8 ms·

Orwell's Proposed Preface to ‘Animal Farm’ (1945)

122 points by tomohawk 5y ago

desireco42 5y ago
- srl 5y ago
  Please don't post this low-effort nonsense. If you cared about the object-level question, you can check easily enough: https://www.whois.com/whois/orwell.ru https://www.whois.com/whois/orwell.ru. (Spoiler: no, not using namecheap.) Really, this is a transparent attempt to bring that topic into unrelated threads. Let the namecheap-bashing stay in the namecheap-bashing threads.
  - desireco42 5y ago
    I think it is relevant because it shows how this content can be affected by it. I think you will agree how this is not something that should be off the internet, Animal Farm is more relevant then ever.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      Then surely it should be brought up as an example in that thread, where it's unambiguously on-topic?
- chernevik 5y ago
  I have commented that denial of a communication service is a mistake, but even so, a bunch of Ukrainians objecting to providing a service to invading Russians is clearly different than the sort of thing described in "Animal Farm".
the_unknown 5y ago
Putting aside the linked content I'd just like to marvel at the speed of the site - near plain text, minimal markup, basic JS. And even a dead link to a guestbook in the source. A few modern enhancements would be a nice addition to fix the overly wide width and font selection but they certainly aren't required. Ah, 1999. A simpler web. Transporting the build of those simpler times to the world of today would deliver instant gratification.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ephaeton 5y ago
  Well, the overly wide width can easily be mitigated by resizing your viewport; this is truly responsive web. Your font (size) preference is also easily applied, and nothing breaks when you scale the information to your preference. Both are very rare nowadays, and have been for quite a while, where "responsive" means "one of X configurations, and _we_ choose which" and scaling text often has the effect of breaking the visual appearance, and thus, in a visual-first mindset, the UX, and more often than not also the functionality in general.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    > Well, the overly wide width can easily be mitigated by resizing > your viewport; this is truly responsive web. I've been arguing this for years. "The web" is device agnostic - the agent of the user sets the width, text size, font, and other properties as needed. All these websites that work on X*Y screen size of J, K, and L devices are the result of "web developers" who have a J, K, or L device with an X*Y screen trying to make a flyer. And I work in the industry, albeit on the server side.
    - pferde 5y ago
      I mentioned this point on HN once or twice in the past, and the response has been pretty much "nobody's going to do that, learn to live with our fixed width articles, you outdated dinosaur!" :)
- jerezzprime 5y ago
  I read your comment and I found myself having an annoyed feeling in response. I tried to dig into my own emotions to figure out why, and I realized that I am annoyed by the fact that the second-most comment (at my time of viewing) was completely unrelated to the content, and drew attention towards some details of the presentation that do not really have a lot of value. I worry that this opinion will not be broadly accepted here at HN, but I am annoyed by the upwelling of opinion that a web experience is only valuable if it is presented in an experience that meets the observers definition of "performant" or "fast" or "JavaScript-free".
gedy 5y ago
Very interesting read and some timely quotes for the present as well: "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?"
- vkou 5y ago
  In the Western world, its contribution pales in comparison to the efforts of actual fascism. Fortunately, our institutions have (for now) managed to survive both the beer gut putsch, and the failed president-for-life orchestrating it last year. Unfortunately, they've proven very resistant towards efforts at extracting the police state mentality of... Well, our police. In for-internal-consumption Russian/Soviet propaganda, a lot, but that's nothing new. Declaring enemies of eastern block imperialism 'fascists' has been a rallying cry for repression in the region for quite a while. Orwell himself had quite a bit of first hand experience with that in Spain, as did Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc, etc.
- metabagel 5y ago
  Orwell was opposed to totalitarianism, whether aligned with the right or the left. But, he was basically a democratic socialist.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    If Orwell was alive today he wouldn't be a DSA member.
    - beebmam 5y ago
      Certainly true, he'd probably be an IWW member and certainly deeply anti-Trump. Similar to Noam Chomsky
      - dannyobrien 5y ago
        Unless the rejuvenation process had profoundly re-engineered his beliefs and his nationality, he'd be a grudging Labor Party supporter with a column in the New Statesman, same as he ever was.
24tkjlkjll34y 5y ago
slibhb 5y ago
> The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. Orwell sounds almost exactly like a modern "anti-woke" blogger.
- awb 5y ago
  1984 is a great cautionary tale of fiction. I think it’s a misapplication of the medium to place the themes of a fictional narrative on top of reality though. Reality is way more complex than these broad stroke rebukes of intellectuals.
  - sitkack 5y ago
    It is an allegory, to take anything it says on face value is to miss the point.
    - awb 5y ago
      The point of 1984 is perfectly clear and poignant. The point of a broad swipe at intellectuals however does escape me.
      - krageon 5y ago
