This article seems like a lazy rewrite of an article about Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism by Alex Woloch in the latest London Review of Books. See the section after the *.
Can I respectfully disagree with Dang's changing the featured link?
As someone who is not informed on Orwell, the previously featured article actually helps me understand what it is trying to say. It also gives me crucial basic information (e.g. Blair = Orwell) which is missing from the London Review of Books article.
Reading both would be best of course, but I know which link I'm sending to friends first.
I agree with you as well. I never intended for this link to be the original link. It was just intended for the audience of HN that is already a fan and familiar with Orwell's work.
I couldn't reply to dang comment unfortunately to say that.
His essays Shooting An Elephant and Politics and the English Language have always stuck with me. We have the 4 volume collection in the family. It's at an arm's distance right now.
I read Animal Farm when I was 12 and 1984 a few years later. And I've re-read them a few times since. In college, I read Down and Out. Traveling through Europe I read Homage to Catalonia.
Orwell is my favorite writer and 1984 is my favorite book.
I loved it so much that I once tried to do a 'modern update' of it, with headers and bullet points and so on. It's meant to be a supplement to the original essay, not a replacement: http://visakanv.com/blog/politics-and-the-english-language
I didn't remove anything that he said; I just presented his multiple lists of examples in a easier-to-read format. The original essay probably was formatted a particular way on the printed page, but it's turned into a tedious wall of text in the orwell.ru version.
I have a link to the predecessor in opening; so you can open both copies in separate tabs and compare them for yourself.
Say what you want about Orwell (Well, Blair, if you like), but he was a shrewd observer of human nature.
1984 and Animal Farm are probably his best known works, but his 'Down and out in Paris and London' describes being poor and how it affects both your body and mind like no other account I've ever read (and I read quite a lot!)
I love his writing - and, before anyone suggest I have a rosy view of him because of his politics, I am a (mild) libertarian of the Viennese mold...
The Road to Wigan Pier should be in this. Orwell lived with coal miners' families in Northern Britain for months. I particularly was struck by his descriptions of the way social-welfare policies were used to weaken family structures of the poor.
> social-welfare policies were used to weaken family structures of the poor
How on earth do you get that message out of Orwell?
He argued in places that the various relief organisations were often patronising and under-informed, but the "weaken family structures" is a distinctly modern code phrase.
>“The most cruel and evil effect of the Means Test is the way in which it breaks up families. Old people, sometimes bedridden, are driven out of their homes by it. An old age pensioner, for instance, if a widower, would normally live with one or other of his children; his weekly ten shillings goes towards the household expenses, and probably he is not badly cared for. Under the Means Test, however, he counts as a ‘lodger’ and if he stays at home his children’s dole will be docked. So, perhaps at seventy or seventy-five years of age, he has to turn out into lodgings, handing his pension over to the lodging-house keeper and existing on the verge of starvation. I have seen several cases of this myself. It is happening all over England at this moment, thanks to the Means Test.”
Marilynne Robinson's book 'Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution' talks extensively about the history of Britian's social welfare system and its degrading effect on the people it ostensibly serves.
I recommend it highly if you are interested in the relationship between people and states of the British colonial diaspora, including the USA.
If you were affected by it I'd strongly recommend you read the ragged trousered philanthropists. Unfortunately it seems like not much has changed in the 100 years since it was written.
Among everything else, Orwell is a master of English. This can be hard to see because his mastery never calls attention to itself. His focus is always the point.
Strangely to me, Politics and the English Language was never assigned in any of the classes I took at Berkeley. 1984 was by popular acclamation The Book. But it seemed that PATEL was ranked too high for undergrads. It should've been required English 1A reading.
Would it have killed the author of this post to name the essays he's quoting?
"... good prose is like a windowpane." - Why I write, 1946
"Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - Politics and the English Language, 1946
> To the surprise of absolutely no one, George Orwell is everywhere these days. His seven-decade-old dystopian classic, 1984, recently made waves by topping a bunch of bestseller lists. Orwell’s earlier (and arguably greater) allegory, Animal Farm, is also getting its due. That both novels are suddenly on the radar of people who probably haven’t given Orwell a second thought in years is hardly surprising at a time when war refugees are painted as national security threats, white nationalists hold positions of power in the White House and an American president is openly involved in an abusive relationship with the English language.
It isn't surprising. What is surprising is to see anyone lay this at the feet of Trump.
So here is what actually happened: In the wake of 9/11, Bush started legitimizing a strong surveillance state (that to some degree has been with us since WW II). With few exceptions, primarily from 'crazy libertarians' and some liberals, both liberals and conservatives went along with it. Of course, this didn't stop liberals from using it as justification to try to get Republicans out of office later on.
Obama was elected. Since Obama was "their guy", liberals grew mostly silent on the subject (although with a lot more exceptions than before) and conservatives suddenly changed their tune, at least in public: surveillance is bad (but Snowden is still a traitor).
