thomassmith6514 hours ago
The Germans announce over the wireless that as the inhabitants of a Czech village called Lidice [...] were guilty of harbouring the assassins of Heydrich, they have shot all the males in the village, sent all the women to concentration camps, sent all the children to be “re-educated”, razed the whole village to the ground and changed its name.
[...]
It does not particularly surprise me that people do this kind of thing, nor even that they announce that they are doing them. What does impress me, however, is that other people’s reaction to such happenings is governed solely by the political fashion of the moment. [...] In a little while you will be jeered at if you suggest that the story of Lidice could possibly be true. And yet there the facts are, announced by the Germans themselves and recorded on gramophone discs
gleenn14 hours ago
Screwing the other side is far easier to sell than having things be good for the average person. Some pretty gross displays of greed and hypocrisy.
vodou16 hours ago
I remember this blog! It was posting diary entries 70 years after they were written. This was a good time in the history of Internet and the diary/blog ended at the dawn of the golden era of the "blogosphere".
George/Eric paid a lot of attention to how many eggs his hens laid. It almost became somewhat of a joke in the comments. But good content!
https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/11238/
Lots of great quotes (quite a few hen related):
> This morning a disaster. One hen dead, another evidently dying.
I am pretty sure he wrote more about hens and other birds than the ongoing world war.
specproc13 hours ago
I picked a book of his diaries up recently, it's been great to pick at. The copy I have has _a lot_ about his garden and the countryside around him, which has been fun to read whilst working on mine.
Lots of very terse household entries like, "July 11: 12 eggs".
perihelions15 hours ago
I guess this is the key biographic context,
> "In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.[111] He supervised cultural broadcasts [sic] to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.[112] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...
There's quite a visible gap between his nominal role as a propagandist for Britain in India, and his private views expressed here. I mean: "quite truly the way the British Government is now behaving upsets me more than a military defeat"—wow!
(Meta: the part where Wikipedia's obviously very not-neutral editors inserted that exemplar of newspeak, "cultural broadcasts" for "propaganda", into the biography of Orwell himself is just... doubleplus).
lukan15 hours ago
In 1984, the office rooms for the ministry of lies were directly inspired from his work for the BBC ..
bloakan hour ago
Eileen's work at the "Ministry of Information" could also be an influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(Unite...
robocat13 hours ago
> ministry of lies
Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth.
By doublethink, internally you know there are two meanings although you can never actually do the crimethink of believing or saying any ungood connotations. Edit - added quote:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, [and remember it if necessary]. To deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.
lukan12 hours ago
My bad. You are of course correct.
Also I never said anything about a ministry of lies. I only spoke of a ministry of truth of course.
(That is, if the 2 h edit window would not have been already over now)
bee_rider15 hours ago
I wonder how he’d feel about current trends. There’s a certain honesty to just blaring out propaganda that’s kinda missing in this era of influence operations.
mulmen13 hours ago
The winning strategy in the previous US presidential election was to scream obvious lies blaming the immigrants, minorities, or opposition for any perceived slight.
I think Orwell would find this all very familiar.
skinnymuch10 hours ago
Isn’t Orwell a fed informant screwing over the left he claimed to be a part of? Can’t imagine he’d have good takes.
mulmen8 hours ago
I didn’t say that he’d have a “take”. I said he’d find the climate familiar.
clarionbell3 hours ago
His main gripe was that government wasn't doing enough, that it was too passive. He had problems with lot of their other policies, but as most people, he understood that defeating Nazis is worth compromises.
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jongjong12 hours ago
It's strange why Orwell gets so much more attention than Aldous Huxley. I feel like modern reality is a lot closer to 'Brave New World' than '1984'.
Brave New World describes a world saturated with endless streams of information and entertainment and yet almost everyone basically acts the same way; everyone chooses to engage in the same kinds of 'pleasure seeking' activities; they all think the same and they all want to watch and experience the same things, despite the fact that many alternatives exist.
Ironically, it might be partly because BNW is becoming real that those in charge are drawing attention towards 1984; this form of subtle attention manipulation is very BNW-like.
Another thing though is that as the world becomes more like BNW, the book itself becomes less interesting to read for younger people. For example, I remember being surprised when characters in the book asked each other if they had watched a 'Feelie' (a Movie with sensory experience) about 'Swimming with whales'.
