7 ms·

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every d

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
andybak 4y ago
I'm bored with people rolling this quote out and I disagree with the premise. This is much more like Victorian prudery and moral panics than some foreshadowing of a totalitarian state. Stop being overly dramatic.
- paganel 4y ago
  This is pure censorship, belittling people who call it out means taking the the side of censorship. Nothing overly “dramatic” about it (there’s also something to be said about using the word “dramatic” with a negative connotation).
  - starkd 4y ago
    Even if the revisions are fairly innocuous in themselves, it is still altering history in a way that impedes future generations from an honest legitimate view of history. Imagine a world with a filtered awareness for history. It is a closing of the mind.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Except it’s entirely voluntarily done by the owners themselves. Nobody forced them to do it, there hasn’t been an organized protest asking them to, it’s just a business making decisions about what they think will boost sales. Capitalists making independent business decisions is pretty far from 1984.
    - op00to 4y ago
      Are corporations even mentioned in 1984?
  - kcplate 4y ago
    The publishers could not care less about removing words due to the fact that they might be offensive in 2023. They are not losing any sales because of any specific words in these books. They are editing the books simply because it creates cheap publicity around the brand. This isn’t censorship, it’s a publicity stunt.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  Man, this comment. We literally have telescreens in our homes. We know that the NSA has monitored every bit of information we emit. We have AI generated propaganda. Algorithms that turn us against each other, that monitor the cameras on every corner. We even had people violently attempt to overturn our democratic elections! And you bleat that it's just a little prudery.
  - op00to 4y ago
    I am just stunned that you equate A PRIVATE COMPANY doing whatever the hell they want with their own property to 1984. Do you also believe that one time you thought you saw a pig talk means we are headed towards an Animal Farm situation?
- hyperhopper 4y ago
  The point is more that it's reaching a point where true history is hidden/questionable/edited/rare/debated. It's not too the next step where totalitarianism comes into play. Especially when it gets to the point where having stepped over these boundaries in the past can lead to being targeted by the government / powerful corporations / employers. But it's 100% relevant to be bringing into the conversation.
  - jquery 4y ago
    Tennessee just banned transition therapy for trans people and gave them a year to “detransition”. The owner of Twitter just replied “kek” to an outspoken segregationist. But sure, it’s capitalists trying to sell more pulp fiction that’s the biggest fascist threat in America right now.
    - not_a_shill 4y ago
      Was the only non-fascist era in USA history 2015-2016 (Oberfell to Trump)? You could probably knock the years back to Obama if you want, but Prop 8 was in 2008 so it's hard to go earlier than that. NOI segregationists have existed for a long time in the post-segregation era.
    - CoryAlexMartin 4y ago
      The Tennessee bill you’re referring to specifically prohibits children, not adults, from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapies and sex change operations.
      - sundaeofshock 4y ago
        It is a transphobic bill that blocks all age and medical appropriate gender affirming care for a person under 18. This includes totally reversible actions related to social transition including name changes and clothing choices. https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-condemns-tennessee-house-for-passing-discriminatory-anti-drag-bill-and-gender-affirming-care-ban-urges-governor-lee-to-veto https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-con...
- throw0101c 4y ago
  > This is much more like Victorian prudery and moral panics than some foreshadowing of a totalitarian state. Stop being overly dramatic. Why can't it be a foreshadowing of a totalitarian state of Victorian prudery?
- jwestbury 4y ago
  Exactly -- it's bowdlerisation, pure and simple. This is a behaviour that the left used to abhor, but they've finally found reason to adopt the behaviour themselves.
  - cyclecount 4y ago
    Americans on the right seem incapable of seeing the difference between the dominant liberal institutions in power today, and "the left" which holds basically no power in the western world today.
  - defrost 4y ago
    To be clear this is the attention seeking behaviour of capitalist publishers .. there are no "the left" involved here. They promote the changes, stoke the outrage via press releases, stir up support for "the originals" and make bank from two highly talked about simultaneous releases of the same old product. For context: Dahl’s publications are extremely lucrative. In 2021, his literary estate was bought by Netflix for £500m. So, despite the writer himself being more than three decades dead, his market share must not be allowed to diminish. [1] Absent any of this it'd just be just another release with zero fanfare or intereest. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/26/updating-roald-dahl-same-old-story-david-mitchell https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/26/updati...
DoreenMichele 4y ago
George Orwell's book 1984 was written in 1949 to warn against totalitarianism. It was modeled on Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. I can think of nothing more anti-Nazi than showing a little respect for people of color in our popular fiction.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  The point is that the shoe fits, which exposes that the virtuous intent is actually ignorant, misguided, invalid, counter-productive, and self-defeating.
- starkd 4y ago