        You have not addressed what the poster said. > I think it’s a misapplication of the medium to place the themes of a fictional narrative on top of reality though This is not the point of an allegory. You say this is clear to you, but from what you say it clearly is not.
        awb 5y ago
        I’m saying it’s a misapplication of a fiction novel to take the themes of 1984 and use them as a broad swipe at intellectualism in the real world.
mrjangles 5y ago
Whenever I read any history of European democracies, I always get the impression that political oppression was a lot worse in the past than it is now, despite how bad it may appear. I've always wondered if Europe's decline into totalitarianism was halted all on its own due to the natural "swinging of the pendulum" as they call it, or if it was due to American hegemony over the world, and the fact they basically had the whole of Europe under military occupation until the fall of the Soviet Union. Is today's rise of totalitarianism in Europe simply the swinging of the pendulum, or is it due to the waning of power in the American empire, and therefore the return of Europe to its natural, equilibrium state?
- trabant00 5y ago
  It's never simply a question of either or. Europe slowly migrated on its own away from autocratic regimes but USA clearly put in a large effort to enforce this in the recent period. What I would highlight is the tendency of any group to turn on itself in the absence of an external threat. And this could be the silver lining of the current events.
  - progre 5y ago
    Also, in part, cause of current events. What I mean is, I think this crisis is manufactured in part to foster unity on the russian home front.
- varsketiz 5y ago
  What is "today's rise of totalitarianism in Europe"?
  - Nursie 5y ago
    I was going to ask something similar. What I can think of is Poland and Hungary, potentially Belarus, maybe Turkey if you count that as European? (A very open question I think), and Russia itself. Poland has issues, certainly. Hungary is under sanction from other parts of the EU because of Viktor Orban. Turkey has Erdogan. Belarus has been under the thumb of Lukashenko since a few years after gaining independence, and Russia is Russia but even under Putin it's probably less totalitarian than it was under communism. Honestly I think that (with the exception of that short period in the early 90s when everything looked like it was coming up roses) Europe as a whole is far less totalitarian now than it was for most of the 20th century. Certainly the decades post-WWII where communism held sway, by force, across vast swathes of the continent. Even with its current problems, Poland is far more free now than it was behind the iron curtain. The OP posts this - "I always get the impression that political oppression was a lot worse in the past than it is now, despite how bad it may appear." which makes me think they have a very weird view and possibly not much knowledge of history. Because yes, it was far worse for far more people for a very long time.
taylorfinley 5y ago
Interesting the difference a few years can make. In this preface Orwell claims the Ministry of Information attempted to suppress its publication around 1944; by 1950 the CIA had purchased the film rights. They eventually funded a feature-length animated film adaptation that was released in 1954[0] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20161026174651/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/how-cia-brought-animal-farm-to-the-screen/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161026174651/http://www.telegr...
- rolandog 5y ago
  Which is one of the reasons that made me think—conspiracy theorize—at first that the book was about a critique of capitalism, but then edited to read as a critique of communism. Then, I thought that both systems can be prone to manifest inequality because of their own inherent flaws, and I realized that we shouldn't be squabbling about which one is "right" (like with the Leviathan of Parsonstown [0]), but rather on what parts can we take from any other politico-economical system to make the best one. Edit: readability [0] https://youtube.com/shorts/mQhBEw3gjSk https://youtube.com/shorts/mQhBEw3gjSk
  - maeln 5y ago
    An important fact, that sadly is often not mentioned when discussing Orwell's most famous work, is that Orwell was a communist. He even wrote about is experience fighting side-by-side with the Catalonian anarchist of the CNT during the Spanish civil war, in his book/journal "homage to Catalonia". He was part of the POUM, a communist but anti-marxist militia. In the book, you can already see that he was very wary of the USSR. And after being almost jailed and barely fleeing Catalonia by the Republican, who allied themselves with the USSR and jailed and undermined any militia who was not aligned with them, his mind was definitely made up. Animal Farm is definitely a critique of both capitalism and authoritarian communism (Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism at the time), the conclusion pretty much being that both system end up with powerful and rich people on top and misery on the bottom.
    - jhbadger 5y ago
marco_yolo 5y ago
