Pynchon and fascism

[jbor]

And, to continue the analysis, "the difference between real and phony
antifascism" becomes, in the context of "Orwell's critique of England's
official Left", the difference between the British Labour Party in the '40s,
which was content to align itself with Churchill's Conservative Party, and
in so doing was "concerned only with establishing and perpetuating" its own
power ("phony antifascism"), and "'democratic socialism'", that which "in
Keir Hardie's time had been an honourable struggle against" capitalism
("real antifascism"), the one merely "professing to fight for the working
classes against capitalism", the other actually sincere in doing this. It's
the fact that British Labour formed a coalition with the party on the right
(the Conservatives) rather than the party in the middle (the Liberals) to
achieve power which is the significant detail here, both for Orwell and in
Pynchon's analysis. (I'd forgotten that Churchill had swung across again to
the Conservatives, which was something Paul N. picked me up on right at the
outset of this discussion, and which had sent me along a wrong track in
trying to make sense of the "fascistic disposition" paragraph.)

So, Pynchon details how Orwell saw that the British Labour Party was
"concerned only with maintaining itself in power", and how, when they
actually won the 1945 election "by a landslide", he was worried that this
Labour government, which had "finally got its chance to reshape British
society along 'Socialist' lines", might turn, eventually, into "Ingsoc,
Oceania, and Big Brother." (p. x)

best

> on 31/5/03 11:59 PM, Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
>> One asks what it means to juxtapose
>> the signifier "Churchill" to the signifier "fascist".
> 
> To be more precise, the signifier is "Churchill's war cabinet", and the
> juxtaposition between it and the other signifier, "a fascist regime", is
> couched as a very weak modality ("could be argued", "had behaved no
> differently than"). Tracking the connection of these signifiers into the
> next paragraph we see that the original signifier, "Churchill's war
> cabinet", was operating metonymically within the ongoing discussion of the
> British Labour Party in this section of the Foreword. The elaboration in the
> second paragraph reveals that it is the Labour Party's "acquiescence to, and
> participation in, a repressive Tory-led government", and Orwell's attitude
> to this, which was the primary context. Thus, "Churchill's war cabinet"
> stands in a synonymic relationship to the "British Labour Party", as does "a
> fascist regime" with "a repressive, Tory-led government." Modality is absent
> from the reiteration, because it is a far less exaggerated, controversial,
> inflammatory assertion than the one which has come before.
> 
> Your "analysis" leads one to conclude - or to ask the question at least -
> that Orwell thought of or wrote of Churchill as a fascist. He didn't, and
> it's not what Pynchon is addressing here. Orwell's criticisms were directed
> towards the British Labour Party, which is the topic Pynchon has focused on
> throughout the section of text. (Note that "Orwell's critique of England's
> official Left" is placed in theme position in the second paragraph on p. x.
> That _The Guardian_ chose to erase this paragraph entirely in its
> bowdlerised edit of the Foreword, and thus to obscure the lexical cohesion
> of this section of Pynchon's text, is itself significant.)