(It's not like Orwell didn't get that, Orwell fought with the socialists in the Spanish Civil War Well before WWII actually started he was saying if he ever got in a room with Hitler he would kill him -- an act of *gasp* illegal assassination under the League of Nations)
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But it's funny to see the bros just engage in full-on Two Minutes' Hate style "Orwellian doublethink" on this issue They claim to be free speech maximalists and flip the fuck out, like Dostoyevsky's ranting flailing coxcomb, at people being Irrational and Wrong
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Replying to @arthur_affect
And the worst part is they deliberatly overlook the most important point of Orwell's novel: the most important thing is not whether 2+2= 4 or 5, but whether someone has the means to torture you until you grovel at their feets and pretend to agree with them on everything.
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Replying to @Laurent_Weppe @arthur_affect
If someone says "the sky is not blue, it's pinkish red with green dots dancing around" and you waterboard them till they say "the sky is blue" you're still the fucking villain of the story.
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Replying to @Laurent_Weppe
Yes, and the whole thing is even if we don't bring in the extreme case of torturing people, there is always that blurry line between education and indoctrination Young Orwell being genuinely concerned "Do I *really* know the Earth is round? What if they'd taught me it was flat?"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Laurent_Weppe
Which is why 1984 giving us this narration where Winston talks like truth is obvious and easy to see and everyone knows it until totalitarians take it away is so frustrating Like that is, inherently, conservative, that's the definition of the right wing
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Replying to @arthur_affect
The whole "The Truth is obvious" function in 1984 because the party's gaslightning is a caricature of the real thing:
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Replying to @Laurent_Weppe @arthur_affect
The weekly chocolate ration is reduced to 20 grams a week, and 24 hours later, the state propaganda says "People are demonstrating their gratitude for the chocolate ration"…
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Replying to @Laurent_Weppe @arthur_affect
An Inner Party orator give a speech about the evils of Eurasia, get a piece of paper and switch mid sentence to denounce the evils of Eastasia, while the banners denouncing the Eurasian ennemy and celebrating the alliance with Eastasia are quickly taken down
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Replying to @Laurent_Weppe
Yeah He completely discard subtlety or nuance or, honestly, basic realism of any kind in 1984 in order to make his point It's not a serious prediction, it's a caricature, a fever dream It's why Asimov didn't care for it - "This society wouldn't last a day"
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Like honestly the more I think about it the harder I find it to forgive that 1984 is tailor made to appeal to "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" The book itself *exactly* the kind of pure appeal to emotion, to primal fear, that Orwell is supposed to be warning us against
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Laurent_Weppe
Like at this point this isn't me being mean to him and extrapolating, this is a fact There are many many 1984 fans who see Big Brother lurking behind every rock and tree Who quite literally drive themselves into a Two Minutes' Hate every day against "creeping Orwellianism"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Laurent_Weppe
It's just... the book is hypocritical It's ironically a great description of itself The phenomenon where, once you become a True Believer, the more absurd the propaganda is the more violently you rush to defend it The way even the mildest expression of doubt triggers rage
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