In the 1930s socialism was still a rather new experiment and the Soviet Union was a shining example of its success to most of the socialist and leftist elites. In fact the Soviet Comintern planted seeds for communist and socialist movements around the world. They were responsible for fueling many revolutions and civil wars around the world at a time where US foreign policy was isolationist and dealing with the Great Depression. One such tactic was to embed sympathetic agents into major publications like the New York Times and win public favor through propaganda and other disinformation. Walter Duranty was a journalist who won Pulitzers for his flowery depictions of the Soviet Union. So fast forward today nothing has changed and even though we are aware of it nothing will change. If anything the reach of bad actors is far superior than ever before. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook is full of disinfo targeted at both the left and right and also coming from official sources. It not just crazy anonymous accounts. Sadly, this will never change and I am not sure there is any antidote for these human flaws.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > the reach of bad actors Are you implying that "to embed sympathetic agents into major publications" is the work of a bad actor? If so, are you aware that nearly all major news sources today are pushing agendas? Here's a tip: filter out any news organization that publish stories on "look at these suffering children" in regards to any conflict or current event. That's not news, that's agenda-pushing. There's a bunch of additional filters you can use, but when you're done you're left with a bunch of ill-informed blogs, speculation, and if you're lucky a few eye-witness accounts of a single event out of dozens of events which make up the conflict.
dustintrex 5y ago
The preface was written at an odd moment in time when the UK and the Soviet Union were allied, for the simple reason that in times of war the enemy of my enemy (Hitler's Germany) is my friend. Two short years later the Cold War began and pointed criticism of Russia became much more palatable. Meanwhile, it's 2022, and we're firing orchestra conductors because they're Russian and not denouncing Putin sufficiently vigorously. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/28/denounce-putin-or-lose-your-job-russian-conductor-valery-gergiev-given-public-ultimatum https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/28/denounce-putin...
- decebalus1 5y ago
  You're phrasing it as if 'we're firing any orchestra conductors' but anyone with half a brain is able to figure out who that guy is and what are his past political involvements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Gergiev#Social_and_political_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Gergiev#Social_and_poli... So honestly, he can get fucked either way, regardless of how vigorously he's denouncing Putler.
  - dustintrex 5y ago
    Yes, he appeared for a TV ad for Putin in 2012. Why is this suddenly a firing offence in 2022? Does he bear personal responsibility for what Putin's doing today? Denouncing McCarthyism in 1950, Truman said, "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have."
    - nindalf 5y ago
      > Yes, he appeared for a TV ad for Putin in 2012. This is an extraordinarily disingenuous summarisation of that link. A more accurate summary - he has publicly supported Putin on every single major policy. He supported annexing South Ossetia (2008), criticised Pussy Riot (2012), defending Putin’s anti gay bill (2013), annexing Crimea (2014). Just to drive the point home, here’s what he had to say about the anti-gay legislation - “In Russia we do everything we can to protect children from paedophiles. This law is not about homosexuality, it targets paedophilia.” This is a man so abhorrent that he was equating LGBT with paedophilia. And you summarised that as “oh he just did an ad, what’s wrong with that”. Even now he could save his job by putting out some platitude like “I support a peaceful resolution to the conflict” but he won’t because he supports whatever Putin does. Let me be clear - it is ok for me and others to not want to associate with such a person. It is ok if all of us prefer not to go to a performance by him. If the production companies think they’ll find it impossible to fill seats because too many people will stay away, then it is ok for them to pick someone else. This isn’t censorship, it’s just people not associating with those who support unjustified wars. > McCarthyism I don’t know why it’s necessary to explain this to an adult in 2022 but McCarthyism is explicitly about persecution by the government. Not ordinary citizens preferring not to associate with you. The First Amendment prevents the government from making laws which abridge the freedom of speech, it doesn’t force private citizens to be your friends and supporters after you say anything.
PCGamer_Empath 5y ago
This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's review of 1984, which is far and away the funniest book review I've ever read. I generally share Asimov's evaluation of the quality of the writing. Here is a link to it http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
roomey 5y ago
Absolutely unrelated to the article, but does anyone else hate prefaces? I was a big reader (bk-before kids) and once read a preface that was so thoroughly shit that I almost didn't read the book. I ended up skipping the whole thing, and the book was excellent, had me from the first line! From then on I never, or very rarely read a preface. I would value others opinions on this cause I just can't see the point of them. The link for example; what benefit to the story would that be if you read it before animal farm? To me it would wreak the story, totally full of spoilers and also, putting forth the authors understanding of his own work, which in turn reduces the readers freedom of interpretation. In summary, should prefaces actually be postfaces? (connected by a little perforated strip which can be removed and fucked in the bin)
- phgn 5y ago
  I absolutely agree with you. Worst IMHO are the prefaces written posthumously that talk about the impact and interpretation of the book. It's like they don't want you to make up your own mind, but simply experience this "award-winning" experience. Which may also be the reason prefaces are at the front and not the back of the book.
  - roomey 5y ago
    Or a "celebrity" preface..it's almost a bigger deal than the book itself. It always makes me think the book will be shit, but that is unfair too. I guess that's why I try ignore them... Glad I'm not the only one!

