As the left rewrites history and continues to bulldoze anything that is deemed unfit for public history consumption to “remedy the errors of the past”, let’s not forget the name of the individual that statists have deemed a proponent and god of leftist ideology. A name that has been fully captured by the left without further questioning: George Orwell.
Talk to any leftist and they unabashedly prop Orwell up as a total puppet of the left. Today, even the left would force Orwell’s dead rotting skull to nod in favor of Socialist geriatric politician, Bernie Sanders. One can only wonder if they will dig up his corpse, convert him to US citizenship, and parade him to the polls like some macabre “Weekend at Bernie’s” to vote for Socialist Sanders because, you know, that is what Orwell thought.
This must stop.
Apparently, 1984 and Animal Farm had not much to do with large government. Articles (as the one linked above) and discussions with numerous people would lead you to believe Orwell was, in fact, a Socialist. This is a distorted image of the master of political literature. Statists would like you to think that Mr. Orwell is firmly placed in the hall of the left after Antonio Gramsci and Karl Marx.
However, further research illustrates a different view. Quotes directly from George Orwell would reveal he has denounced more of leftist ideology than most would like to admit. His message was clear: large government is corrupt and intrusive.
Eerily enough, many of George Orwell’s quotes below can be applied to modern America. All of these quotes are taken from one of his best works, Inside the Whale (a must read):
…Paris was invaded by such a swarm of artists, writers, students, dilettanti, sight-seers, debauchees, and plain idlers as the world has probably never seen. In some quarters of the town the so-called artists must actually have outnumbered the working population indeed, it has been reckoned that in the late twenties there were as many as 30,000 painters in Paris, most of them impostors. The populace had grown so hardened to artists that gruff- voiced lesbians in corduroy breeches and young men in Grecian or medieval costume could walk the streets without attracting a glance and along the Seine banks by Notre Dame it was almost impossible to pick one’s way between the sketching-stools.
It was the age of dark horses and neglected genii; the phrase on everybody’s lips was ‘Quand je serai lance? (when am I launching?)”. As it turned out, nobody was “launching” the slump descended like another ice age, the cosmopolitan mob of artists vanished, and the huge Montparnasse cafes which only ten years ago were filled till the small hours by hordes of shrieking poseurs have turned into darkened tombs in which there are not even any ghosts.
The above account can be reflected with any modern Leftist city in the USA and the conformist hippy “artist”. Modern Austin, Brooklyn, Denver, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle come to mind as parallels to early 20th century Paris. Just remember, next time your pretentious dread-locked friend rolls up on his longboard with a “Feel the Bern” t-shirt, remember that Orwell would have thought him a faggy poseur.
Orwell explains how leftist ideologies dominated cultural and literary circles. This unflinching dominance of the left in the arts and culture of today (originating in 1969 America) has become vapid and cliché, just as it was in the 1930s. History is cyclical and Orwell was truly a soothsayer:
As early as 1934 or 1935 it was considered eccentric in literary circles not be more or less “left”. Between 1935 and 1939 the Communist Party had an almost irresistible fascination for any writer under forty. It became as normal to hear that so-and-so had ‘been received’. For about three years, in fact, the central stream of English literature was more or less directly under Communist control. How was it possible for such a thing to happen?
Orwell goes on with the destruction of the individual. The weapons to destroy the individual are conformity, statist group thought, propaganda language, and censorship within the Left (e.g. political correctness today):
Every Communist is in fact liable at any moment to have to alter his most fundamental convictions, or leave the party.
Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships- an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence. But this means that literature, in the form in which we know it, must suffer at least a temporary death.
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this: ‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
Deconstruction of the West and anti-patriotic sentiment by leftist ideology is not something new in the Modern USA (originating at the intellectual institution known as the Frankfurt School). Orwell was also attuned to it in his day:
All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British….If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible…Given the stagnation of the Empire the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process…It is clear that the special position of the English intellectuals during the past ten years, as purely negative creatures, was a by-product of ruling class stupidity.
Society could not use them, and they have not got it in them to see the devotion to one’s country implies ‘for better or worse’…high brows took for granted, as though it were a law of nature, the divorce between patriotism and intelligence. If you were a patriot you publicly thanked God that you were ‘not brainy’. If you were an intellectual you sniggered at the Union Jack and regarded physical courage as barbarous…A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again.
