Orwell's Nightmare

[Otto]

Orwell's Nightmare
by Stan Persky

"(...) my own view is that Orwell still matters because his nightmare about
the erasure of the past continues to be relevant. It is true that the terms
of the present political engagement may have changed. A popular expression
of those changing terms is found in the title of Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs.
McWorld.(25) While Soviet totalitarianism is gone, we now find ourselves
describing a world of insatiable consumers in the capitalist mall and a
realm of bloodthirsty tribalists and religious fundamentalists possessed of
a feudal metaphysics, both of which, Barber argues, are threats to democracy
no less than the version of totalitarianism that Orwell depicted. Even in
Orwell's time, there were alternative versions of the nightmare."
http://www.dooneyscafe.com/stories.php?story=03/04/27/1807557
(25) Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are
Reshaping the World (Times Books, 1995).