122 points by tomohawk 5y ago

srl 5y ago
Please don't post this low-effort nonsense. If you cared about the object-level question, you can check easily enough: https://www.whois.com/whois/orwell.ru https://www.whois.com/whois/orwell.ru. (Spoiler: no, not using namecheap.) Really, this is a transparent attempt to bring that topic into unrelated threads. Let the namecheap-bashing stay in the namecheap-bashing threads.
- desireco42 5y ago
  I think it is relevant because it shows how this content can be affected by it. I think you will agree how this is not something that should be off the internet, Animal Farm is more relevant then ever.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Then surely it should be brought up as an example in that thread, where it's unambiguously on-topic?
chernevik 5y ago
I have commented that denial of a communication service is a mistake, but even so, a bunch of Ukrainians objecting to providing a service to invading Russians is clearly different than the sort of thing described in "Animal Farm".

Putting aside the linked content I'd just like to marvel at the speed of the site - near plain text, minimal markup, basic JS. And even a dead link to a guestbook in the source. A few modern enhancements would be a nice addition to fix the overly wide width and font selection but they certainly aren't required. Ah, 1999. A simpler web. Transporting the build of those simpler times to the world of today would deliver instant gratification.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ephaeton 5y ago
Well, the overly wide width can easily be mitigated by resizing your viewport; this is truly responsive web. Your font (size) preference is also easily applied, and nothing breaks when you scale the information to your preference. Both are very rare nowadays, and have been for quite a while, where "responsive" means "one of X configurations, and _we_ choose which" and scaling text often has the effect of breaking the visual appearance, and thus, in a visual-first mindset, the UX, and more often than not also the functionality in general.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > Well, the overly wide width can easily be mitigated by resizing > your viewport; this is truly responsive web. I've been arguing this for years. "The web" is device agnostic - the agent of the user sets the width, text size, font, and other properties as needed. All these websites that work on X*Y screen size of J, K, and L devices are the result of "web developers" who have a J, K, or L device with an X*Y screen trying to make a flyer. And I work in the industry, albeit on the server side.
  - pferde 5y ago
    I mentioned this point on HN once or twice in the past, and the response has been pretty much "nobody's going to do that, learn to live with our fixed width articles, you outdated dinosaur!" :)
jerezzprime 5y ago
I read your comment and I found myself having an annoyed feeling in response. I tried to dig into my own emotions to figure out why, and I realized that I am annoyed by the fact that the second-most comment (at my time of viewing) was completely unrelated to the content, and drew attention towards some details of the presentation that do not really have a lot of value. I worry that this opinion will not be broadly accepted here at HN, but I am annoyed by the upwelling of opinion that a web experience is only valuable if it is presented in an experience that meets the observers definition of "performant" or "fast" or "JavaScript-free".

