People who've only read 1984 like to imagine him as a sort of centrist liberal or even just as a straight up conservative and it's revealing of this pretty big tonal shift from Young Orwell to Old Orwell
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And really, even then, it's also Old Orwell being repackaged by Cold War America for public schools Like does everyone forget that when O'Brien gives the Brotherhood Oath to Winston and Julia it says they'll blow up buildings, throw acid in people's faces, strangle babies, etc
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And yeah it's a sting deliberately designed to ensnare Smith and make him feel bad in hindsight for the Party's show trials (that are bizarrely elaborate for this totalitarian dystopia where no such thing should really be necessary) Even so
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
see our prior conversations about Tolkien vs Orwell, how one was - despite his conservativism - deeply a lover of life and a hater of warfare, and one seemingly NEEDED a cause to go to crusade for
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Replying to @loudpenitent @Nymphomachy
Well I mean Tolkien almost straight up says in the text of LotR that the reason he's into all this old-timey shit with horses and swords and fighting Orcs and Trolls and other imaginary monsters is he *desperately wants to crusade for a cause* But he can't, not in real life
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He can only let himself have these feels about this preposterous fairy tale fantasy world Real leaders and real governments have burned their chance at inspiring that kind of loyalty from him, ever
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I mean Sam's internal monologue when seeing the Easterlings get killed That there's something different and ugly and painful about seeing the kind of war where Men kill other Men (which in our world is the only kind that exists)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Hell, even with orcs - consider the Jackson adaptation vs the books, right? The books don't call orcs "creatures." Jackson has Gandalf snarl "Send these foul creatures into the abyss!" THIS DOES NOT FIT TOLKIEN, whose heroes always still persistently call orcs "folk." People.
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Replying to @loudpenitent @Nymphomachy
I mean Tolkien was troubled enough by the Orcs he actively considered making them *not* people (animals elevated by Morgoth into the semblance of the Children of Iluvatar), even though that strains credulity and raises a lot of questions about the Half-Orc shit
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Did Tolkien have Half-Orcs?
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Yeah, Bill Ferny in Bree and Saruman's thugs in the Shire
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