1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: 1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"


> on 1/5/03 5:53 PM, Scott Badger wrote:
>
> > Which is my take as well, though, admittedly, after several readings. Of
> > course, I wouldn't admit, even here...especially here..., how many times
> > I've dived into GR, and how much of that text I'm still trying to get my
> > head around.
> >
> > The last two sentences are tricky though. From what comes before, the
> > "unseemly" arguments would appear to be those against "fascistic"
actions,
> > even during war-time. And the Churchill bit could be read, not as
support
> > for the suspension of some civil-liberties during war-time, but, still,
as a
> > challenge to those that hold civil liberties above all else i.e. would
the
> > greater risk of military defeat of Britain, and "nazi-rule all over
> > Europe"(Otto), *really* have been worth the preservation of those
freedoms
> > restricted by the Churchill cabinet. But, the way the last sentence
begins,
> > "One could certainly argue[...]", does keep tripping me up. It suggests,
> > instead, that a supportive statement will follow. For example, a
> > contemporary fascistic state that can be traced back to such war-time
> > "expediencies".
>
> I agree and originally noted that there's a lot of hedging, particularly
in
> that last sentence, but throughout the rest of the paragraph as well. Eg.
> Pynchon says the "unseemliness" of an argument against government policy
> during wartime "does not necessarily make it [the argument] wrong" -
leaving
> completely open the corresponding option that it doesn't necessarily make
it
> right either. It's as if he doesn't quite want to own up to what he's
> actually saying, as if he doesn't have the courage of his convictions or
> something. It's not ambiguous, it's just purposely inconclusive. Further,
> stating that "one could certainly argue that Churchill's war cabinet had
> behaved no differently than a fascist regime" is one thing - I don't
really
> think it can be argued at all but my disagreement is with Pynchon¹s
> seemingly indiscriminate use of the "fascist" label, as I've said - but
when
> later on he plops the post-war British Labour government in with the Third
> Reich and Stalin that's when the historical and political analysis goes
> completely haywire:
>
> >> Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis
> >> defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that
> >> far from having had its day it had perhaps not yet
> >> even come into its own - the corruption of spirit, the
> >> irresistible human addiction to power, were already
> >> long in place, all well-known aspects of the third
> >> Reich and Stalin's USSR, even the British Labour
> >> party - like first drafts of a terrible future. (xv-xvi)
>
> The comparison - and it's Pynchon's, not Orwell's - is absurd. And the
word
> he's looking for here, the word Orwell uses in the novel, is
"totalitarian",
> not "fascist". And even so, Attlee's post-war government was neither
> totalitarian nor fascist, and not in the slightest is he, or any British
or
> American leader since the war, in the same category as Hitler or Stalin.
>

Is it really absurd? "the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human
addiction to power" are both important topics of the novel and Pynchon seems
to say that Orwell must have observed something similar in British post-war
politics as in the war cabinet.

> But, as often in his fiction also, the bulk of Pynchon's political swipes
in
> the Foreword seem directed at the political Left which, as always, is
> proving a little tough for some here to acknowledge and accept.
>

In critisizing the Left of having fallen to Doublethink too (accepting the
Gulag as 'socialist' while rejecting the Kz as fascist) this is of course
directed at the political Left but it's not at all embracing the political
Right. Neither in Orwell nor in Pynchon. But a Pynchon uncritical of the
Left too when it comes to politics wouldn't be a Pynchon.

What strikes me is how "1984" blurs those political categories into a single
one: totalitarian. There's no capitalism, socialism or fascism in the novel.
Goldstein's book describes all systems as essentially the same. This can be
compared to "GR" where the "They"-system is operating on both sides too and
in all parties involved.

Otto