In reference to the dangers of where leftist thought may lead and the predictions of the mass killings that followed, from Marxist writing to French Intellectuals, such as Sartre, influencing Pol Pot to the every expansion of leftist ideology in the USA today. Again, Orwell was able to identity the dangers of left-wing thought:
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
Ironically, not much has changed in Orwell’s critique of the left and its failures. It can fully be applied to what we are witnessing in the USA today.
I encourage you all to realize that Orwell was not a leftist; he denounced the left, the Socialist, the statist, and favored individualism in all its forms. He was an opponent of big government in all forms ranging from Fascism to Communism. So next time someone uses Orwell as a tool for their political agenda, just remember:
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’.
Read More: This Accidental Experiment Shows The Superiority Of Patriarchy
Male leftists are the ultimate betas. They try to out-whiteknight each other to our doom.
Soscialism is for the weak. For the hopeless.
Capitalism is for the strong.
The right system lies in between.
The challenge is to agree over the nature of in-between.
That’s easy. No limits for the successful and little protection for the failed.
I do not care for a debate right now, so I will just say that it is debatable, even though I tend to agree.
I am on board with the earlier thinking of Milton Friedman, and arch-right winger. Provide people with a basic income and then otherwise get the government out of the way. He eventually abandoned the idea because it became apparent to him that any such program would be piled on as an addition, rather than substitute, for the endless bureaucratic goodies schemes that were already in place.
I am quite sceptical about basic income. What if 80% of all people hate their jobs and then feel free to quit? Suddenly they can buy 80% less for that basic income.
There is an interesting book by Thomas Piketty called Capital which came out a couple of years ago. He has some interesting theories about Capitalism and basically feels that Western wealth and its current distribution (i.e. a large middle class and smaller upper class) is merely a product of the World Wars, and that currently Capitalism is on a long course of degenerating into a 2-class system of the super-wealthy and the poor. I think I agree with him, in that certainly, unfettered Capitalism will lead to this state eventually.
I do agree with you that Socialism is for the weak, but also that Capitalism needs to be bounded somehow. But it is extremely difficult, probably impossible, to find a good balance. People will rort any system you can come up with to create inequality. For example, in Australia where I live, we have a public health system and have had it for many years. To me, it sounds good that a poorer person who discovers they have a brain tumour can have medical intervention for free. But then consider our obesity rate, leading to skyrocketing cancer and heart disease…why should the public have to pay for people’s poor decisions? How do you distinguish between these groups? This is where it becomes hard to draw a line.
Piketty is just trying to resurrect Marxism. He is a twat.
Oh surely I don’t think he is a commie. I only understood that he was pointing out the deficiencies of capitalism. It’s not like he’s advocating for a revolution of the proletariat.
Also, don’t you see in evidence today a gradual shifting of wealth to the super wealthy, generally through large corporations?
Currently “Capitalism”? We do not have capitalism, if by capitalism you mean “free markets” unrestricted by government. What we have are restricted markets moving towards total government control. Complete socialism in fact.
I’ll tell you where the line is drawn. Nobody is entitled to steal from anyone else. Job done.
What was really weird was that in the army I was considered a bit “soft”, and in business school I stood out as left of centre due to my study of and views on business ethics. Then I get to a left coast law school and I am considered the devil incarnate: healthy, straight, white male, ex-military with a business degree. Apparently I embodied everything that was wrong with the world.
I’ve experienced this myself.
Bollocks. What we have now in the West is “in between” and it is a travesty.
Agreed. Female leftists, feminists, are pursuing their own interests. Male feminists are subverting their own interests. You can’t be more beta male than that. Are enthusiastic hillary supporters trying to hack this site?
Male leftists are the ultimate betas… Actually I would say possibly delta, but mostly gamma !
male feminists are the ultimate betas. male leftists come just after IMO.
Beta, Gamma, Omegas….all preening as society circles the drain.
