1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[jbor]

on 2/5/03 1:00 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> the exorbitant
>> generalisations and bizarre (and actually quite
>> offensive when you come to think about it)
> 
> When YOU come to think of it, maybe ...
> 
>> historical comparisons

I think that comparing Clement Attlee to Hitler, or Bush to Saddam, -
democratic governments to dictatorships - is patently ridiculous, and it's
offensive to the memories and families of the millions of their own
countrymen which the latter two totalitarian despots murdered.

> "The dissident Left" vs. "the
> official Left" (ix).  Cooptation of dissidence,
> resistance, subversion, et al.

But what happens when this "dissident Left" actually wins or seizes
political power? Doesn't it then just become another "official Left"? What
are the examples of the "dissident Left" in action? Stalin? Maoist China?
Pol Pot? Saddam? North Korea? Robert Mugabe?

As long as this "dissident Left" keeps defending the "rights" of terrorists
and tyrants then it's not going to have any impact in democratic countries.
And the fact that it does keep defending terrorists and tyrants leads me to
believe that that's probably a good thing. And, dissidence just for the sake
of dissidence is, well, puerile.

Pynchon's identification of "Ingsoc" with the British Labour Party is silly.
Certainly Orwell disagreed with the politics of Attlee & co., but he was
more horrified and appalled by the actions of the Communists during the
Spanish Civil War. Ingsoc is modelled on Stalinism, and it's a warning of
what could happen in Britain if a Socialist Revolution ever did eventuate.
There's no hint anywhere in the novel that it is meant to describe life
under a democratically-elected British Labour (or Conservative, or Liberal,
or coalition) government. It depicts Britain after a *Revolution*, after the
ousting of capitalism and democracy.

The mainstream political parties in most Western democracies can hardly even
be described as "left" or "right" - they're all within about half a
micrometer of one another in some nondescript "centre".

best