  That might be true if it were just about being more polite. But this is about control by establishing an approved vocabulary. Why else the need to rewrite past literature? It is a very condescending attitude to think you can protect people from "harmful thoughts". Archaic language is a key into deciphering cultures and other historical ideas.
  - op00to 4y ago
    Literally none of that is happening. The company thinks they can sell more books if they no longer alienate a large portion of the reading public. Maybe all the white folks bought 007 books, and now they want other races to buy 007. What is distinctly missing from your fantasy is the removal, destruction or burning of the prior editions of the book. You can still get the racist edition if that’s your thing. Hell, they’re on zlib.
- nhchris 4y ago
  "and Stalinist Russia. I can think of nothing more anti-Nazi" By now I'm used to Soviet union being ignored whenever convenient, but I've never seen it forgotten in the span of seven words. > Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced. [..] For instance, in the 1950 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol, censors made over three hundred cuts, screening the book's references to Frenchmen as "a people of very lively imagination", and the chivalrous treatments which the French gave to Russian prisoners—such as eating in the passenger's lounge and being given a hundred francs per month—were extracted from the text. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union > "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." [..] In Germany, Owens had been allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, at a time when African Americans in many parts of the United States had to stay in segregated hotels that accommodated only blacks. [..] After the parade, Owens was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the Waldorf Astoria New York and instead forced to travel up to the reception honoring him in a freight elevator. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens#1936_Berlin_Summer_Olympics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens#1936_Berlin_Summer... > "An overwhelming majority [74-82%] of the men feel that negro and white soldiers should be separated both during and after training" - pg. 10, Attitudes of White Enlisted Men Towards Sharing Facilities With Negro Troops, US War Dept., 1942 - https://archive.org/details/us-war-department-final-race-wonk-room/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/us-war-department-final-race-won...
jquery 4y ago
This is just capitalists trying to sell more books. You want the old books? They haven’t been burned or locked away. Nobody is being jailed for selling the old books. From the article: The word “n-----”, which Fleming used to refer to black people when he was writing during the Fifties and Sixties, has been almost entirely expunged from the revised texts. If you want your James Bond books that have the hard r n-word, they’re still there for you on eBay, undoubtedly.
- yucky 4y ago
  FYI, although the article wants you to make the jump that n----- = "the hard R", it's actually referring to a less offensive albeit very dated term - negros (as in the United Negro College Fund). Negro is a word that annoys me as well, but it's no different than People of Color/Colored People in that it's just a cringey old-timey descriptor. From what I can tell the only reference with "the hard R" is not in reference to anybody in particular but rather as a chapter title that is in reference to Harlem and is a direct call back to the famous Harlem Renaissance writer Carl Van Vechten.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    The best argument I've seen yet against such self censorship.
  - op00to 4y ago
    “Negro” is an offensive term. The US government does not use “negro”. https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/lcdrg/appendix/black-person https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/lcdrg/appendix/bla...
    - yucky 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNCF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNCF
      - op00to 4y ago
        That's a lazy counterargument, and I assume you're just trolling. Please don't do that here. I'm not sure why you're trying to justify the use of an outdated term that is problematic if not immediately hurtful. If you had read the article you linked, you'd have known that the United Negro College Fund emphasizes its initials rather than its full name. "In 2008, reflecting shifting attitudes toward the word Negro in its name, the UNCF shifted from using its full name to using only its initials, releasing a new logo with the initials alone and featuring their slogan more prominently." Look on their website. Their official history does not mention the term "negro" once. https://uncf.org/the-latest/75-years-strong-highlights-from-uncfs-history https://uncf.org/the-latest/75-years-strong-highlights-from-... You will be unable to find in at least the last 30 years, any publications from the UNCF that use the word "negro" to refer to black people.
password1 4y ago
Except no party is doing this, but very capitalist firms in an attempt to appeal to new segments, to refresh their brand and to be on the news with their products. They follow a trend to fortify their business, that's it. The fallacy of your argument is that it somehow implies some coordinated attempt by some kind of obscure force that is conspiring to control society. That's no different than other conspiracy theories.
- sebazzz 4y ago
  The trend is fearing to offend and all the consequences and ((social) media) outrage that follows.
  - password1 4y ago
    Yes it's a stupid trend (most trends are), but that doesn't mean it exists because of some hidden power conspiring to take control of western society.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

andybak 4y ago

I'm bored with people rolling this quote out and I disagree with the premise. This is much more like Victorian prudery and moral panics than some foreshadowing of a totalitarian state. Stop being overly dramatic.