The part where the English prof defends the Russian totalitarianism cracked me up like never before! I mean seriously rather than outright saying all opponents of political establishment must be crushed, he went on a verbose explanation peppered with smart sounding lexicons. Which are mostly garbage actually 😉
Doublespeak gobbledygook at its best
the leftie, collectivist literature that dominates today’s canon will need to be removed piece by piece like ceiling asbestos from a house built in the 70s. We are only beginning to understand the damage it is doing to our health. Lefties, please note: the purpose of literature is literature, not the creation of blueprints for levelling society.
BTW every time ROK is down I always imagine Roosh is being interrogated in a police cell on suspicion of having violated some new law on feelings
The left’s literature is boring. Just ordinary people doing ordinary things.
If you don’t write about great deeds, why write at all?
i don’t know. “the grapes of wrath” and “100 years of solitude” come immediately to mind as two leftist novels that were anything but boring. i could probably think of many more examples if i wanted to.
maybe you meant what leftists are writing nowadays. i wouldn’t know what that is, but i imagine it isn’t great.
Yes my statement refers to recent publications. It started around WWI.
There has been a shift from fantasy and fiction, from great deeds, heroes and virgins, to simple and mind numbing stories. Fifty shades of grey for example.
An empty story. Pure emotion-read.
That’s true. Aristole wrote that for great literature, or at least tragedy, poetry needed both magnitude and order as I remember. Little people’s lives are rarely big enough in that sense to hold the attention. Having said that, there’s no reason why you can’t combine big themes, and grand heroic narratives with smaller details, but in general modern literature is too often mundane and prosaic
Agreed!
Yes, I am bored by most literature that take place in the present time. If I want to see the present time I can just look out the window.
The leftists called this kind of literature “kitchen sink realism” in the 1970s. It was supposed to tear away the conservative fantasies that kept the masses dreaming, and make them see themselves as the heroes instead, simply on virtue of being – well, not much at all.
Yes, the affirmation of ordinary life. And how very ordinary it is. Good reference to kitchen sink dramas. I’d forgotten about that
Roosh is HERO
Not to mention, leader of the resistance against the machines
Like Mark Marek
Orwell was an avowed socialist. However, like many socialists, it was only certain forms of socialism that he had a problem with, like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
I only really know him from the books of his that I’ve read and brief potted biographies. As far as I understand he cared very much about the ordinary man despite his very privileged background. After he saw how communists behaved in the Spanish civil war he seems to have been forced to reflect on his allegiances and to try to reconcile his left beliefs with his rather English commitment to liberty. I think that’s why he became such a good critic of socialism because it’s not easy to combine the two. You’re right though he wasn’t a conservative in any obvious sense.
Yes I feel the same way about Daily Stormer and Rense. almost half way out the door with me go-bag after DS was offline for a few days!
Err not quite with you on that one to be honest but yes I can see the existential aspect
His outlook is very similar to the non-fiction writer and economist Friedrich Hayek, namely a deep rooted skepticism towards the role of the State in an individual’s liberty and freedom.
However, although Orwell was very wary about the role of the State, Right or Left, he was consistently a man who was on the side of the downtrodden and the marginalized in society. The Road to Wigan Pier for example is a marvelous study of the communities, cultures and traditions of the working classes in the North of England during the 1930s. One of Orwell’s defining characteristics was that he had no tolerance for the increasing intolerance of both the right or left, with their use of propaganda, slogans and spin, and all his later works belie this cardinal truth through the use of plain, almost disarming prose that underscored the best written satire since Swift in the English language.
Satire, hyperbole, lampooning, exaggeration, displacement, unfamiliar familiarity in settings that seem real are the tools of a great satirist. Orwell was one the finest, and because of political correctness and other types of social ideologies, it looks as though he’ll be the last great one, for a long, long, time……..
“it looks as though he’ll be the last great one, for a long, long, time……..”
Fifty years (I daresay 200 years) from now, people will still be reading Orwell. Gilbert. Shaw. Dickens. Dante.
Can we name a modern author (say 1980 or 90-present) who will be read 50 years from now? Can we name any work of culture (same period of time) that will be remembered 50 years from now?
We’re in a Dark Age, and it’s beyond literature.