I remember thinking that the way the characters kept asking each other about their opinions on the same boring things and expecting them to answer in the same predictable way as some kind of status symbol was weird... But nowadays it's basically the reality; people praise each other for compliance. Basically for being boring and having predictable boring thoughts.
I suspect young people reading BNW wouldn't pick up on that... It would go right over their heads that things were once different and expressing compliance with the mainstream ideology didn't earn you any social status (at least not in the west). It was kind of the opposite.
leoh11 hours ago
There’s a lot more in 1984 than the high-level ideas which are held in contrast to Huxley (risks of oppression versus risks of opulence). Both are certainly at play.
A few of the things from 1984 that I’ve noticed or have been told about and often reflect upon:
* 1984 is a book that is concerned with the physical body and the deprivations experienced in Oceania — ie Winston’s gastric distress is articulated on the first page; many of us experience meaningful bodily distress on account of our food systems, stress, disconnection, and other issues
* 1984 is largely about alienation — many of us prioritize our work and other fears over connection in the same ways that Winston and Julia do (engaging in sex is taboo in Oceania); although engaging in sex is not forbidden in our culture, taking the time to really connect with others when so many of us feel so much constant pressure to work can feel “wrong”
* stirring up hatred among the populace in 1984 is a common theme; in our culture, on both the right and the left, an insistence on hating others, other political parties, other countries, and injustice (ie as opposed to cultivating love and compassion for those suffering) form the basis of profound issues we face today
willvarfar9 minutes ago
Orwell suffered and died from tuberculosis. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-orwell-wrot... talks about the parallels with Winston's experiences in the book.
hulitu4 hours ago
Also the doublespeak, the "War is peace": we need soldiers, we need more guns; the surveillance, everyday terrorism, etc.
solumunusan hour ago
> everyone chooses to engage in the same kinds of 'pleasure seeking' activities; they all think the same and they all want to watch and experience the same things, despite the fact that many alternatives exist.
This seems contrary to reality. Shared culture is becoming more disparate and people are living in alternative realities according to their own individual algorithms.
willvarfar7 minutes ago
I think the polarisation we see in society may be because everyone seems to end up getting to the same handful of places rather than to individual bubbles.
bpshaver10 hours ago
I'm a little tired of this comparison and this point. Its fine if you like Brave New World more than 1984. But does this need to be mentioned every time Orwell is mentioned? Orwell wrote a lot more than 1984 and Animal Farm.
I mean, this article doesn't mention 1984 at all.
Xmd5a10 hours ago
Orwell tried to anticipate the reception of his own book by projecting it into fiction as Immanuel Goldstein’s Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, but it ultimately became fully integrated into our society, which leans more toward Brave New World. Ironically, Goldstein’s book is ideologically closer to Brave New World than to 1984.
Another interesting example of a meta-reflexive dystopia is the British series Utopia. Its plot revolves around a fictional comic book of the same name, which is believed to predict a conspiracy to cause population reduction through forced vaccination following an engineered pandemic. There is something fascinating about these narratives; intentionally or not, they seem to call fiction into reality. It’s as if Orwell genuinely tried to create a transcendent critique to out-compete the very system whose rise he was witnessing. Ultimately, he may have failed, not because the system is inherently stronger, but because our thoughts are never entirely our own to begin with.
Edit: what I'm talking about is no stranger to what is called "predictive programming", and whichever meaning you attach to this phrase, I believe the poster I'm replying to is sensing its effects.
The question then becomes: to what extent are we merely engaging in hindsight bias or reacting to engineered shifts in attention? Furthermore, is it possible to analyze these mass manipulation techniques, even just for one's own clarity, without the guarantee that your own line of thinking won't become a mental trap?
After all, if I were one of "them" – subtly pulling the strings in an open society where consent is manufactured rather than coerced, where events are influenced rather than dictated – the social stigma against "conspiracy theorists" would be a far more efficient and durable tool than any of the impossibly risky plots those theorists imagine. In fact, it would be the only tool I would dare to use.
So perhaps the safest way to run a conspiracy is to first astroturf a community of conspiracy theorists.
Yet even this thinking keeps us trapped, circling the idea of 'them.' The crucial idea I must utter is this: it's not about their existence or non-existence. It is that at the genesis of these roles, there is an infinitely nested psychological bedrock. Isn't thi common ground from which the mind of the conspirator, who seeks to impose a hidden order, and the mind of the theorist, who seeks to reveal one, both arise ?
ivape14 hours ago
I was actually looking into reading some of his other candid works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lond...
