascism. Just judging by his writings, I believe he would be described as far-right in today's USA. Just my opinion.

George Orwell was a militant and fought for Trotskyist POUM party during the Spanish Civil War.

His experiencing the Stalinist Checa liquidate first of all other revolutionaries instead of fighting Franco as well as the Sovjet show trials held in Mosow at about the same time made him write "Animal Farm".

Francisco Franco was not a fascist like Mussolini or a national socialist as Hitler, both had rather revolutionary than conservative ideas. He was rather an ultra-conservative military dictator, believeing he defended church, family and the fatherland.

Leon Trotsky was a fanatic revolutionary and the founder of the Red Army. He was murdered by a Stalinist agent in México where he still propagated revolutionary struggle. To describe him or his followers as "far-right in today's USA" is not correct unless, of course, one considers that the neoconservatives are rather revolutionary than interested in conserving a certain social, ethical or economical status quo.

Like the Nazis (jews) and the communists (burgois and kulacks enemies of the people) they even seem to have a favourite scape goat, whom they blame for all or most evils of this world: Liberals and Islam.