4 ms·

This is an excellent read, and I find this quote "But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved

This is an excellent read, and I find this quote "But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence." very relevant to the current world/politics and how people interpret the facts/news.

hutzlibu 6y ago
I read is as a pretake on 1984. The concept of double-think etc. Basically, people want to believe facts that align with their ideology and reject facts that do not. This keeps people focused and less distracted by doubts. In 1984 this gets exploited in a regular manner.
- thrur484 6y ago
  In 1984 normal person has no access to facts and ideology. In totalitarian society ideology becomes embedded into fabric of society. It forms new equilibrium and replaces social contract.
  - jariel 6y ago
    This is a really subtle and correct point that's I think really difficult to grasp for High School students studying Orwell. I think this frankly is hard to understand until you're somewhere past 30. It's hard to understand, when you're young, that basically everyone in the press is lying to you in little ways, even though they're 'mostly telling the truth' - that there is a huge game behind it. I'm reminded of when E. Germany had to be re-integrated into the West, the problem was that the vocabulary relating to politics and democracy had been erased in the East. Several generations of people grew up without even thinking about various aspects of politics. There literally was no language for the W. Germans to use to re-introduce E. Germans to political dialogue. You can erase democracy by suppressing language, and therefore by suppressing thought. It doesn't exist if nobody is thinking about it. The idea is to enforce the rules through the daily rituals, language, constructs that people use - there's no need for facts or ideology then. The beginning of this I think happens more or less out in the open with certain subjects now in 2020, when we see language and culture shifting - but it shifts slow enough that it's not noticed. Go ahead and look at episodes of '30 Rock' - a brilliant, first rate, amazing production from literally just 10 years ago --> it's couldn't be made today, or rather, it would have to be 'heavily censored' today because so many of those jokes are just a little to un PC (jokes about women's pay, harassment in the workplace). But today, it wouldn't be 'network censorship' - it would be a kind of 'thought and behaviour censorship' right from the writers room and producers edict. When I look at '30 Rock' from a 2020 communications perspective I'm actually very, very concerned - the level of suppression that has slowly been sinking in is alarming.
- bgilroy26 6y ago
  1984 grew directly out of Orwells experience in the war. POUM and Andreu Nin Perez and Leon Trotsky's treatment at the hands of Stalin and the ComIntern were very disheartening for him 1984 is very difficult to map directly on to US politics because liberal/neoliberal capture of the universities and mainstream journalism are kindof total the way that American conservatives allege, but also George Blair hoped that figures like Trotsky of the Red Army and Perez of the POUM would win out in the end Orwell would not have been friends with the pepper Christian homeschooler, the glad-handing inside dealing Mar a Lago member, the little local lord like the area car dealership owner, the conspiracy theorist YouTuber, the Rad Trad anti Vatican II syncretist, those supremely Trumpist figures. You kindof have to visit with George the man, his actions, and his times to understand his story. But that tends to muck up any chance to put him to use purely for your side. (He was a socialist though, til the day he died, so he'd be voting Biden were he here in Wisconsin right now : P)
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    "He was a socialist though, til the day he died so he'd be voting Biden were he here in Wisconsin right now : P" Not sure if that was sarcasm referring to labeling of Biden as socialist by Trump and co? Because I doubt any real socialist would consider Biden a socialist.
    - bgilroy26 6y ago
      They wouldn't, you're right. We will not see the NYSE shuttered in the next 4 years or Amazon's excess of revenue over expenses taxed at 100% and their money bags driven across the country in armored trucks and heaved into Elizabeth Warren's US Treasury as a result of this election. On the other hand, despite the fact that my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek when I wrote it, such Debbie Wasserman Schultz haters as Nathan J Robinson and Noam Chomsky have adopted the 'Vote for Biden and keep protesting' angle so who's to say how the real socialists are voting this year?
      - bleeding 6y ago
        "Real socialists" is definitely not a community with a homogeneous opinion on who to vote for, or even on whether a "real socialist" should vote. The argument on whether socialists should participate in liberal democracy has been one that has been ongoing since essentially the dawn of leftist politics. The theory of two revolutions, the idea that a revolution constructing a liberal democracy was a necessary step towards socialism, was probably the prevailing idea in many of the 19th and early 20th century revolutions (like the revolutions of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1905). There were obviously people who did not take this line, but it is not new or conciliatory that some leftists take a similar stance today.
jimbob45 6y ago
>In the absence of hard evidence, people trust the sources they trust the most I hate Orwell so much. He points out obvious behaviors in the most pretentious way possible.
- toyg 6y ago
  There was little to no knowledge of the mechanisms of ideological propaganda on a mass-scale before Orwell's time. 1900-1950 was when the mechanisms of the democratic game were effectively being discovered across Europe. Orwell made them understandable to a wider audience. He's to political ideological movements what Asimov is to robots.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    The modern mass-media incarnation of propaganda in modern world, for sure. But ideological-purity regimes are certainly not new to the world stage.
- dang 6y ago
  That's not what Orwell is saying. He's saying that people side with their side even in the presence of evidence. Orwell seems to me perhaps the least pretentious of writers. I'm not sure what in that quote could be put any simpler or more clearly.
Karishma1234 6y ago
What truly impresses me is Orwell's ability to see through the propaganda and then engage in its meta-details. It was only after moving to USA I realized some things which I took for granted were basically propaganda and there are "other sides" which I need to consider. I could not have come to that conclusion without youtube and the diversity of thoughts in American society. I really wonder how Orwell could see through things like this without the Youtube and Internet. Really a fine mind.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, were your prior beliefs about your home country, America, or global civilization? Would you mind sharing a few of them? > I really wonder how Orwell could see through things While he certainly had a fine mind and intellectual curiosity, it also seems he required exposure to different cultures, places, and events such as the Spanish civil war. Your own experiences provide similar anecdote, and my own travels certainly reinforce they idea.
lordnacho 6y ago
This is why the current news-noise world is awful. If we just look at minor things for now, you can find all sorts of unfounded opinions in every FB thread on Trump or on the virus. People on FB can now link an article that says whatever they want, and it's not good for public discourse. The tell-tale sign of political "thinking" is that you come across a lot of people who think all the evidence points one way. I always think twice when someone presents every decision as an obvious, here-are-10-reasons-and-no-rebuttals case. Such cases are actually a lot more fragile than here-are-some-pros-and-some-cons cases, where the author falls to one side or the other based on some valuation. With Trump and the virus, this has gotten out of hand. It won't take you long to find badly supported opinions either way on those topics.
greenyoda 6y ago
Another great quote along these lines, from near the beginning of section IV: > Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  That’s how I feel about a lot historical wiki entries on anything pre-wiki and post my self awareness. What we saw or were taught are not referenced because they’re in books or not linkable. So the only truths are what is on the internet.
- archibaldJ 6y ago
  This reminds me in Japanese museums you can see paintings depicting Japan’s involvements in WW2 as a noble effort to liberate Asia. And meanwhile in mainland China everything about how the current party comes to power would inevitably be in rose-colored lenses if you look through the official sources. This makes one skeptical if all these historical war-related events that we still have records of actually happened as described. And as a Chinese I started to doubt how much things recorded in Shiji from 84BC (aka “The Records”, and has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization”) was actually true. I guess such is the dilemma of postmodernism.

