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George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf

• motohagiography 4y ago
  > [...] because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’tonly want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. One wonders whether this desire for struggle, self-sacrifice, drums, flags and loyalty-parades is not a right/left thing, and whether the consequences of indulging it are independent of the stories we tell about it. There's a deeper cause for it though I think. The civilization from which I write this comment offers comfort, safety, and hygiene and really everything you could possibly imagine, so long as you don't challenge its weaknesses and falsehoods. There is a (very partisan) quote from UK physician and author Theodore Dalrymple that captures it well, "When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control..” The urge for those drums, flags and parades is a desire for the dignity that the comforts don't provide, and in the fascist case, it was also an opposite reaction against the indignity of precieved comfort and lies. My pet theory about the nazis was what made them so explicitly and sickeningly cruel was they were compensating for the psychosexual shame and humiliation, not only from war reparations, but from a generation of mostly fatherless boys (post-WW1) raised in the culture of the Wiemar Republic. They envied the masculine eros of Mussolini's fascism and directly adopted its aestheics combined with a new occult mythology to compensate for the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and with the promise of largely ethno-socialist policies. Jews in Germany were not total outsiders at the time (though there is no denying anti-semitism before NSDAP, Europe's historic anti-semitism practically defines it), many Jews having fought for the country and Kaiser, but nazi propaganda against them was all about scapegoating them for the liberalism (so-called "degeneracy") of Wiemar, and crucially, for the psychosexual shame of a generation of German boys who would eventually join the nazi party. Add freely available meth (pervitin) to the mix, and the dictator had everything he needed. This doesn't excuse or explain at all, but rather, asks whether these factors have any predictive power, where if you add these ingredients together again, do we get a similar result, and how do we know the reaction is occurring as predicted without it becoming a chain reaction throughout the whole system? It seems like an urgent contemporary question to me.
  • ncr100 4y ago
    >[my civilization offers support] so long as you don't challenge its weaknesses and falsehoods Yowch. To be clear, just challenging it results in the blanket ripped from one's bed? Romania?
• dang 4y ago
  We belatedly changed the URL from https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein-kampf/ https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein... to a copy of Orwell's text that doesn't shamelessly bowdlerize him. I mean, really—Orwell? I'm referring to the omission of this passage: "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. ... that several commenters pointed out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32135108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32135108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32133675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32133675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130897 All: in the future, if you run across something like this, could you please send us a heads up at hn@ycombinator.com? We can't read all the articles or comments, but we do read all the emails, usually within a few hours. We will be especially grateful if you point out a flaw as massive as this one. Edit: I couldn't resist diffing the bowdlerized text with the gutenberg.net.au one and the eliding of that bit is the only difference between the two, other than punctuation. Edit 2: it turns out that bookmarks.reviews is guilty only of blogspam. They got the thing from https://www.openculture.com/2014/08/george-orwell-reviews-mein-kampf-1940.html https://www.openculture.com/2014/08/george-orwell-reviews-me..., which links to https://carnegiecouncil-media.storage.googleapis.com/files/v18_i007-008_a010.pdf https://carnegiecouncil-media.storage.googleapis.com/files/v... (via https://boingboing.net/2014/08/17/orwells-review-of-mein-kampf.html https://boingboing.net/2014/08/17/orwells-review-of-mein-kam...). That looks like a decades-old copy of the 1968 edition, edited by Orwell's widow. I doubt that it was she who dropped that sentence—I bet it was whoever reprinted the essay. Considering that Orwell specifically wrote "I should like to put it on record", that took some brass, or lack of it. The degree to which Orwell practiced intellectual honesty is an endless marvel. If there's one thing we should learn from anybody, it's that from him.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• magwa101 4y ago
• belter 4y ago
  "...All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.... ...Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal...”
  • d23 4y ago
    > He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.
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• iammjm 4y ago
• _Algernon_ 4y ago
  The top comment points out that a part is redacted, removing "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power - till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter - I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity.". This Gutenberg version appears to include that line: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html
  • swayvil 4y ago
    • greatpostman 4y ago
      Quotes from Churchill and general patton paint a very different picture than we are told
      • swayvil 4y ago
      • hef19898 4y ago
        Wasn't Patton a PTSD denying, proto wheraboo who thought he fought the wrong enemy? One that was removed from Getmany due his treatment and view of displaced jews? As with all WW2 generals, I would take his quotes, and memoires, with a ton of salt.
