*Doublethink* - the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct.
*Newspeak* - the controlled language of Oceania, of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary; a linguistic design meant to limit the freedom of thought and ensure universal orthodoxy of ideology and politics among the populace.
*Thoughtcrime* - criminal act of holding unspoken beliefs or doubts.
*Telescreens* - devices which operate as both televisions and security cameras and microphones.
*Two Minutes Hate* - daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies and express their hatred for them for exactly two minutes.
*Hate week* - psychological operation designed to increase the hatred of the population for the current enemy of the totalitarian Party, as much as possible, whichever of the two opposing superstates that may be.
*Prolefeed* - deliberately superficial entertainment including literature, movies and music that is produced by Prolesec, a section of the Ministry of Truth, to keep the “proles” (i.e., proletariat) content and to prevent them from becoming too knowledgeable.
Uncredited Photographer Anti-fascist Members of the Militia Belonging to the Anti-Stalinist Marxist POUM PARTY (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista - Workers Party of Marxist Unification) During the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona 1937
The tall militant at the rear left, partially framed by a window, is George Orwell.
“…[W]hen I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.” ― George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia” 1938
There it is. We discussed this on “Shock Jocks.” One of the Tweet replies says, “I prefer the term ‘Tory Anarchism’”—a label self-applied, strangely, by George Orwell, a writer claimed by democrats, liberals, and conservatives everywhere. I’ve always liked it myself. Edward Said used it on Swift; I once transferred it to Yeats:
It is easy enough to say with Orwell that Yeats was a reactionary and a fascist. Edward Said, who did so much to redeem Yeats for the PC era by praising him in Culture and Imperialism as an anti-colonial poet meditating on Fanonian themes (in another mood, I might enter this into evidence for the fascist tendencies of identity politics), once wrote of “Swift’s Tory Anarchy.” The label might be applied to Yeats, who admired Swift: to his Tory elegy for a shattered culture of wholeness and authority, to his anarchic drive toward the shaping of a soul out of the chaos of experience.
Orwell, Said, Swift, Yeats. What connects the politics of these disparate men of disparate eras who between them cover almost the whole political compass? Consider the etymology of “Tory”:
mid 17th century: probably from Irish toraidhe ‘outlaw, highwayman’, from tóir ‘pursue’. The word was used of Irish peasants dispossessed by English settlers and living as robbers, and extended to other marauders especially in the Scottish Highlands. It was then adopted c.1679 as an abusive nickname for supporters of the Catholic James II.
The Tory is a reactionary because he is an outlaw of the progressive regime, the regime expropriating his country and trampling his culture with its forward march of progress. “Tory Anarchism,” then, is redundant. There is no real conflict between serving the exiled or prostrated old regime and wishing to bring down the new one, whether you are Irish or Palestinian or one of the British Empire’s inner critics.
But there is no going back—“retvrn” is the idlest of fantasies—so in theory the Tory’s anarchism should at length become less tactical or circumstantial and more of a substantive commitment to individual freedom in a new world, newer than the new regime which displaced the old one. He might still construe these freedoms as better defended by a unitary sovereign than by an oligarchy or bureaucracy, which is what, for this kind of sensibility, most regimes calling themselves democracies pragmatically are. But if the freedoms are the point—and the writings of Orwell and Said may bear this out in the end—then the distance between anarcho-monarchism and liberalism isn’t as far as their feuding partisans imagine.
Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare, World-besotted traveller; he Served human liberty.
when kafka said “all the love in the world is useless when there is total lack of understanding” and when richard siken said “if you love me, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”
When orwell said: “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
The uk government now are allowed to spy on anyone they want, whenever they want. This is the most invasive surveillance law in any modern nation. #BigBrotherIsWatchingUs
Animal Farm by George Orwell penguin books paperback modern classics literature novella fiction communism stalin socialism by Directorsportif (8.00 GBP) http://ift.tt/1TPR3qC
I was developing an art style for my day job, so I experimented by creating social media cards using famous quotes from some of the authors I have read. I had my friends translated their words into Filipino, and named the project “SalinGuhit”. It’s fun doing the series, no deadlines and pressure. :D
On This Day in History June 8, 1949: George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is published by Secker & Warburg.
Set in the fictional totalitarian state of Oceania, the book has themes that though written in 1949, are especially relevant today. Such themes are mass surveillance, propaganda, war and danger to basic freedoms.
The tone of the book spawned the term Orwellian to describe a feeling of freedoms lost and the massive restriction of civil and personal rights.
The book was made into the movie “1984” starring John Hurt and Richard Burton that was released in 1984.