hutzlibu 6y ago

I read is as a pretake on 1984. The concept of double-think etc. Basically, people want to believe facts that align with their ideology and reject facts that do not. This keeps people focused and less distracted by doubts. In 1984 this gets exploited in a regular manner.

thrur484 6y ago
In 1984 normal person has no access to facts and ideology. In totalitarian society ideology becomes embedded into fabric of society. It forms new equilibrium and replaces social contract.
- jariel 6y ago
  This is a really subtle and correct point that's I think really difficult to grasp for High School students studying Orwell. I think this frankly is hard to understand until you're somewhere past 30. It's hard to understand, when you're young, that basically everyone in the press is lying to you in little ways, even though they're 'mostly telling the truth' - that there is a huge game behind it. I'm reminded of when E. Germany had to be re-integrated into the West, the problem was that the vocabulary relating to politics and democracy had been erased in the East. Several generations of people grew up without even thinking about various aspects of politics. There literally was no language for the W. Germans to use to re-introduce E. Germans to political dialogue. You can erase democracy by suppressing language, and therefore by suppressing thought. It doesn't exist if nobody is thinking about it. The idea is to enforce the rules through the daily rituals, language, constructs that people use - there's no need for facts or ideology then. The beginning of this I think happens more or less out in the open with certain subjects now in 2020, when we see language and culture shifting - but it shifts slow enough that it's not noticed. Go ahead and look at episodes of '30 Rock' - a brilliant, first rate, amazing production from literally just 10 years ago --> it's couldn't be made today, or rather, it would have to be 'heavily censored' today because so many of those jokes are just a little to un PC (jokes about women's pay, harassment in the workplace). But today, it wouldn't be 'network censorship' - it would be a kind of 'thought and behaviour censorship' right from the writers room and producers edict. When I look at '30 Rock' from a 2020 communications perspective I'm actually very, very concerned - the level of suppression that has slowly been sinking in is alarming.
bgilroy26 6y ago
1984 grew directly out of Orwells experience in the war. POUM and Andreu Nin Perez and Leon Trotsky's treatment at the hands of Stalin and the ComIntern were very disheartening for him 1984 is very difficult to map directly on to US politics because liberal/neoliberal capture of the universities and mainstream journalism are kindof total the way that American conservatives allege, but also George Blair hoped that figures like Trotsky of the Red Army and Perez of the POUM would win out in the end Orwell would not have been friends with the pepper Christian homeschooler, the glad-handing inside dealing Mar a Lago member, the little local lord like the area car dealership owner, the conspiracy theorist YouTuber, the Rad Trad anti Vatican II syncretist, those supremely Trumpist figures. You kindof have to visit with George the man, his actions, and his times to understand his story. But that tends to muck up any chance to put him to use purely for your side. (He was a socialist though, til the day he died, so he'd be voting Biden were he here in Wisconsin right now : P)
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "He was a socialist though, til the day he died so he'd be voting Biden were he here in Wisconsin right now : P" Not sure if that was sarcasm referring to labeling of Biden as socialist by Trump and co? Because I doubt any real socialist would consider Biden a socialist.
  - bgilroy26 6y ago
    They wouldn't, you're right. We will not see the NYSE shuttered in the next 4 years or Amazon's excess of revenue over expenses taxed at 100% and their money bags driven across the country in armored trucks and heaved into Elizabeth Warren's US Treasury as a result of this election. On the other hand, despite the fact that my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek when I wrote it, such Debbie Wasserman Schultz haters as Nathan J Robinson and Noam Chomsky have adopted the 'Vote for Biden and keep protesting' angle so who's to say how the real socialists are voting this year?
    - bleeding 6y ago
      "Real socialists" is definitely not a community with a homogeneous opinion on who to vote for, or even on whether a "real socialist" should vote. The argument on whether socialists should participate in liberal democracy has been one that has been ongoing since essentially the dawn of leftist politics. The theory of two revolutions, the idea that a revolution constructing a liberal democracy was a necessary step towards socialism, was probably the prevailing idea in many of the 19th and early 20th century revolutions (like the revolutions of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1905). There were obviously people who did not take this line, but it is not new or conciliatory that some leftists take a similar stance today.

