5 ms·

Indeed - When he wrote 1984 in 1948, Orwell just took his contemporary totalitarian regimes (mostly Nazi Germany and the USSR) and extrapolated them to world sc

• ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  1984 seems to be set in the UK ('Airstrip One', of 'Oceana'). None of the storyline actually takes place in 'Eurasia' or 'Eastasia' or any other part of the world. They don't need to even actually exist for the storyline. Indeed, this itself is a message about controlling a populace via control of information. The rest of the world could have been razed by war, they could be total utopias. The propaganda keeps people from thinking about alternatives.
  • xnorswap 2y ago
    Yes, but Orwell wasn't really writing _about_ the UK, you need to look at the context and background of the work, which is the rise of Stalinism and the fear of that brand of totalitarianism taking over.
    • zorked 2y ago
      There is a very politically-motivated school of interpretation of 1984 that wants to excessively tie it to "Stalinism" to prevent using the book to critique other political doctrines - completely unrelated to Stalinism or communism - that exhibit the same tendencies. Interpret more broadly and it becomes a much better, more important book.
      • xnorswap 2y ago
        It wasn't just Stalinism, it was wider totalitarianism too, but that wasn't the point I was making, it wasn't a critique directed against the state of the UK at the time, but what it could become.
• BurningFrog 2y ago
  Orwell learned his cynicism the hard way as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish civil war 1936-37. He arrived as an idealistic anti fascist fighter. After experiencing Stalinism in person, he became the man we know. https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/how-spains-civil-war-defined-george-orwell-politically/ https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/how-spai...
  • pessimizer 2y ago
    > He arrived as an idealistic anti fascist fighter. He arrived as a Stalinist into a government and population of anarchists.