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TIL: Orwell Described Today's 'Woke' Culture

Posted by Pecuniology 4 years, 5 months ago to Culture
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"Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five."

—George Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
SOURCE URL: https://libcom.org/library/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war-george-orwell


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  • Posted by term2 4 years, 5 months ago
    Socialism WILL work this time- right?
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    • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
      Well, y'know... All those other times weren't Real Socialism™. This time, it's different.

      There won't be any Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, or Pol Pots this time. Totally safe.

      Pinky-swear.
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      • Posted by term2 4 years, 5 months ago
        Apart from the basic philosophical error in socialism that it takes from one by force and gives to another, there is another very practical reason it ALWAYS fails in practice. That reason is that although the people proposing it may actually believe in the nice-nice stuff that is proposed, when socialism is put into practice, it attracts bad people to run the programs and it always fails.
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        • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
          Jordan Peterson makes this point.

          If doe-eyed suburbanites who moved into roach-infested apartments in Teh Big CIty, when they moved out of their mothers' basements, feel that they 'totally' 'fer-sherr' won't let a Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot usurp their swoopy utopia, then they are worse than stupid.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 5 months ago
    Funny thing is that even though Orwell wrote some of the best anti-Communist literature in existence, he himself was a Communist. Talk about your cognitive dissonance...
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    • Posted by Solver 4 years, 5 months ago
      Ironically, he seemed to be mostly concerned that his favorite ideology wasn’t being practiced correctly. Of course he could’ve done much better ruling the world.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 4 years, 5 months ago
    Well, Leonard Peikoff made reference to this kind of Nazi attitude (which is held, apparently by others who are not Nazis, or who won't admit to being such.) Peikoff called it "polylogism".
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    • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
      Ludwig von Mises addresses polylogism in Human Action, as well. It is an abhorrent abnegation of rationality that goes well beyond mere hubris into insanity.

      The idea that Jews create their own universe, with its own laws of nature and rules of logic; Aryans, their own universe; Africans, Womxn, Latinx, Non-Binary, etc., ad infinitum, their own... is schizophrenic.
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      • Posted by $ 25n56il4 4 years, 5 months ago
        The problem is...Socialism cannot work! And the frightening fact that these idiots in Washington keep blathering about it (without mentioning the S word) should scare the hair off a person's head!
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        • Posted by LibertyBelle 4 years, 5 months ago
          It is true that Socialism cannot work. But more importantly Socialism violates the rights of man. And it seems some economists don't want to deal with that fact, even while denouncing Socialism and proving that it cannot work. People seem to be afraid to uphold individual rights, even when they are denouncing Socialism.
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          • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
            Not only do the vast majority ignore individual rights, even those who claim to support them often resort to collectivist language that makes is seem as if The State, Government, Society, America, Europe, etc. have volition and initiate action.

            If you really want to see a look of stunned incomprehension in someone's eyes, suggest that the term environmentalism refers to humans' adapting the world to serve our needs, rather than the other way around. "Sod the spotted owl and exterminate or cage every plant and animal that threatens humans. The environment should serve humans."
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        • Posted by $ jdg 4 years, 5 months ago
          That depends on how you define "work". It certainly can never deliver the benefits to the masses that its champions promise, because it denies the basics of human motivation AKA economics. But if you regard socialism as a way for its self-selected elite to gain power for themselves at everyone else's expense, it works marvelously, at least until they run out of other people's money.

          "Woke" culture and the environmental movement also "work" quite well for that same end. And if your real goal is to destroy western civilization, they can do that too. That is the real danger which the masses ought to be fighting to prevent.
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        • Posted by $ 25n56il4 4 years, 5 months ago
          Some might think I over react. However, in 1934 the damn Nazi's tried to recruit my father! He was their idea of the perfect Aryan. Blond, blue eyed, well built, intelligent! He refused their request. He was in the Merchant Marine.
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          • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
            After Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, the only way to see prudence as 'overreaction' is to have some kind of mystical It Can't Happen Here thing going on.
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            • Posted by Solver 4 years, 5 months ago
              And many democrats wants to bring their Socialism to this Nation by any means necessary. But their real goal is world conquest. Think of that ominous parallel.
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              • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
                For more than a quarter-century, I have described my political views as metarchy, from meta- in the sense of self-referential and -archy referring to political rule. It isn't a philosophy, but instead a method.

                The idea is to compel all individuals—either through social pressure or the power of the State—to live by the rules that they advocate.

                In this way, the property of communists would be seized, socialists would be taxed at 95%, racists would be forbidden to live among or work with members of other races, nationalists would be denied passports, and everyone would leave me in peace and stay off my lawn. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine what we might do with murderers, torturers, and rapists.

                The underlying assumption of metarchy is that self-contradictory political systems would spin out of control, while rational political systems would be relatively stable.

                Those Democrats who support socialism fancy that they will be Lenin and not one of the nameless shlubs toiling in a field under the unrelenting sun twelve hours a day. If I were Emperor for a Day, I'd disabuse every suburban socialist and academic Marxist of his anti-rational nihilism in short order.
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                • Posted by TheRealBill 4 years, 5 months ago
                  So what about globalists?

                  Also, the Democrats of today don’t favor socialism. Look at what they advocate, and you see it is Fascism through and through.

