1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[jbor]

on 5/5/03 5:28 PM, Otto wrote:

> So why are you critisizing the people who dare to dissent from the official
> politicial line in times of war?

I'm not. I'm criticising those who compare liberal democracies to
totalitarian dictatorships, elected political leaders like Churchill, Attlee
or Bush to murderous tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Saddam, without ever
acknowledging that, on the whole and in every detail and respect, it's the
*differences* which are so overwhelming.

> I don't know where you get this impression from that I'm unwilling to see
> differences which of course exist, only because I point to similarities
> which are there too. Our disagreement seems to be about which part of this
> binary opposition of "differences vs similarities" should be emphasized or
> is more important.

It isn't a binary opposition at all. My point is that the differences far
outweigh any general similarities. The "similarities" listed are so vague
and general they apply to any system of governance. It's like saying Pynchon
and Ayn Rand are similar because they're both writers who write critically
about modern society and culture: the statement's not wrong, it just evades
the fact that there are enormous and much more significant differences
between the two things being "compared".

All government systems impose restraints on civil liberties. They're called
"laws".

> I don't believe that "political equality and intellectual freedom" is
> everyday reality for everybody in the US, Britain or Germany.

Well, compared to Orwell's depiction of life under Big Brother, or Hitler's,
Stalin's or Saddam's regimes, I think it's fair to say they are.

> I repeat: Every government is under perpetual suspicion. Just because every
> bureaucracy has this tendency to increase its control and because the
> economical sphere will never stop trying to achieve influence on the major
> decisions.

Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Mugabe ... were and are well beyond suspicion.
What's the next step after "suspicion"?

> There are more differences between "Big Brother" and Saddam than
> similarities. 

You're arguing that Bush is similar to Big Brother but Saddam wasn't?!

_1984_ depicts a society which is modelled on Stalinism. It's not modelled
on the post-war British society under the Labour government, although Orwell
certainly didn't like Attlee and co., and saw them as being more interested
in power for the sake of power than in the working classes who they
purported to be the advocates of, and in that sense similar to the Soviet
leaders. But Orwell's book is a warning about what *could* happen in Britain
*if* a Soviet-style Revolution should ever take place. It was a big if, and,
thankfully, it has never eventuated.

There are two different "political narratives" which Orwell constructs in
his depiction of Oceania - his "doublethink" in creating the novel. One is a
representation of what had already happened in Russia, and of the
inhumanities of totalitarianism under despots like Hitler and Stalin. The
other is a warning, or prophecy, of what might happen in Britain (and, by
implication, the U.S. and other Western states), if a similar situation
arose. The novel doesn't offer any solutions to those poor "dissidents"
trapped and doomed in the USSR, or any program to prevent the same thing
from happening in Britain, only a forlorn empathy on the one hand and the
earnest hope that it won't ever happen "here" on the other. I guess the text
itself was Orwell's political gesture, and the one thing we can probably all
agree on is that it should continue to be read, and particularly as a
prescribed text for high school and college kids. Of course, this raises the
frightening irony that the novel _1984_ has itself become something like
those propaganda texts which help to sustain Big Brother's reign.

best