(This is what I mean about one of the critical flaws in 1984 - it's set up so the dead past, the world we live in now in real life, is totally inaccessible to Smith, he knows almost nothing about it He imagines it as some kind of paradise and the narrative just lets him do so)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
It's part of this sort of arch joke that the Party uses "capitalists" as a strawman to beat up on, saying that their defeat of capitalism justifies everything they do, but no one even remembers what a capitalist is - they just have this image of a rich guy wearing a top hat
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
Because of this, actual capitalists manage to read this book and think of themselves as the good guys Orwell's critique about using capitalism as an excuse for abuse and oppression within left-wing movements turns into an actual defense of capitalism
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
This interpretation of the book is flat out wrong if you actually pay attention when you read the whole thing And yet it's incredibly common The *tone* of the book invites it, this sense that revolution has ruined what was a flourishing happy world
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And that sucks, honestly One thing that I've noticed is people who love the word "Orwellian" talk about "creeping Orwellianism", they point to some stupid fake college campus scandal and go "These are the trends Orwell was warning us about"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
But he wasn't! At least not in 1984! 1984 isn't about "creeping Orwellianism", it doesn't have "trends", it doesn't contain "early warning signs" The whole thing takes place AFTER they've already completely conquered society!
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And that's actually one of the great weaknesses of 1984 It DOESN'T depict the transitional period, at all It's actually a major plot point that NO ONE CAN REMEMBER IT (except maybe O'Brien dropping tantalizing hints) Winston keeps trying to remember but he can't
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And honestly I think that's because he couldn't show the transition because he wasn't sure what the story would be There's a lot of shit you'd have to figure out for how this exaggerated nightmare scenario might occur
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
It's easier not to explain it, let the Party appear all-powerful and eternal, make the story be about the fact that no one can actually know anything about the reality of the world I get that, but it remains a cop out
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
It means dickhead conservatives get to fill in their own version of the history, which they have done, to the point where "creeping Orwellianism" fanfiction giving an origin story to the Party is basically better known than the actual plot of the actual book
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And even though Orwell actually believed the Party was an end result of the inevitable collapse of capitalism under its own contradictions, they get to say stupid shit about how America was working fine and was the prosperous land of the free etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
And then, one day, the pronouns attacked
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Replying to @arthur_affect @trans_victory and
I'm sure the party would want to abolish gendered pronouns altogether in the name of uniformity in a newer Dictionary
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