Those liberals who were cool with whatever Obama was doing believed in the myth of "the right people". Meaning, governance isn't a question of political power, sound policies, principled problem solving or anything along those lines. It's just a question of having "the right people" in charge. So whatever powers "the right people" say they need to do their job, since they are "the right people" it must be true and we should give them those powers to Get Things Done. (Note: there are conservative factions that believe this as well.)
Now, those very same liberals are in a panic because (surprise, surprise) Trump (i.e., the wrong person) is in charge and has all those powers that were previously given to "the right people". Of course, the problem isn't the granting of those powers. It's just that the wrong person was voted in by an ignorant public.
So now, in a panic, largely induced by a media which finds itself incapable of straight truth or depth, they flock to buy 1984 so they can 'legitimately' talk and write about this book they've never previously read in order to make tenuous comparisons to Trump's brand new presidency. And they, like conservatives during the Obama years, will cry out against the very same surveillance state that was no problem at all when their guy was in charge.
Probably true, but it's an excuse to talk about Orwell and most commenters here are doing a great job of that. How about we keep it up and not take the bait? That would be breaking new ground on the internet.
I don't terribly mind the "bait" -- it's an attempt to be topical. But the article is shallow garbage. There's plenty of other commentary on Orwell that would better serve as the basis for a discussion.
What would be ground-breaking is bait resistance. A community that could respond to the substantive parts of a story and resist getting sucked in by the baity parts would be a new thing (where by 'new' I just mean I don't know of one).
The problem is the story's substance starts with poisoning the well by making the accusation that the state of fear described in 1984 and Orwell's other writing is due to Trump and the 'white nationalists' he has in his cabinet. Then, it gives sparse details about the specific connections between Orwell's writings and Trump, but because of the initial poison the reader is supposed to infer meaning that simply doesn't exist. That's why I called it a propaganda piece, because that's all it is. Orwell is fantastic, but Orwell in my estimation would be rolling in his grave upon hearing that the biggest hypocrites about 'government transparency' and 'fair free speech' in the world are using him to attack their political opponents.
A bait-resistant community would necessarily be bait intolerant. There are many other resources that could have been linked if the purpose was just to discuss Orwell. Orwell has not been voted up to the front page. This article has been voted up to the front page. Suggesting I discuss Orwell but not discuss the ideas presented in the linked article is unfair. The article discusses Orwell within that specific context; it is the substance of the story to which you would have me respond.
It's not just the surveillance state that's been getting a pass -- it's also the near-total failure of the legislature to legislate and the accompanying increase in rule by executive order. I was critical of this at the time, even when I agreed with the policies, like DACA. It's no way to run a country.
I worry that Orwell has become so ubiquitous as to be meaningless. Both sides read Orwell and take from it that they are right and if their opponents would only read some Orwell they would understand how evil they are. It's a shame we can't temporarily resurrect him so he can write: "Orwell on Orwell in the 21st Century" I'm sure he'd see it clearly, and differently than all the rest of us.
You're right, but I think it's worth pointing out why the “wrong person” matters to people: they are concerned this person will fully weaponise the surveillance state.
Of course, the mere ability of the executive to do that in the first place should have been concern enough, but as you say, all too many people willingly look past this when it comes from their own team.
Trump supporters have been discussing "1984" for about a year now, well before the book shot up on Amazon because "Trump is literally 1984."
It kept coming up because of the rampant censorship by mass media, social media, and especially sites like reddit, not in small part thanks to efforts by Correct The Record and now ShareBlue.
I think this is a good observation and deserves more attention. Everybody loves Orwell, on both sides of the Great American Culture War.
During the election campaign I saw my US friends to compare Trump speeches to Two Minutes of Hate from the 1984 book. It was funny, I remarked, because the Trump-leaning people I occasionally argue with in the Internet had been calling angry Twitter users attacking various Republicans or Brendan Eich of Mozilla or whoever was the target of the latest scandal a social media version of Two Minutes of Hate years earlier. Then I wondered about where the Gamergate lashing out at "immoral journalists" fit in.
Is Orwell popular today because everyone loves to metaphorically hit their enemies with a famous author who described famous dystopia, or is it because both sides are equally guilty, well, I don't know.
My personal favorite dystopian author is Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451. It is a book about an age where it's not the totalitarian government that burns books, but people who don't want to read books because they might be uncomfortable with the old ideas they might find, preferring spending their time in a room covered by flat screens, talking with their 'friends'. Quite remarkable for a book written in 1950s.
I have never seen a piece complaining about the usage in "insurgent" vs. "rebel" when the news speaks of foreign affairs, but that is a perfect example of newspeak.
Instead, we speak of newspeak because the new president doesn't like "politically correct" speech.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n04/david-trotter/i-say-damn-it-wh...
It's a better read anyway.