4 ms·

Big 1984 energy coming from this story. “It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty gr

Big 1984 energy coming from this story. “It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

ijidak 2y ago
Human society is collapsing. The stuff playing out on right now was science fiction when 1984 was written. This whole charade has had me laughing since yesterday. The Caesars of Rome often played these public games to make themselves look magnanimous, while at the same time consolidating power and control.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Sadly, Orwell was not hugely imaginative, he was just aware of things that happened in the Soviet Union.
  - ternnoburn 2y ago
    It's worth remembering that Orwell was a socialist, a leftist, and was anti authoritarian not anti communist. (Which isn't opposed to your comment, the Soviet Union was authoritarian.) It just gets brought up so often that because he was anti Soviet, he must be anti communist, which wasn't the case.
    - randomcatuser 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - pjc50 2y ago
      He was always socialist, but ended up as anti-communist after the Spanish civil war, during which while fighting for the Marxist POUM he had to flee a Stalinist purge. (Americans love to flatten all left parties into "communist", ignoring the rich history of ideological differences and occasionally violent purges) Huge fan of Orwell myself.
      - ternnoburn 2y ago
        Anti communist or anti Stalinist? Or even anti Marxist-Leninist? Homage is a complicated book to place because it's been interpreted so baby different ways across eras. But it's hard to imagine someone going and fighting for POUM and praising them post facto would ultimately be anti communist across all flavors of communism.
    - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
      See: his memoir "Homage to Catalonia," wherein he worked with the Communist Party of Great Britain to get him into Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he fought with the POUM, a Spanish anti-Stalinist communist party (though he would admit that this was mostly by chance, and he himself was more aligned with the anarchists). He would say later, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
- gherkinnn 2y ago
  So human society has been collapsing since Roman times?
  - philjohn 2y ago
    That's a particularly uncharitable take. If we assume good intent, what OP was getting at is that we had that form of governance, it failed, we then slowly marched towards democracy, and now it looks like a backslide.
  - timeon 2y ago
    Many certainly collapsed, Romans including.
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
Distractions as usual for the minions.

ijidak 2y ago

Human society is collapsing. The stuff playing out on right now was science fiction when 1984 was written. This whole charade has had me laughing since yesterday. The Caesars of Rome often played these public games to make themselves look magnanimous, while at the same time consolidating power and control.

pjc50 2y ago
Sadly, Orwell was not hugely imaginative, he was just aware of things that happened in the Soviet Union.
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  It's worth remembering that Orwell was a socialist, a leftist, and was anti authoritarian not anti communist. (Which isn't opposed to your comment, the Soviet Union was authoritarian.) It just gets brought up so often that because he was anti Soviet, he must be anti communist, which wasn't the case.
  - randomcatuser 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - pjc50 2y ago
    He was always socialist, but ended up as anti-communist after the Spanish civil war, during which while fighting for the Marxist POUM he had to flee a Stalinist purge. (Americans love to flatten all left parties into "communist", ignoring the rich history of ideological differences and occasionally violent purges) Huge fan of Orwell myself.
    - ternnoburn 2y ago
      Anti communist or anti Stalinist? Or even anti Marxist-Leninist? Homage is a complicated book to place because it's been interpreted so baby different ways across eras. But it's hard to imagine someone going and fighting for POUM and praising them post facto would ultimately be anti communist across all flavors of communism.
  - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
    See: his memoir "Homage to Catalonia," wherein he worked with the Communist Party of Great Britain to get him into Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where he fought with the POUM, a Spanish anti-Stalinist communist party (though he would admit that this was mostly by chance, and he himself was more aligned with the anarchists). He would say later, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
gherkinnn 2y ago
So human society has been collapsing since Roman times?
- philjohn 2y ago
  That's a particularly uncharitable take. If we assume good intent, what OP was getting at is that we had that form of governance, it failed, we then slowly marched towards democracy, and now it looks like a backslide.
- timeon 2y ago
  Many certainly collapsed, Romans including.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

Distractions as usual for the minions.