gedy 5y ago

Very interesting read and some timely quotes for the present as well: "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?"

vkou 5y ago
In the Western world, its contribution pales in comparison to the efforts of actual fascism. Fortunately, our institutions have (for now) managed to survive both the beer gut putsch, and the failed president-for-life orchestrating it last year. Unfortunately, they've proven very resistant towards efforts at extracting the police state mentality of... Well, our police. In for-internal-consumption Russian/Soviet propaganda, a lot, but that's nothing new. Declaring enemies of eastern block imperialism 'fascists' has been a rallying cry for repression in the region for quite a while. Orwell himself had quite a bit of first hand experience with that in Spain, as did Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc, etc.
metabagel 5y ago
Orwell was opposed to totalitarianism, whether aligned with the right or the left. But, he was basically a democratic socialist.
- slibhb 5y ago
  If Orwell was alive today he wouldn't be a DSA member.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Certainly true, he'd probably be an IWW member and certainly deeply anti-Trump. Similar to Noam Chomsky
    - dannyobrien 5y ago
      Unless the rejuvenation process had profoundly re-engineered his beliefs and his nationality, he'd be a grudging Labor Party supporter with a column in the New Statesman, same as he ever was.

24tkjlkjll34y 5y ago

slibhb 5y ago

> The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. Orwell sounds almost exactly like a modern "anti-woke" blogger.

awb 5y ago
1984 is a great cautionary tale of fiction. I think it’s a misapplication of the medium to place the themes of a fictional narrative on top of reality though. Reality is way more complex than these broad stroke rebukes of intellectuals.
- sitkack 5y ago
  It is an allegory, to take anything it says on face value is to miss the point.
  - awb 5y ago
    The point of 1984 is perfectly clear and poignant. The point of a broad swipe at intellectuals however does escape me.
    - krageon 5y ago
      You have not addressed what the poster said. > I think it’s a misapplication of the medium to place the themes of a fictional narrative on top of reality though This is not the point of an allegory. You say this is clear to you, but from what you say it clearly is not.
      - awb 5y ago
        I’m saying it’s a misapplication of a fiction novel to take the themes of 1984 and use them as a broad swipe at intellectualism in the real world.

mrjangles 5y ago

Whenever I read any history of European democracies, I always get the impression that political oppression was a lot worse in the past than it is now, despite how bad it may appear. I've always wondered if Europe's decline into totalitarianism was halted all on its own due to the natural "swinging of the pendulum" as they call it, or if it was due to American hegemony over the world, and the fact they basically had the whole of Europe under military occupation until the fall of the Soviet Union. Is today's rise of totalitarianism in Europe simply the swinging of the pendulum, or is it due to the waning of power in the American empire, and therefore the return of Europe to its natural, equilibrium state?