        • greatpostman 4y ago
          You must admit, throwing out first hand accounts is radical
          • hef19898 4y ago
            Not if those first hand accounts are known to be extremely biased. And you don't nned those books, the primary sources, war diaries, field reports and so in, are available now. No need to use, or believe, self promoting statements and books trying to whitewash (in the case of German Generals) or improve (allies) one's image.
• superb-owl 4y ago
  > Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice This fact has been the downfall of every utopian ideology, and ignoring creates a vacuum that fascist regimes readily fill. I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government might be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort and our need for adventure.
  • imtringued 4y ago
    I agree, imagine perfect ideology X, it solves every conceivable problem but then people stop the utopia because they want to struggle a little bit and feel challenged.
  • onelovetwo 4y ago
    Maybe we should stop looking to government for that?
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    “There should be a science of discontent” Many modern political problems stem from people needing something to struggle for and other people fighting against it. There’s also a lot of shaping going on where if people weren’t so upset about X they’d realize Y was a huge problem so let’s distract them permanently with X.
    • busyant 4y ago
      > Many modern political problems stem from people needing something to struggle for and other people fighting against it. Reminds me of the lines in Fight Club: "We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives." I'm not sure if that precise quote is in the book, but it's certainly in the movie and it echoes your sentiment and those above.
      • refurb 4y ago
• Bostonian 4y ago
  The Journal of Finance just published this paper: "Financial crises and political radicalization: How failing banks paved Hitler's path to power" https://www.bis.org/publ/work978.htm https://www.bis.org/publ/work978.htm.
  • theptip 4y ago
    The recent biography of Keynes (“The Price of Peace” by Carter) spends a lot of time discussing similar theories put forth at the time; Keynes was very critical of the Treaty of Versailles as he considered it an inevitability that crushing the German economy post-WW1 would produce a nationalist demagogue. Indeed, the treatise by Keynes after which the biography was named provided a technical argument for that thesis.
    • everybodyknows 4y ago
      In The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) Keynes puts the blame squarely on the French delegation as led by Clemenceau: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of...
    • Starlevel001 4y ago
      > crushing the German economy post-WW1 It was so crushed it was the strongest economic power in Europe by 1923. Truly a crippling burden.
      • theptip 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_interwar_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_interwar_economy > By 1932, close to six million people were unemployed. The situation in Germany became so precarious that Hitler and the Nazi party started to gain the support of the people.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Twenties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Twenties > The United States was the only country to come out of World War I without debt or reparations to pay. Germany owed a huge sum and had to take a loan from the US just to survive. No one had any hint that there would be a stock market crash with worldwide repercussions and that this crash would ruin Germany and set the stage for Hitler to come into power.
• pydry 4y ago
  • edmcnulty101 4y ago
    Are you being serious? This is a pretty low grade comment.
  • Avicebron 4y ago
    Why do you inherently ascribe it to "male loser" vs. just "loser"?
    • planarhobbit 4y ago
      Probably because the only thing that can physically stop a man is another man, and when men get so unhinged as to support ruthless leaders to get what they want, all bets are off and you’re dealing with a carnage waiting to happen.
      • deleted 4y ago
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    • zozbot234 4y ago
      Because patriarchy. To females, being a "loser" was simply the status quo; there were no "winners" to aspire towards.
      • thrown_22 4y ago
        Imagine erasing such murderous despots as Kathrine the Great and Elizabeth Tudor because of their genitalia.
        • InTheArena 4y ago
          Neither of whom were outside of a single standard deviation from the norm in Europe at this time. I find the GP argument less the convincing, but I believe that women haven’t been the face of genocide and war because of lack of opportunity - But all such are historical outliers - regardless of sex.
• emacsen 4y ago
  • zozbot234 4y ago
    Not just Brits, but Europeans in general. Consider the Dreyfus affair, which happened in developed, La Belle Époque France.