I agree. Affluent, liberal historical epochs tend to produce disposable literature and art. Also, as Orwell knew that to write literature or create art under an ideological set of State sanctioned rules, like socialist realism and formalism in Stalin’s Russia produces nothing more than propaganda and not literature. With the exception of Shostakovitch in Stalinist Russia, there is not one single piece of music or literature that stood the test of time from either Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. So he was very much proved right on this score.
It seems odd and perverse that western universities have got into the business of “committed writing” for their students. That is writing, which must be socially and politically correct for it to get an airing in the first place! So, yes the era of literature that actually has to capacity to change and transform the reader in a way that provokes thoughts and reflections in the deepest parts of our being seem to be over indeed.
Is that the truth or is just no one out there capable or willing to find the gems among the hipster artists? My father used to say that you only see the best from the past, but you see the best from today among all the garbage from today. Time filters by quality.
That’s a point. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. It depends also by what you mean by literature and art. It’s not a static concept and why should a giant elephant made of the detritus and garbage of the London Streets not be any more a great and relevant art work of our times, say as the still lives of Vermeer were any more great art works that reflected the social and family ties of 17th century Holland?
Good art and literature is of its time. Great art transcends the social and cultural fissures of its time and the passing on to successive generations to be seen, experienced and re-interpreted a freshly is testimony of that fact. Essentially, It’s an enigma, where time is somehow transcended in the act of original creation.
You’re right- time and distant filter quality. There’s no reason why our elephant of the dirty streets shouldn’t be an enduring art work to future generations.
My point was rather that there is such a big amount of garbage today that it becomes impossible to review it all. Prejudice starts to become the personal choice maker and one chooses to consume only works that bear similarity to something of quality that one already knows or that has already been approved of by peers.
If somebody was to make a convincing argument for socialism today, would capitalists still listen? I argue they would not, because if they always did, they would usually just get disappointed and avandon that practice. Now, I have no convincing argument for socialism, but you get my point. There is just too much information out there for any individual to take it all in and find the best.
If you sat down each day for four hours to view movies, you would not be able to view even all movies that are being released that day. And that is just the commercial movies.
A hell of a lot is being produced. No one can possibly have an overview.
I personally do not care about debates about what constitutes art. I find it silly. Either I like something or not. For instance, I looked at the modern art that the Nazis banned. I found it ugly and disgusting and thought that the Nazi art was superior. But I could not keep my eyes off it. Eventually, it touched me in a very dark and repressed part of my soul. So it did something to me. Is it art? Who cares. It is what it is.
Of course prejudice and discernment are the yardsticks by which all critical “subjective” judgments are made by in any aspect of one’s life. To deny this, as some Socialists do, is to deny life itself.
I get your point about the excess of information and publications that make the job of appraisal almost impossible. However, just like in the Sciences, a new model or theory becomes accepted not because it’s necessarily right or wrong, but rather it’s to do with the “consensus” opinions and endorsements of your peers. That’s how it works. It’s the same with judgments about artworks today, there’s loads of literature and other art-forms that are praised to the skies because they fit a certain “ideology” and accepted “consensus” opinion even though they’re piles of worthless excreta.
What you say about Nazi art is interesting as it comes back to my own judgments about what constitutes art or not, and all the windy verbose rhetoric that goes on around these things. With Nazi works for example, and with the exception of Tempolhoff airport in Berlin, I frankly find most of it ridiculous, overpowering, and kitsch like, especially the whole notion of producing huge lifeless Aryan male nudes that lack any of the realism that the 15th century Italians used with both sexes, doesn’t resonate with me. Anyway, that’s only my opinion and it’s perhaps completely wrong, maybe I’m missing something. The point is, it meant something to you. It spoke some truth to you and that’s the yardstick of all “art”, so what you say is indeed correct.
I suppose, it’s a variation on the old cliche “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
I agree. As I see it, art is just a word. A sound. Associated with the things that you saw when it was uttered. Adking ‘what is art’ is asking ‘what memory do you associate with that uttering’.
The museum guard held the same judgment as you. Kitsch. I do not disagree, but I think that appreciation for suffering and depth can coexist with appreciation of kitsch. But yes, now that you write it, they did lack that realism. Kind of bland and unpolished.
I think fifty years from now, very few people will be literate.