trabant00 5y ago
It's never simply a question of either or. Europe slowly migrated on its own away from autocratic regimes but USA clearly put in a large effort to enforce this in the recent period. What I would highlight is the tendency of any group to turn on itself in the absence of an external threat. And this could be the silver lining of the current events.
- progre 5y ago
  Also, in part, cause of current events. What I mean is, I think this crisis is manufactured in part to foster unity on the russian home front.
varsketiz 5y ago
What is "today's rise of totalitarianism in Europe"?
- Nursie 5y ago
  I was going to ask something similar. What I can think of is Poland and Hungary, potentially Belarus, maybe Turkey if you count that as European? (A very open question I think), and Russia itself. Poland has issues, certainly. Hungary is under sanction from other parts of the EU because of Viktor Orban. Turkey has Erdogan. Belarus has been under the thumb of Lukashenko since a few years after gaining independence, and Russia is Russia but even under Putin it's probably less totalitarian than it was under communism. Honestly I think that (with the exception of that short period in the early 90s when everything looked like it was coming up roses) Europe as a whole is far less totalitarian now than it was for most of the 20th century. Certainly the decades post-WWII where communism held sway, by force, across vast swathes of the continent. Even with its current problems, Poland is far more free now than it was behind the iron curtain. The OP posts this - "I always get the impression that political oppression was a lot worse in the past than it is now, despite how bad it may appear." which makes me think they have a very weird view and possibly not much knowledge of history. Because yes, it was far worse for far more people for a very long time.

taylorfinley 5y ago

Interesting the difference a few years can make. In this preface Orwell claims the Ministry of Information attempted to suppress its publication around 1944; by 1950 the CIA had purchased the film rights. They eventually funded a feature-length animated film adaptation that was released in 1954[0] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20161026174651/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/how-cia-brought-animal-farm-to-the-screen/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161026174651/http://www.telegr...

rolandog 5y ago
Which is one of the reasons that made me think—conspiracy theorize—at first that the book was about a critique of capitalism, but then edited to read as a critique of communism. Then, I thought that both systems can be prone to manifest inequality because of their own inherent flaws, and I realized that we shouldn't be squabbling about which one is "right" (like with the Leviathan of Parsonstown [0]), but rather on what parts can we take from any other politico-economical system to make the best one. Edit: readability [0] https://youtube.com/shorts/mQhBEw3gjSk https://youtube.com/shorts/mQhBEw3gjSk
- maeln 5y ago
  An important fact, that sadly is often not mentioned when discussing Orwell's most famous work, is that Orwell was a communist. He even wrote about is experience fighting side-by-side with the Catalonian anarchist of the CNT during the Spanish civil war, in his book/journal "homage to Catalonia". He was part of the POUM, a communist but anti-marxist militia. In the book, you can already see that he was very wary of the USSR. And after being almost jailed and barely fleeing Catalonia by the Republican, who allied themselves with the USSR and jailed and undermined any militia who was not aligned with them, his mind was definitely made up. Animal Farm is definitely a critique of both capitalism and authoritarian communism (Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism at the time), the conclusion pretty much being that both system end up with powerful and rich people on top and misery on the bottom.
  - jhbadger 5y ago

marco_yolo 5y ago

In the 1930s socialism was still a rather new experiment and the Soviet Union was a shining example of its success to most of the socialist and leftist elites. In fact the Soviet Comintern planted seeds for communist and socialist movements around the world. They were responsible for fueling many revolutions and civil wars around the world at a time where US foreign policy was isolationist and dealing with the Great Depression. One such tactic was to embed sympathetic agents into major publications like the New York Times and win public favor through propaganda and other disinformation. Walter Duranty was a journalist who won Pulitzers for his flowery depictions of the Soviet Union. So fast forward today nothing has changed and even though we are aware of it nothing will change. If anything the reach of bad actors is far superior than ever before. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook is full of disinfo targeted at both the left and right and also coming from official sources. It not just crazy anonymous accounts. Sadly, this will never change and I am not sure there is any antidote for these human flaws.

dotancohen 5y ago
> the reach of bad actors Are you implying that "to embed sympathetic agents into major publications" is the work of a bad actor? If so, are you aware that nearly all major news sources today are pushing agendas? Here's a tip: filter out any news organization that publish stories on "look at these suffering children" in regards to any conflict or current event. That's not news, that's agenda-pushing. There's a bunch of additional filters you can use, but when you're done you're left with a bunch of ill-informed blogs, speculation, and if you're lucky a few eye-witness accounts of a single event out of dozens of events which make up the conflict.