    • SoftTalker 4y ago
      Yes antisemitism was widespread in Europe at the time, not only in Germany.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • davedx 4y ago
    Whoah way to paint us all with a broad brush. Think the downfall of Labour’s last leader shows how patently untrue this thinking is.
    • ixtli 4y ago
      Oh come on. You know well that the interparty collaboration to take down Corbyn was far from due to earnest concern about Jews safety. On the contrary, they are once again using us as a rhetorical cudgel to achieve their ends.
      • smcl 4y ago
        I'm still shocked that nothing really came of the report that the anti-Corbyn activities within the Labour party. It should've rocked the party to the core and caused heads to roll.
        • anigbrowl 4y ago
          Which means your institution has been captured.
• tomkat0789 4y ago
  I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.” The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These days “peace games” like Stardew Valley are more appealing to me, but maybe I’ma little odd.
  • ant6n 4y ago
    Duplo, Lego, Brio
  • bitwize 4y ago
    > The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, LEGO® Minifigs?
    • brazzy 4y ago
      While there are no modern LEGO soldiers, there are Knights, Ninjas and Pirates, all equipped with weapons.
    • tomkat0789 4y ago
      Yes! I spent many hours with Legos growing up! I also remember playing a basic little kid video game about road construction. You’d select various heavy machinery to plow snowy roads and build bridges. I vaguely remember laying down pavement for a road being very satisfying.
  • wffurr 4y ago
    Stardew Valley has the monsters in the mines. I thought it would have been a cute farming simulator game to play with my toddler, but shortly after we discovered the mines it was all he wanted to do.
  • Latty 4y ago
    You see a lot of children playing Minecraft, or when older, Factorio on pacifist modes where they can focus on "the good bit" of building something. Historically war management was what was available, I remember enjoying building a city in Age of Empires more than the battles, and I think with the options available, while combat will always be popular and engaging, it does have alternatives some people enjoy more.
• soperj 4y ago
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Empires in general. I wonder if it wouldn’t equally describe the Mongolian or even the Roman. But it’s also hard to discount the amount of technological progress that comes from such empires, so “brainless empire in which nothing ever happens” felt like a stretch.
  • josh_fyi 4y ago
    The British Empire was more than "the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder". During the nineteenth century, the British army was absurdly small compared, for example, to the armies of continental powers. See e.g https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14218909 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14218909
    • anigbrowl 4y ago
      I don't think that's a useful comparison, since Britain's military instrument was (and continues to be) its navy, with a small but largely proportionate land force. By contrast, you never hear anything about, say, the Austrian navy because there isn't one that matters.
  • ixtli 4y ago
    Exceptional point. I hadn’t noticed this bit when I read just now.
  • orf 4y ago
    I’m not a fan of this description because it’s reductionist to the point of stupidity. It can be applied to any empire, from the Romans to the USA.
    • anigbrowl 4y ago
      Empires do tend to have a lot of features in common and run into the same difficulties. I recommend The Fate of Empires by John Bagot Glubb for a concise statement of the problem.
• Barrera 4y ago
  > But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches … The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. A commenter here (and one on the original article) has noted that the part being elided appears to be the following: > I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The full review is, apparently, here: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html That this is the only elision seems very strange. The passage is crucial to understanding how Hitler was able to do what he did. Orwell is expressing his admiration for Hitler's deep understanding of human nature while at the same time despising its application. It's a lesson too hard-won and too relevant today to be brushed aside. Still, I can't help but think that Orwell, who gave us the Ministry of Truth and its capacity for historical engineering at scale, would be highly amused.
  • simonh 4y ago
    >The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. I think the magic ingredient is utter, palpable self conviction. Complete unwavering dedication to your own rightness, regardless of any counter argument, any prevarication, even evidence to the contrary, is intoxicating. You don't need to argue, you don't need to convince, you don't need reasons, you're just right by definition. The simplicity and lack of complexity is intoxicating.
    • dbcurtis 4y ago
      a.k.a. reality distortion field
      • simonh 4y ago
        If that’s a Jobs reference, I don’t think so. He talked about hiring smart people so they could tell him what to do, owned his mistakes, changed course when things didn’t work as expected. He said making mistakes was good as long as you learned something. Yes he could be an arse, but he was no Donald Trump.