Semi-autobiographical about when he was nearly homeless and living in poverty in Europe. He also went after how hospitals mistreat patients and poor people in Paris.
kleiba15 hours ago
The combination of reverse chronological order and infinite scroll is a little silly, no?
(Note that there's also an index on the right-hand side.)
martin-t14 hours ago
This seems to be a Wordpress thing and I hate it.
We have supercomputers in our packets and websites can't even do a thing as basic as showing a list of posts, all the posts, on one page.
empiricus12 hours ago
lists have become a lost technology. youtube, spotify are not able to implement a list correctly.
debo_11 hours ago
Indeed, I feel exhausted by this. Listless, even.
submeta15 hours ago
Reminder to myself: My journal entries on my computer in Obsidian won‘t survive even a year after I die. My child probably won’t look into the thousands of files to find my journal entries. Whereas my paper diaries from 30years ago will be perfectly fine in a few decades from now.
e4015 hours ago
This is why I use markdown. I figure that will be easily viewable for as long as the files are around.
jjice15 hours ago
Obsidian is all markdown. I assume OP was referring to no one keeping that data preserved post death.
asciimov14 hours ago
And why I still use paper. Hard drives die, and I don't expect any one to be going through them when I'm gone.
Paper on the other hand they at least will pick it up to throw away, likely flipping through it just to look for anything of monetary value.
drfuchs15 hours ago
But will your grandchild be able to read handwriting?
Retric15 hours ago
I’ve already used a computer to interpret old handwriting.
Aperocky15 hours ago
print and staple it.
diego89815 hours ago
startup idea? upload an obsidian vault, receive a printed, bound notebook(s)
rhcom215 hours ago
You can pretty much do this already by sending it to a Staples
farts_mckensy16 hours ago
[flagged]
dang15 hours ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? It's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that keep doing it.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
farts_mckensy14 hours ago
[flagged]
latentcall16 hours ago
[flagged]
dang14 hours ago
We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
lostlogin16 hours ago
He literally fought fascists. And during that time became anti-communist. He was a socialist in the end and against both extremes. I think he was involved with The Labour Party after the war - can you explain your view?
cogman1016 hours ago
Unless we are literally doing Orwellian doublespeak, he was pretty much the polar opposite of a fascist/authoritarian. He was against strong central governments and was quite critical of his own government (In one of the diary entries even lamenting that the germans failed to jam one of the British propaganda broadcasts).
> Nehru, Gandhi, Azad and many others in jail. Rioting over most of India, a number of deaths, countless arrests. Ghastly speech by Amery, speaking of Nehru and Co. as “wicked men”, “saboteurs” etc. This of course broadcast on the Empire service and rebroadcast by AIR. The best joke of all was that the Germans did their best to jam it, unfortunately without success.
kurthr15 hours ago
I suspect we'll never know, but it's somewhat typical of blithe idealists who would rather hear supportive platitudes than confront hard decisions or tradeoffs. Painting complex individuals who are a product of their time (pretty much everyone) with a broad reductive brush makes life decisions easy and forces others to deal with reality. It was a fairly effective trope from the 60s to the 2010s (the end of history), and even Chomsky failed to really spot the turning point for the Manufacture of Discontent until 2020, a solid 4 years too late. Now they seem lost in the old narrative, fighting old inconsequential battles in a new world.
roywiggins15 hours ago
George Orwell wrote a lot, and not just novels. It's actually pretty easy to know where he was, politically: he wrote political columns in the newspaper and you can read them.
robobro16 hours ago
what is the difference between socialism and communism
lostlogin16 hours ago
Now to type that in the search field…
kurthr15 hours ago
Please don't ask Grok!
mrkeen15 hours ago
It's all just labels.
"United" States of America. "People's" Republic of China. "Democratic People's" Republic of Korea.
At the end of the day you either get services in return for your taxes, or you don't.
roywiggins15 hours ago
Not in the 1940s it wasn't: neither Orwell nor the communists would have claimed the other, and it wasn't just a matter of "labels."
Like, communism has some specific ideas about how to organize society that your average democratic socialist or Labour person just doesn't agree with.
roywiggins15 hours ago
the guy hated the USSR for its authoritarianism. And he hated lefties who forgave Communist crimes.