dustintrex 5y ago

The preface was written at an odd moment in time when the UK and the Soviet Union were allied, for the simple reason that in times of war the enemy of my enemy (Hitler's Germany) is my friend. Two short years later the Cold War began and pointed criticism of Russia became much more palatable. Meanwhile, it's 2022, and we're firing orchestra conductors because they're Russian and not denouncing Putin sufficiently vigorously. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/28/denounce-putin-or-lose-your-job-russian-conductor-valery-gergiev-given-public-ultimatum https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/feb/28/denounce-putin...

decebalus1 5y ago
You're phrasing it as if 'we're firing any orchestra conductors' but anyone with half a brain is able to figure out who that guy is and what are his past political involvements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Gergiev#Social_and_political_involvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Gergiev#Social_and_poli... So honestly, he can get fucked either way, regardless of how vigorously he's denouncing Putler.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Yes, he appeared for a TV ad for Putin in 2012. Why is this suddenly a firing offence in 2022? Does he bear personal responsibility for what Putin's doing today? Denouncing McCarthyism in 1950, Truman said, "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have."
  - nindalf 5y ago
    > Yes, he appeared for a TV ad for Putin in 2012. This is an extraordinarily disingenuous summarisation of that link. A more accurate summary - he has publicly supported Putin on every single major policy. He supported annexing South Ossetia (2008), criticised Pussy Riot (2012), defending Putin’s anti gay bill (2013), annexing Crimea (2014). Just to drive the point home, here’s what he had to say about the anti-gay legislation - “In Russia we do everything we can to protect children from paedophiles. This law is not about homosexuality, it targets paedophilia.” This is a man so abhorrent that he was equating LGBT with paedophilia. And you summarised that as “oh he just did an ad, what’s wrong with that”. Even now he could save his job by putting out some platitude like “I support a peaceful resolution to the conflict” but he won’t because he supports whatever Putin does. Let me be clear - it is ok for me and others to not want to associate with such a person. It is ok if all of us prefer not to go to a performance by him. If the production companies think they’ll find it impossible to fill seats because too many people will stay away, then it is ok for them to pick someone else. This isn’t censorship, it’s just people not associating with those who support unjustified wars. > McCarthyism I don’t know why it’s necessary to explain this to an adult in 2022 but McCarthyism is explicitly about persecution by the government. Not ordinary citizens preferring not to associate with you. The First Amendment prevents the government from making laws which abridge the freedom of speech, it doesn’t force private citizens to be your friends and supporters after you say anything.

PCGamer_Empath 5y ago

This reminds me of Isaac Asimov's review of 1984, which is far and away the funniest book review I've ever read. I generally share Asimov's evaluation of the quality of the writing. Here is a link to it http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm

roomey 5y ago

Absolutely unrelated to the article, but does anyone else hate prefaces? I was a big reader (bk-before kids) and once read a preface that was so thoroughly shit that I almost didn't read the book. I ended up skipping the whole thing, and the book was excellent, had me from the first line! From then on I never, or very rarely read a preface. I would value others opinions on this cause I just can't see the point of them. The link for example; what benefit to the story would that be if you read it before animal farm? To me it would wreak the story, totally full of spoilers and also, putting forth the authors understanding of his own work, which in turn reduces the readers freedom of interpretation. In summary, should prefaces actually be postfaces? (connected by a little perforated strip which can be removed and fucked in the bin)

phgn 5y ago
I absolutely agree with you. Worst IMHO are the prefaces written posthumously that talk about the impact and interpretation of the book. It's like they don't want you to make up your own mind, but simply experience this "award-winning" experience. Which may also be the reason prefaces are at the front and not the back of the book.
- roomey 5y ago
  Or a "celebrity" preface..it's almost a bigger deal than the book itself. It always makes me think the book will be shit, but that is unfair too. I guess that's why I try ignore them... Glad I'm not the only one!