• SecuredMarvin 4y ago
  I wonder no more why my people, after Habeck announcing more than a uncomfortable winter, are united in supporting the people of Ukraine. He offered suffering for a cause. While the morale is quite different, the social mechanics repeat.
  • yomkippur 4y ago
    He might have decided so but the people don't share his cause. They are suffering with the heatwave and will also freeze during winter. Time will tell just how far his cause is going to last (it wont) People in the West are quick to forget that fight against Nazism wasn't unanimous. Many in America supported it. Many in Western Europe supported it. It was only when there was economic interests at stake they jumped in the war. Not to save people from Nazism (although this is what their decendants have been taught in schools) but to protect their own interest. Very few occasions countries enter into a war based on some goodwill or emotion. It just so happens that a common enemy and common goal appear enough to threaten their selfish interests that momentarily, countries rally around it. I can already see public opinions sliding against Zelensky here in the West. People's livelihood is impacted and not everybody feels that they need to suffer for a foreign country that they are far away from. For countries who border with Russia its a different story.
    • jokabrink 4y ago
      But its a lot more than just about the "need to suffer for a foreign country", isn't it? Its about the geopolitical interest of Europe. To be dependent on an autocratic foreign power (in this case gas) shows the problems. For example, if Russia takes over Ukraine, it would make Russia by far the largest exporter of wheat in the world (from 22% to 33%) (second: US 16%) [1]. They would gain additional power in other market commodities like corn, sunflower, steel, etc. Russia is already playing with their resource exports, I expect them to use it more whether or not they managed to achieve their goals regarding Ukraine. And other partnerships are building and increasing too like BRICS, CSTO, SCO. Step back and think for a second: Countries staying neutral because they are dependent on the aggressors export resources are exactly that type of influence that superpowers like to have. Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wheat_exports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wheat_exp...
• rr808 4y ago
  Does anyone know why Hitler hated Stalin and communism so much? The article alludes to how Russia was always the main target, and he was friends with industrialists, but I've never seen a good reason why.
  • gvv 4y ago
    He probably saw what happened during the Holodomor
    • Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      He'd either not care, or actively cheer for it. More Lebensraum!!
  • Konohamaru 4y ago
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  • droopyEyelids 4y ago
    Communism was the main competitor with Nazi ideology. They offered competing solutions to the problems of the downtrodden and destitute population. As the main competing vision, it was also the main threat to nazi success.
  • visiblink 4y ago
    From Hitler's writing, it is clear that he despised socialism/communism because socialist ideologues promoted class antagonism and internationalism, both of which undermined the unity of the German people. Of course, at a practical political level, leftists were also his rivals for the votes of the dissatisfied in inter-war Germany.
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  • scifibestfi 4y ago
• sk8terboi 4y ago
• nabla9 4y ago
  > clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, Mein Kampf is clumsy but offers real insights into propaganda. He really thought about it. He clearly understands the value of propaganda in the war: "propaganda demands the most skilled brains that can be found." When Hitler talks mass psychology and propaganda, he says something very insightful even if it's inconvenient to hear for some. He calls masses feminine. When he talks to his followers, he talks to a beast that knows to be emotional and irrational. Rational reasoning is useless. Just emotion, repetition, never backing down, or admitting mistake.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • mbg721 4y ago
    Was Hitler particularly good at that, or did he just have a desperate audience? The usual downfall that people point to with autocratic governments is that their leaders think they're in touch with their citizens but are really a million miles away.
    • nabla9 4y ago
      He was at least good at it. His chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels was really good. Goebbels made propaganda that was way subtler than Hitlers. Nazi cinema created expensive movies under Goebbels until the end. Nobody sees them today but they are very subtle and clever in a way they build a sentiment. Not at all like the short clips they show you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolberg_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolberg_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opfergang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opfergang
      • mbg721 4y ago
        I appreciate the added perspective; the Anglospheric view is often either "Look at those monsters, we would never do that" or "If only the German language had the concept of humor, they wouldn't have taken that guy seriously."
