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The headline is supported by a single claim that Orwell would oppose being ruled by an unelected bureaucracy. Such a claim is disengenious. Of course nobody li
by derriz 10y ago
The headline is supported by a single claim that Orwell would oppose being ruled by an unelected bureaucracy.
Such a claim is disengenious. Of course nobody likes "being ruled" - so on an emotional level the EU must be a bad thing.
Also, this makes no sense unless supported by a claim that such a condition is unique to living in the EU.
The only way to interpret "being ruled" in the context of the EU is that it means having a hierarchical civil service (the EU commission). So why would having a UK civil servant (instead of an EU one) decide how bananas should be graded be considered a liberation from bureaucracy?
In fact, Orwell hated this kind of weaselly, ambiguous and emotionally manipulatitve statement - particulary when use to advance a political adgenda.
- notahacker 10y agoThe article offers a secondary argument that Orwell didn't mind disagreeing with other radical leftists, but again that's just as easily read the other way: left-wing cheerleaders for Brexit like George Galloway are the modern embodiment of pretty much everything Orwell hated about radical left wing politics in Britain... The "[Dead person] would have voted [x] on the EU" is the most facile form of political argumentation we've had the misfortune to experience over the past few month, and this is one of the weakest examples of this kind of argument I've seen. And if you forced me at gunpoint to construct an argument from the authority of a long dead person on Brexit, I'd probably pick someone whose politics were a little more consistent, considerably more pragmatic and a lot less a product of the very specific political climates of the era he found himself in than Orwell.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]