1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[pynchonoid]

Not too shabby for somebody with no political axe to
grind....

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 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


=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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