• rossdavidh 4y ago
  So, there's a lot to be said about Hitler and fascism and propaganda and all the other fascinating topics Orwell brings up here, but I'd just like to point out how routinely excellent Orwell's analysis is. Of course I mostly see the best bits brought out and dusted off, no doubt he did mediocre stuff as well, but it is worth noticing how often it turns out that Orwell, nearly a century on, still has plenty in his writing worth revisiting.
  • notRobot 4y ago
    Any recommendations for other writings and analyses by Orwell?
    • ambrozk 4y ago
      Down and Out in London and Paris is a great, great memoir. It's 50% Kitchen Confidential, 50% tramping in England during the Depression. I really can't communicate how readable and fun it is.
    • jvalenzu 4y ago
      Homage to Catalonia is his highly personal analysis of the events of the Spanish Civil War. It isn't at all comprehensive, but very plain spoken and perceptive and helps frame all of his fictional work.
      • lostlogin 4y ago
        His description of trench warfare and hand to hand combat is horrifying. I understood his views on communism better after reading the book.
        • robocat 4y ago
          The words “communism” and “socialism” have particularly slippery modern meanings - they depend where you are internationally, in time, and your partisanship. I have read a lot of what he wrote, and I am still unsure what he exactly meant by socialism. I find his essay ‘On Nationalism’ difficult to follow, although very interesting. I love all his writings about his own experiences, because his observations are so exceptionally well written, with the foreignness of early last century, plus the familiarity of his daily life. He then often writes later in those books about his political thoughts, which can be a bit more difficult to read e.g. Road to Wigan Pier.
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  > "Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war." I think there's been a profound change in popular thinking on this since the end of World War II, and it's all due to the nuclear arms race. Maybe the aerial bombardment of cities in the later years of WWII had an influence as well, and to some extent the reality of chemical and biological warfare, but it's really the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation that has made the 'world leaders' less enthusiastic about sending the young people off to die in wars in the name of national patriotism and defense of the country. The result, however, has been a long string of proxy wars between the so-called 'Great Powers' (which are now defined as those having a sizeable nuclear arsenal), right on up to Ukraine today, and the rise of smaller nations with nuclear arsenals (Israel and North Korea) who view them as an indispensable protection from external forces. There's also the case of India and Pakistan, who likely would have fought several WWII-scale tank/air/sea battles by now without the looming threat of MAD to dissuade them. It's not an argument that the nuclear disarmament organizations like to hear, but I think if we really got rid of nukes then we'd be back in large-scale aerial bombardment and mass tank battles, and of course in that situation there'd be frantic efforts to rebuild the nukes. I don't see them going away ever, sans their actual global-scale use, in which case it'll be back to sticks and stones.
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  • sorokod 4y ago
    "made the 'world leaders' less enthusiastic about sending the young people off to die in wars in the name of national patriotism and defense of the country." Not supported by current events.
• fmajid 4y ago
  Hitler tried to use copyright law to prevent translations from being published, notably in France.
  • yokoprime 4y ago
    Dear YouTube, do you know who else tried to copyright claim content? Thats right ....
  • throwaway5752 4y ago
    • hellgas00 4y ago
      Any group with unpalatable views to the general public don't want to have their views expressed in the open. There isn't some grand parallel to be had here. The meetings in Davos are never televised despite their influence on the masses. Recently the Washington Post Doxxed the LibsOfTikTok account creator, who's only crime was posting the views of socially liberal people on tiktok. Once your uncommon views become mainstream they become ripe for criticism on a mass scale.
      • throwaway5752 4y ago
        "Any group with unpalatable views to the general public don't want to have their views expressed in the open" I agree. I disagree however with your bigger point. The American far right in particular has gone through great lengths to be hidden. They financial backing is hidden through shell corporations and with protections they fought to carve out with Citizens United. Davos is widely publicized and the press covers it. Have you even heard of the Council for National Policy? What I'm talking about is the subject of academic research, and is published * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1803946?src=recsys https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1... * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2019.1701446?src=recsys https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2019.1... * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1862895 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2020.18... Right wing views are fine, in the context of following the law. I don't care about other people's politics to the extent they don't try to impose them on me. Seditious conspiracy is another story, and the American right is crossing into that territory recently.