jimbob45 6y ago

>In the absence of hard evidence, people trust the sources they trust the most I hate Orwell so much. He points out obvious behaviors in the most pretentious way possible.

toyg 6y ago
There was little to no knowledge of the mechanisms of ideological propaganda on a mass-scale before Orwell's time. 1900-1950 was when the mechanisms of the democratic game were effectively being discovered across Europe. Orwell made them understandable to a wider audience. He's to political ideological movements what Asimov is to robots.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  The modern mass-media incarnation of propaganda in modern world, for sure. But ideological-purity regimes are certainly not new to the world stage.
dang 6y ago
That's not what Orwell is saying. He's saying that people side with their side even in the presence of evidence. Orwell seems to me perhaps the least pretentious of writers. I'm not sure what in that quote could be put any simpler or more clearly.

Karishma1234 6y ago

What truly impresses me is Orwell's ability to see through the propaganda and then engage in its meta-details. It was only after moving to USA I realized some things which I took for granted were basically propaganda and there are "other sides" which I need to consider. I could not have come to that conclusion without youtube and the diversity of thoughts in American society. I really wonder how Orwell could see through things like this without the Youtube and Internet. Really a fine mind.

jacobr1 6y ago
Out of curiosity, were your prior beliefs about your home country, America, or global civilization? Would you mind sharing a few of them? > I really wonder how Orwell could see through things While he certainly had a fine mind and intellectual curiosity, it also seems he required exposure to different cultures, places, and events such as the Spanish civil war. Your own experiences provide similar anecdote, and my own travels certainly reinforce they idea.

lordnacho 6y ago

This is why the current news-noise world is awful. If we just look at minor things for now, you can find all sorts of unfounded opinions in every FB thread on Trump or on the virus. People on FB can now link an article that says whatever they want, and it's not good for public discourse. The tell-tale sign of political "thinking" is that you come across a lot of people who think all the evidence points one way. I always think twice when someone presents every decision as an obvious, here-are-10-reasons-and-no-rebuttals case. Such cases are actually a lot more fragile than here-are-some-pros-and-some-cons cases, where the author falls to one side or the other based on some valuation. With Trump and the virus, this has gotten out of hand. It won't take you long to find badly supported opinions either way on those topics.

greenyoda 6y ago

Another great quote along these lines, from near the beginning of section IV: > Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.

hindsightbias 6y ago
That’s how I feel about a lot historical wiki entries on anything pre-wiki and post my self awareness. What we saw or were taught are not referenced because they’re in books or not linkable. So the only truths are what is on the internet.
archibaldJ 6y ago
This reminds me in Japanese museums you can see paintings depicting Japan’s involvements in WW2 as a noble effort to liberate Asia. And meanwhile in mainland China everything about how the current party comes to power would inevitably be in rose-colored lenses if you look through the official sources. This makes one skeptical if all these historical war-related events that we still have records of actually happened as described. And as a Chinese I started to doubt how much things recorded in Shiji from 84BC (aka “The Records”, and has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization”) was actually true. I guess such is the dilemma of postmodernism.