1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 2003-05-02 at 03:20, Paul Nightingale wrote:

> Finally, and unfortunately, Paul M. has identified nothing. He failed to
> write two sentences without contradicting himself, and then refused to
> take the time to clarify what he meant.



But it is ALREADY so simple. I said what I did. How I had come up with
my rewrite. The four sentences I wrote are as follows:


My approach to the paragraph was to try to understand and possibly
allow
others to understand what Pynchon actually wrote. No "reading between
the lines" was permitted.

 
The one real "violence" I did Pynchon's language was taking out the
"fascistic disposition" reference. I did this on the grounds that it
was
distracting to use such a harsh even if meaningless term on people
whose
only sin was recognizing that under wartime conditions certain
restrictions on civil liberties are necessary.



Subsequently, to reduce as much as humanly possible the "violence" to
Pynchon's language, I included back into the paragraph the word
"fascistic" in such a way that a plausible meaning for it could more
easily be seen than was the case for P's original, which had been such a
puzzle. (yes, it was a puzzle, indeed it was)



Even though it may be called fascistic to say so (by the more boisterous
among us), is it not entirely true that the extreme government actions
and restrictions on
freedom imposed by Big Brother--entirely unnecessary to the public good
and therefore completely wrong under normal circumstances--may
nevertheless become necessary in wartime. The moment enemy bombs begin
to fall on one's homeland, altering the landscape and producing
casualties among friends and neighbors, criticism of very harsh
government controls become irrelevant, if not indeed subversive. With
the homeland in danger, strong leadership and effective measures become
of the essence, and if you want to call that fascism, very well, call it
whatever you please, no one is likely to be listening, unless it's for
the air raids to be over and the all clear to sound.  But the
unseemliness of opposing harsh restrictions on freedom or talking about
the long term dangers of granting emergency powers in the heat of some
emergency does not necessarily make the fears of tyranny wrong.  One
could certainly argue that Churchill's war cabinet had behaved no
differently
than a fascist regime, censoring news, controlling wages and prices,
restricting travel, subordinating civil liberties to self-defined
wartime necessity.