• throwaway5752 4y ago
• cato_the_elder 4y ago
  >[...] at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.” Orwell's attribution of the quote here seems to be incorrect. While it's true that Hitler used the saying in his speeches [1], it predates him by many decades, and is often attributed to Ferdinand von Schill (the guy who unsuccessfully rebelled against Napoleon). [2][3] [1]: https://comicism.tripod.com/341108.html https://comicism.tripod.com/341108.html [2]: https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lieber_ein_Ende_mit_Schrecken_als_ein_Schrecken_ohne_Ende https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lieber_ein_Ende_mit_Schreck... [3]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6564585-better-an-end-with-horror-than-a-horror-without-end https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6564585-better-an-end-with-...
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Thank you! I was surprised to hear that Hitler coined such a phrase, so it’s great to see it attributed properly.
• MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  Orwell omitted a few details: Hitler never had a majority in the Reichstag/german parliament - he benefited from the enmity between the Social democrats and the Communist. I mean a popular front, like in France of 1936 would have stopped them. The German soial dems and communist were mortal enemies, because the social dems shot a lot of communists in the aftermath of the Kapp putsch. Also Hitler had the massive support of German industrialists, they bailed him out in 1932, and both Thyssen and Schlacht urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler. They all thought that they would control Hitler, von Papen certainly thought so. Also the social dems were very passive (to say the least). Von Papen dissolved the Prussian state, where they social dems were the government - that was the state with the largest police force in the country. What did the social dems do? They went to court, when they should have called a general strike (they did exactly that during the Kapp putsch, some thirteen years earlier) Hitler wasn't acting alone, I wonder why Orwell didn't mention that. I think Orwell didn't like the idea of a popular front, because of his negative experience with the communists during the Spanish civil war.
  • watwut 4y ago
    That is true, but also that tend to be true in multi-party voting system in general. Having over 50% is not routine at all. Generally, the leading party must make coalition of some sort. I think that if you want to attack legitimacy of that election, going through the street violence and voter intimidation Nazi party produced is closer to mark. Also communists were actual communists alien with Russian communist party. And news of purges going on Russia previously were available in Germany. Socialist party was the pro-democracy party on Germany. That is not compatible with party that takes their instructions from Stalin as communists were.
    • sudosysgen 4y ago
      By the time of the KPD-SPD split, Stalin was not in power. In fact, the KPD split from the SPD in 1918, when the USSR was still being born. And far from taking orders from the Bolsheviks, they actually had a fair amount of influence on them. The idea that they split because the meek SPD was afraid of the Stalinists is revisionist history, and the SPD itself at various points in its history was far from above purges and political violence The reason the KPD split from the SPD is that the SPD supported WW1 and the KPD were against the war. The reason they became mortal enemies was because in 1920 the SPD and the Freikorps killed many KPD members, from then on there was no hope at reconciliation.
• MomoXenosaga 4y ago
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• j3s 4y ago
  this is tangentially related, but i've always loved reading this critique of orwell & 1984 by asimov: http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm i've always thought it a valid critique, and it makes me think less of orwell's writings
  • axxto 4y ago
    Thank you for posting this. I really enjoyed it.
  • pyuser583 4y ago
    Asimov spends criticizes how Orwell got future technology wrong. But I wonder how the technology “1984” corresponds to the technology in Eastern Block countries circa 1984. HBOs Chernobyl is praised for its accuracy of Soviet life in the 1980d, and it looks a lot like what Orwell describes in 1984. And some of Asimov descriptions of 1980s tech were fads: > His hero finds it difficult in his world of 1984 to get shoelaces or razor blades. So would I in the real world of the 1980s, for so many people use slip-on shoes and electric razors. I’ve purchased two sets of shoelaces and 20 sets of razor blades (in bulk) this year.
    • mbg721 4y ago
      1984 didn't have the concept of outsourced manufacturing. (For that matter, I guess the Soviet view of the world didn't either.)
