BtZ42 48-54: Foxes once more

Thu May 12 05:48:45 CDT 2016

Yeah. That's the essence of why, probably. But I do not think of
Orwell worrying about reflecting well on parties or national parties,
even during the war. ( I do not think he shared your equivalency
judgment of Churchill and Mussolini however; famously full-throated
for Churchill's war policies. I do not know what he might have thought
of Churchill's whole career)

Sent from my iPad

> On May 11, 2016, at 9:08 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> Maybe just hard to see the forest for the trees? The end of the article hints at why the definition is not clearer, that such clarity would not reflect well on the parties or national policies. Chuchill’s racist statements and policies,militarism, nationalism, imperialism - for example- were  as blatant as Mussolini’s.
>
> “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” - Benito Mussolini.
>
> Hannah Arendt gave a very universal meaning for the social. economic, and political components of a fascist state. It is important to recall that the ideas of fascism put forth by Mussolini and the ideas of national socialism of Hitler were popular in the English and US upperclass and among extreme nationalists/racists/imperialists. Mussolini had a column in the Hearst Papers before WW2.
>
> I think Orwell is talking about the degradation of any political term that becomes  an all purpose term by being overused, and loses its original meaning. It is hard to tell for example, what the hell conservatives want to conserve.
>
> The thing about fascism as an ideoloogy and practice is that it is unusually well defined in both regards. No word is the thing itself, but fascism can be be reasonably well understood and used as more than just  a term attached to an historic one-off, because the pattern is fairly common and the core appeal still at work on a large scale.
>
>> On May 11, 2016, at 6:09 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning.
>>
>> George Orwell.     What is Fascism?    TRIBUNE    1944
>>
>>
>> It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely
>> meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly
>> than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social
>> Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922
>> Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek,
>> homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology,
>> women, dogs and I do not know what else.
>>
>> Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning.
>> To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some
>> of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the
>> régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if
>> ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I
>> have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others.
>> Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in
>> every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By
>> ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous,
>> arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except
>> for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any
>> English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That
>> is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
>>
>> But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot
>> we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we
>> shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long,
>> but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism
>> satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists
>> themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are
>> willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with
>> a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done,
>> degrade it to the level of a swearword.
>>
>>> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 6:45 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Dogs are used and are valuable in the war. Foxes? Lions? Princes?
>>> Leaders may have their foxes and lions.
>>>
>>> Humans are valuable. For killing, dying, working.
>>>
>>> And they are in short supply, in high demand.
>>>
>>> Children?
>>> When you look a bit closer, the first question that strikes you is:
>>> Why is it worse to kill civilians than soldiers? Obviously one must
>>> not kill children if it is in any way avoidable, but it is only in
>>> propaganda pamphlets that every bomb drops on a school or an
>>> orphanage.
>>>
>>> http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19440519.html
>>>
>>> http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/07_14_44.html
>>>
>>>> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 5:52 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Pointsman gathers dogs (for his experiments). Pointsman calls his patients
>>>> Foxes. "anything but humans" gets said.....
>>>> how about an octopus "they don't bark"....
>>>>
>>>> He can't experiment on a human...."is this ethical" asks
>>>> Spectro.....[measurer for measurer].....raising his hand ...in almost a
>>>> Fascist salute.
>>>>
>>>> Foxes are smart, elusive, skilled at escape, a prey in fox-hunting; but
>>>> Slothrop may be like a fox, hunting his own prey [Jamf].
>>>>
>>>> How often have we read/heard that scientific 'experiments on animals do not
>>>> necessarily say anything about human beings reactions.".
>>>>
>>>> Yes, unless we humans are reduced to animals...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> SPOILERS (if that matters to you)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ***
>>>>>
>>>>> I like Laura's brown fox and lazy dog, but GR is going to recycle both in
>>>>> more complex configurations than just Slothrop vs lab dogs... not least
>>>>> because, as noted before, both dogs and foxes can appear as prey or
>>>>> predators depending on context (remember Mike Jing's recent query about the
>>>>> imagined "personal Rockets" that will track each of us like hounds).
>>>>>
>>>>> A few of the later fox references that seem especially salient (Viking
>>>>> edition pagination):
>>>>>
>>>>> 53.30
>>>>> the snow tracked over by foxes, rabbits, long‑lost dogs, and winter birds
>>>>> but no humans.
>>>>>
>>>>> 58.28
>>>>> A skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight’s traffic whispering in
>>>>> the yards and lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> 131.19
>>>>> The true king only dies a mock death. Remember. Any number of young men
>>>>> may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard,
>>>>> goes on.
>>>>>
>>>>> 138.19 They gather, thicker as the days pass, English ghosts, so many
>>>>> jostling in the nights, memories unloosening into the winter, seeds that
>>>>> will never take hold, so lost, now only an every-so-often word, a clue for
>>>>> the living—”Foxes,” calls SpectroE across astral spaces, the word intended
>>>>> for Mr. Pointsman who is not present, who won’t be told because the few Psi
>>>>> Section who’re there to hear it get cryptic debris of this sort every
>>>>> sitting—if recorded at all it finds its way into Milton Gloaming’s
>>>>> word-counting project—“Foxes,” a buzzing echo on the afternoon, Carroll
>>>>> Eventyr, “The White Visitation”’s resident medium, curls thickly tightened
>>>>> across his head, speaking the word “Foxes,” out of very red, thin lips
>>>>>
>>>>> 242.24
>>>>> [General Wivern:] “Slothrop, there are no ‘SG’ documents.”
>>>>> First impulse is to rattle the parts list in the man’s face, but today he
>>>>> is the shrewd Yankee foxing the redcoats.
>>>>>
>>>>> 450.16 [re the facilities of the toiletship Rucksichtslos]
>>>>> “Crew morale,” whispered the foxes at the Ministry meetings, “sailors’
>>>>> superstitions. Mirrors at high midnight. We know, don’t we?”
>>>>>
>>>>>           The officers’ latrines, by contrast, are done in red velvet.
>>>>> The decor is 1930s Safety Manual. That is, all over the walls,
>>>>> photograffiti, are pictures of Horrible Disasters in German Naval History.
>>>>> Collisions, magazine explosions, U-boat sinkings, just the thing if you’re
>>>>> an officer trying to take a shit. The Foxes have been busy. Commanding
>>>>> officers get whole suites, private shower or sunken bathtub...
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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