Already, due to public attitudes and rising prices, books are becoming a luxury item here in Malaysia despite government book voucher handouts. The only cheap books are the books that deserve to be cheap (poor quality and factuality)
Buy almost any classic book online at amazon for barely more than a penny plus $2.99 shipping.
Or download them FREE and read them on any ereader. Project Guttenberg will provide you with more material than you could read in a lifetime, just about.
And if you can’t read, listen to them as audiobooks on librivox.com. There is NO REASON for any human on planet earth in the 21st century to be an unschooled savage when it comes to the classics.
But they will be hard to understand. That’s why it’s called learning.
I’m inclined to agree. I’m probably one of the few people my age who actually reads for pleasure. I remember only a handful of kids in my high school who actually read books. In between the supreme apathy exhibited by young people towards literature (and art in general) and the increasing degeneracy of our society the future of literature does not appear bright.
I do- but I suspect I am a minority. Wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case though.
Stephen King and Harold Pinter.
Orwell was a left libertarian. He fought in the trenches along side the anarchists against Franco and thought the ‘left’ lost the Spanish Civil War because the Stalinists were more concerned with eliminating left wing alternatives to Stalinist communism than they were with winning the war. He left Spain to avoid being eliminated by said Stalinists. Read ‘Homage to Catalonia’ for details, it’s a great read. Orwell was as left wing as it gets, he just wasn’t a Communist. There are both libertarian and authoritarian/statist schools of thought on the left, just like on the right.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/bothaxes.gif
BS all I gotta say
“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.” – Orwell
This graph compares age to political sensibilities. It’s not a longitudinal study but the implication is that as you age your political views change. The vertical axis is social liberalism (at the top) and conservatism (at the bottom). Left to right is economic conservatism (on the right) and liberalism (on the left).
.
Teenagers tend to be rather libertarian because they don’t like anyone telling them anything. Through university and into your 20s, a lot of people swerve to the left and adopt socialist views. Once you hit your 30s and have a job and a mortgage and probably a family to take care of, there is a shift to the right and people tend to stay there into their 40s and 50s until they are facing retirement and looking to the gubment to take care of then in their old age. However, in terms of social views there is a steady march towards conservatism.
Relevant :
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/05/who-killed-george-orwell/
George Orwell was right!
“All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British.”
This can be observed in many countries. Especially Germany.
There has been no patriotism since 1945. Not a single house decorated with the national flag.
Being proud makes you a nationalist. Makes you unilluminated. Makes you a NAZI.
The Germans hate Germany.
Their politicans hate Germany.
But there is hope. #Pegida
I wonder what frightens left. Whats wrong with patriotism?
“Especially Germany. ”
I don’t think it was a coincidence that the one of the purposes of NATO was to “keep the Germans down”.
“Whats wrong with patriotism?”
It gets the way of the ‘immanentizing the eschaton’.
Your last point. Can you clearify it?
Edit: I mistook which point was my last one.
“‘Immanentizing the Eschaton” is creating Heaven in Earth. Typically what this would involve is the creation of regional governments like the EU, and/or a one-world government like the Tower of Babel or NWO.
Got it. Thanks.
Read “The Road to WIgan Pier” if you haven’t and read a biography of Orwell. I think he started out as a leftist, but was smart enough to see the error of his ways.
He was always a leftist, but he did hate Stalin, dictators and authoritarian governments in general whether they were ‘left’ or ‘right.’
From what I’ve read of his works, I have the impression that that Orwell strongly desired an egalitarian society, but unlike most leftists, realized that such a society could not be created without a stripping away of liberty and natural rights.
Hey fellas ive got a new site promoting masculinity and self improvement, http://www.breakthiscage.com I am sure you will have feedback for me.
Looks interesting. In order for sites like this to grow they’re going to have to appeal to more mainstream men who haven’t really thought about these issues before. First impressions are king. More free thought should be encouraged, otherwise sites go stale and stagnate as they essentially become echo chambers for the same thoughts ad-nausea.
Great blog. You’ve written quite a bit. Keep it up. The manosphere never sleeps. It grows daily. People in droves everywhere are rejecting the mainstream approved reading, the msm fishwrap and boob tube and we’re now seeing a void in cultural expression and starving lefty expressionists are panning for the lifeboat jobs doled out by the state. Blogs like yours WILL FILL THAT VOID. People everywhere are vomiting out the toxic emasculating pink slime shit that gets shoved down your throat in schools and when you run from the school building, why even the elevator music in the next building is emasculating. Who can escape it? So by all means, keep crankin’ it out for the manosphere. Kudos to you. Kudos.