                  Private ownership but government control? Check.
                  Violence in support of social agendas? Check
                  Forced sub-market “sale/rent” of capital to smaller firms? Check.
                  Free education? Check.
                  Free/government controlled healthcare? Check.
                  Nothing has value unless it is for “the common good”? Check.
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                  • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
                    As a first-pass response, I'd suggest:

                    Globalists

                    Subject the finest details of their personal lives to referenda that all 7 billion+ individuals in the world get to vote on. This includes the disposition of their property and financial asset holdings.

                    Democrats

                    Private ownership but government control? Put a lien on everything that they own, and regulate its use to the finest detail.

                    Violence in support of social agendas? As they say: Punch a Nazi.

                    Forced sub-market “sale/rent” of capital to smaller firms? Exercise eminent domain on their real estate holdings at sub-market values.

                    Free education? Forbid them to send their children to private school or to homeschool.

                    Free/government controlled healthcare? Put them all on Medicaid.

                    Nothing has value unless it is for “the common good”? [More less covered above.]
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          • Posted by $ 25n56il4 4 years, 5 months ago
            'Course I hadn't been born yet, but you can believe I was told the story during WWII. Also my mother's Ashkenasi heritage sort of prejudiced me against anything German.
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      • Posted by LibertyBelle 4 years, 5 months ago
        Yeah, some years ago, a co-worker tried to tell me that blacks reasoned differently than whites--implying that they could not reason the same way we can. And I told her that that was nonsense.
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        • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
          One nice-sounding bits of soft racism in education is something called Learning Styles™. Some advocates of this hogwash have cooked up more than 100 different Learning Styles™ and insisted that school teachers accommodate all of them in their classrooms. Other advocates keep it down to a smaller, more manageable number. So far, so good, except there is none of that actual pesky science stuff to back any of this up.

          Common examples include Kinesthetic Learners, Verbal Learners, Mathematical Learners, Visual Learners, Tactile Learners, etc.

          This is so absurd that even the writers at The Onion were having none of it:

          https://www.theonion.com/parents-of-n...

          The reason for fabricating this kind of thing—aside from increasing the number of publications on one's CV and the possibility of securing research grants and consulting gigs—is that it enables one to exercise the vilest racism, without coming out and saying it directly.

          The punch line is that Kinesthetic Learners are almost universally dark-skinned. Essentially, it means that they have good rhythm, and they play either basketball or soccer well. Meanwhile, Mathematical Learners are predominantly light-skinned. Tactile Learners are children who refuse to keep their hands to themselves.

          Once this has become the received wisdom, resources for teaching mathematics and science can be concentrated in schools with predominantly light-skinned populations, and the supply of balls that bounce can be concentrated in schools with predominantly dark-skinned populations.
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  • Posted by BCRinFremont 4 years, 5 months ago
    Socialism will ”work” when every human being is willing to make it “work“. Until that unfortunate day, it will always take force to work the square peg in the round hole.

    A working Socialist regime will probably look a lot like the society in Brave New World. Even there, I could never quite figure out how it worked. At best, a stagnant and boring place that has to be slowly disappearing due to lethargy, lack of productivity, and no advancement in science and understanding of the universe lived in.

    ...Socialism can never work...it can only fade away....🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃
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    • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
      That is one of the tragedies of those who support Universal Basic Indigence (UBI) funded by Monetary Magical Thinking (MMT). They feel that when every day is a day off from work, and life will be one long weekend.

      They ignore Diminishing Marginal Returns—meaning that the next unit of something is less enjoyable than the last one was, as one becomes saturated—and after the initial fizz fades, a life without stress is as much fun as sitting in a waiting room with nothing to read (or, what the Christians call Purgatory).

      Although socialism works within a nuclear family, it doesn't work in a unit as small as a village. Helmut Schoeck discusses in Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour how socialism fails even in Israeli kibbutzes.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 4 years, 5 months ago
    I heard it theorized that Eric Blair (his real name) didn't write 1984 as a warning, but as a form of gloating. I have heard his attitude was, "This is what we're going to do to you and you can't stop it."

    Fantastic book, too...
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    • Posted by 4 years, 5 months ago
      It would be a riot, if our greatest heroes were complete bastards, and that admitting this to ourselves were part of the process of truly internalizing their teachings.

      I'm staring right at you, Murray Rothbard and Hans Hoppe fanboys.
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  • Posted by TheRealBill 4 years, 5 months ago
    Going back further: in a speech in 1860 Lincoln described the southern democrats in pretty much the same terms we’d use today. Same behavior and same insistence on collectivism.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 5 months ago
      As the president who implemented a national policy of welfare for corporations primarily at the expense of southerners, Lincoln, the politician, was very good at blaming others for his own collectivist actions.
      His motivation for saying this was political, just as most of the statements of today's Democrat and Republican politicians.
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      • Posted by TheRealBill 4 years, 5 months ago
        Of course, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong in describing the southern democrats who vehemently wanted slavery over a group of people based in their belief of them being an inferior race the way he did.

        Lincoln wasn’t collectivist so much as basic authoritarian. Unfortunately it didn’t stop after he was killed and the systematic shutdown of the great anarchocapitalist experiment in “the old west” and replacing it with overreaching federal control is something we are still suffering from.
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