1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"
Otto
ottosell at yahoo.de
Tue May 6 08:34:41 CDT 2003
----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: 1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"
> 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.
>
Sorry, but the way the last war went into action, the way the UN was
declared & made irrelevant by the US-gov. by forcing the UN-inspectors to
leave Iraq, the rough treatment of the Taliban-prisoners, the civil rights
question in the US, the way the UN, France, Russia and Germany are treated
after the "victory," and last not least the grasp for Iraqi oil, all this
makes me suspicious. In the case of Saddam it's been obvious that he has
been a murderous tyrant but this wasn't the reason we went to war against
him, the reason has been a suspicion (WMD) that couldn't be verified yet.
> > 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".
>
But it's a binary opposition, you use it yourself in your second sentence in
making your point. Of course the "similarities" can be generally applied to
every government if some government is beginning to develop or to show
"tendencies" to increase the control over the people. Have you ever listened
to the police frequencies as cabdrivers occasionally do? Pynchon has as "The
Secret Integration" proves (p. 148-49). Sometimes it's really scary when you
see the police heli (15.000 Euro an hour) outside your window and you get
the info that they're hunting a thief for stealing a cell-phone or how they
are treating a demonstration.
I've never compared Rand to our man but "camp" is "camp," different cases of
imprisoning people without legal control can be structurally compared. It's
not suitable to liberal democracies.
> All government systems impose restraints on civil liberties. They're
called
> "laws".
>
Absolutely right, but to what extent they do this makes the difference
between democracy and tyranny. I think my concern is that the greatest
liberal democracy in the world, the sole remaining superpower with weapons
of mass destruction that can reach every place on the planet might be on the
way to 1984.
> > 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.
>
If you're a long-term unemployed you're stripped of many possibilities, you
are treated second-rate by the administration. I'm with Pynchon here who
says that doublethink is already working: "(...) recall that in the
present-day United States, few have any problem with a war-making apparatus
named "the department of defence," any more than we have saying "department
of justice" with a straight face, despite well-documented abuses of human
and constitutional rights by its most formidable arm, the FBI. Our nominally
free news media are required to present "balanced" coverage, in which every
"truth" is immediately neutered by an equal and opposite one. Every day
public opinion is the target of rewritten history, official amnesia and
outright lying, all of which is benevolently termed "spin," as if it were no
more harmful than a ride on a merry-go-round. We know better than what they
tell us, yet hope otherwise. We believe and doubt at the same time - it
seems a condition of political thought in a modern superstate to be
permanently of at least two minds on most issues. Needless to say, this is
of inestimable use to those in power who wish to remain there, preferably
forever."
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,948203,00.html
> > 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"?
>
That's the question. Do liberal democracies have the right (or maybe even
the obligation) to wage war against everybody who is slaughtering his own
people and/or some neighbours? Like they decided to do in the cases of
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq? Mugabe is a small example because be do
not dare to speak about the Mullah-regime in Iran, post-stalinist North
Korea, Lybia and Syria which is threatening Israel's security and is a safe
haven for terrorists. If we follow Mr. Bush's argumentation all these should
be on schedule to be removed by force. As long as they are there Milosevic &
Saddam can always claim: "Why me?"
> > 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?!
>
No, not at all. But for him it would be much simpler to become a Big Brother
in "subordinating civil liberties to self-defined wartime necessity." The
"homeland security"- measures are worrying a lot of Americans. The technical
possibilies are enormous. Just a few steps more and they are able to know
almost everything we do 'cause everything is registered digitally. Saddam's
oppression apparatus has been relatively primitive relying on the
"Blockwart"-system we know from nazi-Germany and the stalinist-era in the
USSR. In this you are absolutely right, in this (and in his anti-Semitism
too of course) Saddam was very much like Hitler.
> _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.
>
I did get the impression from Pynchon's text that Orwell had feared that
accepting doublethink (good camp vs bad camp) could be a first step towards
totalitarianism.
> 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
Indeed, I really agree to what you say in the paragraph.
Otto
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