Who cares what Orwell thought?
Your comment demonstrates you aren’t smart enough to have an opinion worth sharing on this site about Orwell. If you were, you would have framed your comment as an well-reasoned critique of the article, perhaps begun by raising questions that challenge his relevance to RoK readers. Next, you might have explained or listed all the reason you had for believing Orwell is not relevant to RoK readers. Then you might have ended by suggesting a different writer whose works would be more appropriate for explication or review by RoK.
This is a site for intelligent men with wide ranging interests which happen to include all things masculine. George Orwell’s writings were damn-near prophetic and informed/warned at least two generations of American students of the dangers of a totalitarian government. Those ideas are still relevant and important today to any man who desires to understand the world
I do not give a damn if you think I am smart enough. As I see it, this is a site for men who not only converse about topics, but also find a place where they can be honest and talk to other men. Engaging in idol-worship may be something that is a part of that, but rebellion against such folly must be a part of that as well.
Orwell had some good ideas and wrote some nice fiction. But he was not infallible. While the article admittedly does focus on his writings, I despise the notion of ‘fighting over’ ‘important people’. Ideas matter, people do not. Unless they are your friends or, well, not dead. Past idols are often stylized into infallibility.
Ideas matter but people don’t? How does that work? Where do ideas come from? Are they just abstractions floating freely in the ether? 😉
I think of people more as information processing machines. Naturally, you need people to create good ideas. But:
1. Just because a person has one good idea, does not mean that all that person’s ideas are good.
2. Associating with a smart person does not make you smart.
3. Logically articulating why a smart person is on your side does not make that person on your side.
But most importantly, that guy is dead. Finished, finito. Who knows if he would still be convinced of his ideas today. Writing a book or essay is just a snapshot of a person’s mind. And especially when a person is dead, it does not allow for interaction and discussion, leading to the writing being possibly elevated to the status of holy scripture. Sometimes I read my own stuff from older times and think it is quite cute; but that ignores the fact that I had many doubts while writing it and chose only one out of thousand possibilities to phrase my ideas.
Wow! The Crazy Train has slipped the tracks and is running on dirt roads now!
Your entire comment was, “Who cares what George Orwell thought?” That was it. You didn’t attempt to “converse” with anyone about ideas. And your comment shows you didn’t care about Orwell’s ideas. So WTF was the point if your comment?
And seriously, “idol worship”? WTF are you taking about?
I don’t want to say anything more because it’s clear you are a Troll. A Troll is incapable of engaging with the ideas in an article or post but must either simply dump their crazy shit in a comment or else must wait for others to say things they can shit all over.
My comment stands. You are not smart enough to be here because you are not humble enough to admit you are ignorant and learn from your betters.
If I respond to anything else you say it will be because I enjoy trolling Trolls.
I feel a little bad about poking you earlier. Your comment here has given me a glimpse into your mind and I see it is a very… Unfriendly place for you. It shifts and changes and manipulates you constantly, causing your emotions to jump and shatter and bounce around in ways you can’t seem to control. And this causes you to think nothing is firm, nothing is certain. And the constant stream of different thoughts and ideas and stories and news on the internet just magnifies it times 10. Times 100!
I feel you, man. I really do.
I don’t believe in most psychoactive medication, but you might want to talk to a doctor. Just to help you get a handle on your out of control thinking. They can help you feel what normal is like so you have something to aim for. Then stop taking them.
Next, start making the best decisions you can about what to believe. What, if anything, to believe IN. Decide that this idea or that opinion is the best Truth you can be sure of right now and commit to believing it. Lay a foundation for your thought life.
For example, me? I believe in God. A supremely powerful and transcendent consciousness with a rational personality who also lives and values everything and everyone He has made. And yes, He is masculine.