  • CSMastermind 4y ago
    I read it just now and I think Asimov is being far too hard on Orwell in that review. > The great Orwellian contribution to future technology is that the television set is two-way, and that the people who are forced to hear and see the television screen can themselves be heard and seen at all times and are under constant supervision even while sleeping or in the bathroom. Hence, the meaning of the phrase 'Big Brother is watching you'. This is an extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping everyone under control. To have a person being watched at all times means that some other person must be doing the watching at all times (at least in the Orwellian society) and must be doing so very narrowly, for there is a great development of the art of interpreting gesture and facial expression. > One person cannot watch more than one person in full concentration, and can only do so for a comparatively short time before attention begins to wander. I should guess, in short, that there may have to be five watchers for every person watched. Except as I sit here and write this now with tape over my webcam "television set is two-way" hardly seems like an idea worthy of derision. Nor does the idea of government mass surveillance seem laughably impractical. Of course, we have computers now that make this type of mass surveillance possible, Isacc couldn't conceive of the advances in computer and ML that have unlocked these terrifying government capacities. In this way it was Asimov not Orwell lacking imagination. And he takes George to task for not mentioning computers: > Orwell was unable to conceive of computers or robots, or he would have placed everyone under non-human surveillance. Our own computers to some extent do this in the IRS, in credit files, and so on, but that does not take us towards 1984, except in fevered imaginations. Computers and tyranny do not necessarily go hand in hand. Tyrannies have worked very well without computers (consider the Nazis) and the most computerised nations in today's world are also the least tyrannical. Oh the irony. As for the rest of the review he dresses down Orwell for not envisioning the rise of new drugs (vices) or the liberated role of women in society. These are only flaws if you assume Orwell's goal was to accurately predict the future. Personally I don't. I wouldn't criticize Animal Farm for not having the most accurate of farm equipment in its depiction and I don't read 1984, especially now, to get a sense of what the world will actually be like in 1984. It's a silly and unfair framing of the objective. I read both Animal Farm and 1984 as allegorical retellings of historical events which separated from the specific details of those events allow us to see general patterns and apply them to our own societies. Animal Farm isn't less of a book because Stalin was not literally a pig and 1984 is not less of a book because gin wasn't the primary vice of the youth in the literal year 1984. To dismiss the book for saying so is to miss the point completely.
• Coolerbythelake 4y ago
  Obviously the parallels to what we're living through with our last president are plain and should be alarming. The ridiculous idea that the secret service sms messages aren't available somewhere from the NSA or some other agency is a joke. We are in the midst of a slow moving coup and as long as 45 remains free, spewing his vitriol and handing out cash to his devotees unimpeded we should be very concerned.
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• rob_c 4y ago
  Well, he wasn't wrong.
• p1peridine 4y ago
  Interesting read. Speaking of dystopian fiction authors; Aldous Huxley wrote the well-known book "Brave New World". [0] Doing a quick search for MK-ULTRA on Wikileaks one can find this now unclassified transcript from 1974: > ... AND OTHER CULTS LIKE IT ARE NOT RELIGIOUS, BUT WERE DELIBERATE SYNTHETIC CREATIONS PART OF A SERIES OF PROJECTS THAT INCLUDED THE MK-ULTRA OPERATION, THAT WAS RUN THROUGH BRITISH INTELLIGENCE CONTROL OVER A SECTION OF THE CIA, WAS RUN THROUGH ALDOUS HUXLEY AND GREGORY BATES OUT OF PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA. [1] Wonder if BNW is a blueprint, rather than a fiction book. Thoughts? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201109003500/https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE302484_d.html https://web.archive.org/web/20201109003500/https://wikileaks...
• mikaeluman 4y ago
  Just have to admit to being impressed by how succinct and clear yet deep this writing was. Easy to read and understand, and certainly gets the point across.
  • johndhi 4y ago
    That's Orwell for ya. Journalism background.
  • throwaway202022 4y ago
    I think he made it a point to write like this. Check out his essay "Politics and the English Language".
  • moritzwarhier 4y ago
    I agree, but I am not surprised. Today's writing about politics mostly seems much more convoluted, bloodless and meaningless. I don't think that the main reason for that is with the writer though. I think the reason is the "triumph of liberal democracy" or capitalism. We have invented a pretty robust sugar-coat for the interests of the powerful. Nowadays, we even call some of our exploitation schemes "eco-friendly".