paganel 4y ago
This is pure censorship, belittling people who call it out means taking the the side of censorship. Nothing overly “dramatic” about it (there’s also something to be said about using the word “dramatic” with a negative connotation).
- starkd 4y ago
  Even if the revisions are fairly innocuous in themselves, it is still altering history in a way that impedes future generations from an honest legitimate view of history. Imagine a world with a filtered awareness for history. It is a closing of the mind.
- acdha 4y ago
  Except it’s entirely voluntarily done by the owners themselves. Nobody forced them to do it, there hasn’t been an organized protest asking them to, it’s just a business making decisions about what they think will boost sales. Capitalists making independent business decisions is pretty far from 1984.
  - op00to 4y ago
    Are corporations even mentioned in 1984?
- kcplate 4y ago
  The publishers could not care less about removing words due to the fact that they might be offensive in 2023. They are not losing any sales because of any specific words in these books. They are editing the books simply because it creates cheap publicity around the brand. This isn’t censorship, it’s a publicity stunt.
Invictus0 4y ago
Man, this comment. We literally have telescreens in our homes. We know that the NSA has monitored every bit of information we emit. We have AI generated propaganda. Algorithms that turn us against each other, that monitor the cameras on every corner. We even had people violently attempt to overturn our democratic elections! And you bleat that it's just a little prudery.
- op00to 4y ago
  I am just stunned that you equate A PRIVATE COMPANY doing whatever the hell they want with their own property to 1984. Do you also believe that one time you thought you saw a pig talk means we are headed towards an Animal Farm situation?
hyperhopper 4y ago
The point is more that it's reaching a point where true history is hidden/questionable/edited/rare/debated. It's not too the next step where totalitarianism comes into play. Especially when it gets to the point where having stepped over these boundaries in the past can lead to being targeted by the government / powerful corporations / employers. But it's 100% relevant to be bringing into the conversation.
- jquery 4y ago
  Tennessee just banned transition therapy for trans people and gave them a year to “detransition”. The owner of Twitter just replied “kek” to an outspoken segregationist. But sure, it’s capitalists trying to sell more pulp fiction that’s the biggest fascist threat in America right now.
  - not_a_shill 4y ago
    Was the only non-fascist era in USA history 2015-2016 (Oberfell to Trump)? You could probably knock the years back to Obama if you want, but Prop 8 was in 2008 so it's hard to go earlier than that. NOI segregationists have existed for a long time in the post-segregation era.
  - CoryAlexMartin 4y ago
    The Tennessee bill you’re referring to specifically prohibits children, not adults, from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapies and sex change operations.
    - sundaeofshock 4y ago
      It is a transphobic bill that blocks all age and medical appropriate gender affirming care for a person under 18. This includes totally reversible actions related to social transition including name changes and clothing choices. https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-condemns-tennessee-house-for-passing-discriminatory-anti-drag-bill-and-gender-affirming-care-ban-urges-governor-lee-to-veto https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-con...
throw0101c 4y ago
> This is much more like Victorian prudery and moral panics than some foreshadowing of a totalitarian state. Stop being overly dramatic. Why can't it be a foreshadowing of a totalitarian state of Victorian prudery?
jwestbury 4y ago
Exactly -- it's bowdlerisation, pure and simple. This is a behaviour that the left used to abhor, but they've finally found reason to adopt the behaviour themselves.
- cyclecount 4y ago
  Americans on the right seem incapable of seeing the difference between the dominant liberal institutions in power today, and "the left" which holds basically no power in the western world today.
- defrost 4y ago
  To be clear this is the attention seeking behaviour of capitalist publishers .. there are no "the left" involved here. They promote the changes, stoke the outrage via press releases, stir up support for "the originals" and make bank from two highly talked about simultaneous releases of the same old product. For context: Dahl’s publications are extremely lucrative. In 2021, his literary estate was bought by Netflix for £500m. So, despite the writer himself being more than three decades dead, his market share must not be allowed to diminish. [1] Absent any of this it'd just be just another release with zero fanfare or intereest. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/26/updating-roald-dahl-same-old-story-david-mitchell https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/26/updati...