I also believe that He has revealed Himself to us through propositional writings we call Holy Scripture. I believe He made Himself manifested to us as a Man, the man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, no matter what else I may think, discover, consider, my bedrock belief is that this world was created by a rational personality and therefore I, as a rational person, belong to this creation and He intends me to be both happy and intellectually fulfilled.
God is rational. His creation is rational and understandable by the rational beings He has created.
Think about it. Not the best way I’ve ever described it, but I’m typing on an iPod.
God’s Best.
Tom, how long have you been on Return of Kings? I wrote a lot of other comments that are smarter. Perhaps you did not see them. That is okay.
Read: My comment was ‘dumb’ on purpose.
I was following my boyish wish to be blunt and get to the point. You do not need to understand, but that is what it is.
Now, I do not feel the need to prove to you how smart I am, because – well – you actually may be smarter than I am. Still, I think it is a bit dumb to judge my intelligence by a single comment that you happened to oversee. But I do not mind you thinking I am dumb. It will be interesting to see how it will affect your treatment of my future comments.
Hey Tom, that is kind of you. I can partly identify with what you are saying.
Then again I feel kinda okay, man. You may be projecting your own past experience into me. That is cool.
I believe in god, too. Not the Christian version, mind you, but yeah, a father. It s a great thing to be loved by him.
We disagree about whether knowledge can be certain. But do we? I quite believe in science, but I for instance do not believe in absolute morals and values, which may here be a point of disagreement.
Mind elaborating what brought you to your judgment?
Again, I feel that your intent is honest here, so no hard feelings here.
I’ve just read the thread of you two guys and find it inspiring and caring. You both seem so authentic. I know lots about science but pathetically little about art or literature. I think having either of you or both as a friend would be more intellectually rewarding than I could imagine. Probably good for the heart and soul too. Thanks for writing, Tom and Tom. KEVIN
The enemy seethes at the gates, pressed to enter like a pack
of rabid curs.
Woe and dread fill the City, where is Alexander, where is
Caesar, Constantine, Charlamage.
Their lines have withered, the blood is weak.
Long has been the waning days of the glory of the West.
It is no breach that welcomes the gibbering hoard, nay it is
the serpent slithering in the dark.
Betrayal.
The corpulent women prostrate themselves before their new
masters,
offering their bodies willingly.
Those who should be men are tarted up as whores.
Drunk from consuming the forbidden nectar.
They see no conquerors, only more meat to gorge on.
There are no men left, save a few who stand, a beacon in a
swirling storm alone.
Men living in the shadow of their times, a day without hope,
with the only thing beyond hope- the promise of vengeance.
A sea of darkness comes to wash away the last gasp of
resistance,
Finally crushing those that have destroyed themselves.
The City burns now, burns with fire.
The mob destroys the very thing it wished to possess.
And no one sees her flee, in her arms the last pinprick of light
in the vast dark,
the son of a MAN.
Regarding socialism, most socialists believe in elaborate income redistribution schemes. I don’t have a big problem with them because there is some evidence to suggest that societies that have adopted these ‘schemes’ have less poverty and more social cohesion.
However, the ones to be careful of are the ones that speak of the ‘ownership class’. They aren’t speaking about the 1% either. These types are basically Marxists who still believe that eliminating private property–or severely restricting the right to own property–is the answer all serious social problems.
In my mind there is a huge difference between these two types of socialists. Even if one believes that income redistribution is a form of theft, is it nothing compared to asset redistribution which ultimately leaves you with nothing.
As for male leftists, I must admit that I find them rather pathetic myself. I didn’t like them in my 20’s either, and I was far more left leaning then than I am now in my late 30’s. They tend to be cowardly, smug and condescending. It’s difficult to admire people like that.
If I recall, he had a quote that went something like this: “There are some ideas so stupid that only a liberal could agree with them.”
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Between him and Kafka we have terms to describe the world the left would like to create.
Orwell did retain a certain affection for socialist ideas in the small scale. Though he did reject “capital-S” Socialism, which he understood as the larval stage of totalitarianism, he was nevertheless adamant that a sort of “Lake Wobegon socialism” was the best arrangement for the lives of ordinary individuals.
There’s a certain logic in this. Socialism doesn’t “scale up” very far, but families are inherently socialist; a family operated on purely capitalist lines would fall apart. Communities of a very modest size can practice local socialism successfully, so long as they retain (and exercise) the power to exclude those who won’t (rather than can’t) pull their own weight.