  • lostlogin 4y ago
    Reading the comments below the article (generally a bad idea) show that a paragraph of the article seems to have been ‘redacted’. Sources are quoted but I don’t see a reason for the change. “I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power - till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter - I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity.”
    • pukexxr 4y ago
      >>Sources are quoted but I don’t see a reason for the change. Redacted [by who?] If this was removed by Orwell then it isn't for you to see a reason or not. If removed by the editors of the abve site, then I'd agree that that's a questionable choice; at any rate an ellipsis would be called for.
• Bud 4y ago
  Very timely post given the threat of the fascist movement in the US right now. Especially interesting that Orwell mentions the right to birth control, since that, too, is now being threatened and destroyed in the US. Orwell understood the link.
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• mdtancsa 4y ago
  I am surprised no one has mentioned Paul Bloom's "Sweet Spot". He looks at the psychology behind chosen pain / suffering / struggle (e.g. running a marathon ) https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56922622-the-sweet-spot https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56922622-the-sweet-sp...
• helloworld11 4y ago
  >Probably, in Hitler's own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia's turn will come when England is out of the picture—that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees it. Unsurprisingly, Orwell here was wonderfully prescient, even as many contemporaries failed to see that this exact plan was the case.
  • avodonosov 4y ago
    You mean Hitler really turned to Russia after he defeated England?
    • dang 4y ago
      "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • GekkePrutser 4y ago
      After he gave up on conquering Britain, which is kinda 'out of the picture' I guess
      • avodonosov 4y ago
        Had he attempted to conquer Britan before turning to Russia?
        • lovecg 4y ago
          The Battle of Britain is generally accepted to have had a peace treaty with Britain as a (failed) strategic objective, thus putting it “out of the picture”.
• anonu 4y ago
  plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
• B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  "Suppose that Hitler’s programme could be put into effect. What he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250 million Germans with plenty of ‘living room’ (i.e. stretching to Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder." That bears reading twice.
• leoc 4y ago
  His "Wells, Hitler and the World-State" is probably better: https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws
  • dbtc 4y ago
    Thank you, that's a great site.
• russellbeattie 4y ago
  Ooh! I just read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". In it, he describes how he and his wife almost got into serious trouble for having a copy with them in Barcelona. Orwell had joined a loyalist political faction as a volunteer to help fight Franco's fascists, which were backed by Germany. However, communists took over the Catalan government, using Orwell's party as a scapegoat to gain power. They started rounding them all up as traitors. Thousands were put in jail or summarily executed. The police came to search Orwell's wife's hotel room in the middle of the night and found a copy of Mein Kampf, which given the circumstances, was incredibly incriminating. But apparently they found other political books and luckily for her, decided it wasn't incriminating. I have no idea how. I thought the book was enlightening and Orwell really is an amazing writer. I lived in Spain for a few years and visited most of the areas he went to, which made the whole book even more vivid. Orwell was sooooo lucky to escape the country. Just a week after he and his wife left, formal charges were brought against them as traitors in Spain. By the way, I have no idea how I went this long without knowing it (maybe I forgot) but George Orwell is a pen name. I was reading the Wikipedia page about his wife and I was like, "Who the hell is Eric Blair?"
• nl 4y ago
  It's interesting that this version is an edited version, and unclear when the changes occurred. The full version[1] includes this: > I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. In the linked version that is represented by "..." which is easy to miss [1] http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html
  • braingenious 4y ago
    That is quite an enormous omission! It is kind of unsurprising though, because misinterpreting Orwell is nearly an art form.
• cypherpunks27ad 4y ago
  The link is actually to a censored version of the review which omits the sentence "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler." An uncensored copy of the review which does contain that sentence is here: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html Here is a reference from the NYT to show that yes, he really said this: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/22/opinion/l-orwellian-ambivalence-toward-adolf-hitler-017710.html https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/22/opinion/l-orwellian-ambiv... The fact that most of the copies of Orwell's review of Mein Kampf have replaced this sentence with "..." is downright Orwellian.
  • dang 4y ago
    I don't know that it's Orwellian except insofar as it's stupid, and since stupid conventionality was one of Orwell's great themes, it is Orwellian, so you're right. We've belatedly changed the URL now. I wish I'd seen it sooner.