DoreenMichele 4y ago

George Orwell's book 1984 was written in 1949 to warn against totalitarianism. It was modeled on Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. I can think of nothing more anti-Nazi than showing a little respect for people of color in our popular fiction.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
The point is that the shoe fits, which exposes that the virtuous intent is actually ignorant, misguided, invalid, counter-productive, and self-defeating.
starkd 4y ago
That might be true if it were just about being more polite. But this is about control by establishing an approved vocabulary. Why else the need to rewrite past literature? It is a very condescending attitude to think you can protect people from "harmful thoughts". Archaic language is a key into deciphering cultures and other historical ideas.
- op00to 4y ago
  Literally none of that is happening. The company thinks they can sell more books if they no longer alienate a large portion of the reading public. Maybe all the white folks bought 007 books, and now they want other races to buy 007. What is distinctly missing from your fantasy is the removal, destruction or burning of the prior editions of the book. You can still get the racist edition if that’s your thing. Hell, they’re on zlib.
nhchris 4y ago
"and Stalinist Russia. I can think of nothing more anti-Nazi" By now I'm used to Soviet union being ignored whenever convenient, but I've never seen it forgotten in the span of seven words. > Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced. [..] For instance, in the 1950 edition of The Ordeal of Sevastopol, censors made over three hundred cuts, screening the book's references to Frenchmen as "a people of very lively imagination", and the chivalrous treatments which the French gave to Russian prisoners—such as eating in the passenger's lounge and being given a hundred francs per month—were extracted from the text. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union > "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." [..] In Germany, Owens had been allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, at a time when African Americans in many parts of the United States had to stay in segregated hotels that accommodated only blacks. [..] After the parade, Owens was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the Waldorf Astoria New York and instead forced to travel up to the reception honoring him in a freight elevator. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens#1936_Berlin_Summer_Olympics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens#1936_Berlin_Summer... > "An overwhelming majority [74-82%] of the men feel that negro and white soldiers should be separated both during and after training" - pg. 10, Attitudes of White Enlisted Men Towards Sharing Facilities With Negro Troops, US War Dept., 1942 - https://archive.org/details/us-war-department-final-race-wonk-room/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/us-war-department-final-race-won...

jquery 4y ago

This is just capitalists trying to sell more books. You want the old books? They haven’t been burned or locked away. Nobody is being jailed for selling the old books. From the article: The word “n-----”, which Fleming used to refer to black people when he was writing during the Fifties and Sixties, has been almost entirely expunged from the revised texts. If you want your James Bond books that have the hard r n-word, they’re still there for you on eBay, undoubtedly.

yucky 4y ago
FYI, although the article wants you to make the jump that n----- = "the hard R", it's actually referring to a less offensive albeit very dated term - negros (as in the United Negro College Fund). Negro is a word that annoys me as well, but it's no different than People of Color/Colored People in that it's just a cringey old-timey descriptor. From what I can tell the only reference with "the hard R" is not in reference to anybody in particular but rather as a chapter title that is in reference to Harlem and is a direct call back to the famous Harlem Renaissance writer Carl Van Vechten.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  The best argument I've seen yet against such self censorship.
- op00to 4y ago
  “Negro” is an offensive term. The US government does not use “negro”. https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/lcdrg/appendix/black-person https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/lcdrg/appendix/bla...
  - yucky 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNCF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNCF
    - op00to 4y ago
      That's a lazy counterargument, and I assume you're just trolling. Please don't do that here. I'm not sure why you're trying to justify the use of an outdated term that is problematic if not immediately hurtful. If you had read the article you linked, you'd have known that the United Negro College Fund emphasizes its initials rather than its full name. "In 2008, reflecting shifting attitudes toward the word Negro in its name, the UNCF shifted from using its full name to using only its initials, releasing a new logo with the initials alone and featuring their slogan more prominently." Look on their website. Their official history does not mention the term "negro" once. https://uncf.org/the-latest/75-years-strong-highlights-from-uncfs-history https://uncf.org/the-latest/75-years-strong-highlights-from-... You will be unable to find in at least the last 30 years, any publications from the UNCF that use the word "negro" to refer to black people.

password1 4y ago

Except no party is doing this, but very capitalist firms in an attempt to appeal to new segments, to refresh their brand and to be on the news with their products. They follow a trend to fortify their business, that's it. The fallacy of your argument is that it somehow implies some coordinated attempt by some kind of obscure force that is conspiring to control society. That's no different than other conspiracy theories.

sebazzz 4y ago
The trend is fearing to offend and all the consequences and ((social) media) outrage that follows.
- password1 4y ago
  Yes it's a stupid trend (most trends are), but that doesn't mean it exists because of some hidden power conspiring to take control of western society.