So while we find in Orwell many denunciations of both communism and fascism, he avoids a blanket condemnation of socialism at the lowest orders of magnitude. He never lost his affection for a variety of socialism we might say is merely a sort of intimate, well-knit community: a small-town socialism shorn of authoritarianism and political organization.
As someone who has read almost anything by Orwell that one could get his hands on, and sometimes read them multiple times, as well as having read at least two or three biographies of him, I cannot find anything in this post with which I disagree.
You got it right. Most folks today do not get it right about Orwell, but you did.
Orwell WAS a Socialist…that’s the thing. He saw what he considered to be the stifling effects of Colonialism while in Burma and wrote about it…he even went as far as to ‘walk the walk’ by going to fight with the Republicans (Socialists) vs. the Royalists in the Spanish Civil War…it was during this time he had his “Road to Damascus Moment” and realized that replacing one corrupt system with another that was equally bound to become corrupt was not an easy solution. That was why he wrote Animal Farm…not only as an analogy for the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union, but as a warning to show that violent rebellion without a moral compass only results in, as the Who once said : “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” ; with 1984, Orwell wanted to show how with the emergence of transnational superstates and the ‘victory’ of Socialism, the result wasn’t world peace but rather a stasis in which three superstates are locked in eternal war and paranoia as they rewrite each others past and obfuscate any narrative of the present by changing language. In such superstates there is only the Party, the drone like outer Party, and the beer drinking sports obsessed proles happily shuffling off to their shifts at the factory to build weapons & breed soldiers to fight in the eternal wars. Orwell was a Cassandra warning us about the bitter fruits the twentieth century was about to bear, and today’s leftists who continually press for more and more government control over our lives ‘for our own good’ are the ones he warned us about…the most dangerous dictator is the one that says “we are doing this to help you.”
Bernie Sanders is terrible. The kids who are backing him are playing with fire.
“But Orwell said he was a socialist”, some will say. Yes, because he had to. British newspapers, publishing and academia were dominated by the Left. Orwell’s two most famous novels were anti-socialist, so he declared himself a socialist as a shield.
Orwell was approached by many socialists who wanted him to join their groups, and in each case he refused and then denounced them publicly.
“But Orwell fought in Spain. He fought together with a Trotskyist group!” That’s the one claim on which Orwell-as-leftist hinges. But the Spanish civil war was unusually religious. The communists who tried to take over hated the Catholic Church most of all, and their foremost targets were the clergy. It was in their slogans, in their speeches, in all their arguments. Like all decent members of the British Empire’s middle class, Orwell would of course pride himself on being fervently anti-Catholic.
Note that he never expressed any Trotskyist opinions. That was simply the group he joined (and criticized in his writings for its lazy attitude – “mañana, mañana”). Which was attacked by the more numerous other communists in Spain, the ones who really ran the attempted takeover.
Plus, like most Westerners he was brainwashed by the media into hating the fascists in Spain. He was not fascist. But that doesn’t make him socialist. You only need to read 1984 to see him describe Ingsoc (English Socialism) as a complete failure, which creates endless poverty for all except for the few in the Inner Party, and which oppresses all and lies to all. Not exactly a message the Left would like to hear.
As others have pointed out, George Orwell was not just a socialist, but much farther to the left than Bernie Sanders or anyone associated with the left in the US. Understand this: Orwell, who went to fight in Catalonia for the anarcho-syndicalist brigades, was criticizing Soviet Russia from the left! He criticized the Communists because he saw them as fake-leftist who were only in it to seize power for themselves, and not for the people. Contrary to what the author of this article implies, Orwell never criticized “the left” as a monolith entity. And how could he, given the fact that he risked his own life to fight for a government (the Calonia Generalitat) that was the most left-wing ever form of political organization in modern history?
Orwell was explicitly, and unwaveringly, a Marxist. Certainly he took issue with, notably, the Stalinist claim to Marxism in what was essentially a state-capitalist system – a claim the writer of this article seem very eager to swallow.
Orwell was a socialist, and he critiqued the far left and right (e.g. communism, fascism). To refute this is pointless.