Anyway, I really like this piece of his:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
> During the years 1918-33 you were hooted at in left-wing circles if you suggested that Germany bore even a fraction of responsibility for the war. In all the denunciations of Versailles I listened to during those years I don’t think I ever once heard the question, ‘What would have happened if Germany had won?’ even mentioned, let alone discussed. So also with atrocities. The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it.
lukan15 hours ago
Depends on your definition amd usually requires more specific words, like marxist style socialism, anarcho communism, maoism ...
Very trivially speaking, socialism is communism light.
foldr15 hours ago
Read The Lion and the Unicorn if you want an overview of Orwell's political views: https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20180531/html.php
He was was in favor of wealth redistribution and nationalisation of key industries, but his political views were very far from Communism.
olddustytrail15 hours ago
Bertrand Russell published a collection of essays in 1935 titled _In Praise Of Idleness_ which are well worth reading.
One of the essays is called _Between Scylla and Charybdis_ (the original rock and a hard place!) which explains why he rejects the commonly accepted idea that an intellectual should naturally be politically either a Communist or a Fascist. Remember Fascism was not a dirty word at this point; the Nazis destroyed it's legitimacy through their actions.
Anyway, if you want a better understanding read that. And the rest because they're very interesting.
dokyun15 hours ago
[flagged]
dang14 hours ago
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We're trying for something different here.
petsfed14 hours ago
I'll respond to this on its face, because its important:
The "socialist" part of the moniker was 2 things.
First, it was misdirection. Hitler believed that Bolshevisim, and left-wing revolutions in general, were Jewish plots. He was stridently anti-communist, yes, but also anti-socialist, and anti-democratic. The party he took over called themselves "socialist" because they needed a way to telegraph that they were the party of the workers, and at the time, workers' parties were socialist parties, at least in name. Mussolini did the same thing (although, he did start out as a socialist, so that's a bit more complex).
Second, the nazis were all about socializing the property of the outgroups. Vis the banning of Jewish businesses, the confiscation of Jewish property, etc etc. Several pretty prominent Nazis were tried, convicted and imprisoned or executed for stealing Jewish property for themselves (Amon Goth was dismissed from his role as commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp of Schindler's List fame over exactly that). The Nazis considered such theft to be stealing from the Reich.
All of that to say, fascists are happy to exercise socialism, provided the people they are taking from are part of the vilified outgroup that the fascist identity opposes.
robobro15 hours ago
the nazis where?
AnimalMuppet14 hours ago
The original ones, in Germany. It was short for "national socialist" - that is literally where "Nazi" comes from. They were different from the communists in that they were national rather than international socialists.
At least, that's what it said on the tin. Not sure, once they got into power, how actually socialist they were. (On the other hand, once the communists got into power, I'm not sure how communist they actually were.)
AnimalMuppet10 hours ago
Argh. I totally missed the point of the GP to this (a snarky comment on a typo).
Worse, I missed it until after the edit window closed...
moron4hire15 hours ago
I mean, they claimed to be. It was in the name, "Nazi" was a contraction of "National Socialists". But that's kind of the problem with much of these conversations online. They figure way too much on the naming of things and not enough on the outcomes of things. I think anyone with an honest understanding of the Nazi party would admit it was much, much more about the "Nationalism" then it ever intended to be about the "Socialism". Much like how the modern "Republican" party doesn't seem to care too much about republics.
slater12 hours ago
The nazis were socialist in the same sense that the German Democratic Republic was democratic, and the same way the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. hth
hydrogen780015 hours ago
"First they came for the communists"
techright7515 hours ago
[dead]
tristramb16 hours ago
[flagged]
rufus_foreman16 hours ago
[flagged]
regularization15 hours ago
About seven years before he was sending letters to the British Foreign Office of who to blackball during the UK's version of the Red Scare - people like Charlie Chaplin.
He even wrote a book a year before this (1984) denouncing societies that had people denouncing each other for political heresy. Psychological projection. What a htpocrite.
rhcom214 hours ago
Pretty interesting, I had no idea about this:
The George Orwell Paradox: From Spy Target to Informant https://spyscape.com/article/surveillance-state-how-british-...
skinnymuch10 hours ago
Yeah. Western hegemony has an interest in presenting the Animal Farm guy a certain way.
skinnymuch10 hours ago
Yes very much so. Thankfully someone in this thread (even if only you) saying the correct context.
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