The Box of Chocolates Thread (You never know what you're going to get!)
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I re-read 1984 the other day, and my takeaway has remained constant. The backdrop of the book is certainly that of a totalitarian regime. However, to my eyes the main theme of the book is that the main character is a naive fool who mistakenly thinks he is smarter than people around him, has a naive understanding of the world, thinks his thoughts and ideas automatically makes se
Isn't this the whole point of O'Brien?
Yeah... everyone around Stalin is alive.
Well, if that ain't just a kick in the balls... I meant Lenin.
This is correct. Trotsky got assasinated and brushed out of photos like this after Stalin took power. Actually I think half of the adults visible next to and in front of Lenin got erased by Stalin.
This is correct. Trotsky got assasinated and brushed out of photos like this after Stalin took power. Actually I think half of the adults visible next to and in front of Lenin got erased by Stalin.
Maybe that's the answer t_d was looking for?
That strikes me as likely. Like I said, I am not claiming my take was fresh. It is just not one I have seen a lot.
This is correct. Trotsky got assasinated and brushed out of photos like this after Stalin took power. Actually I think half of the adults visible next to and in front of Lenin got erased by Stalin.
I can't speak to the other theories of the pictures proposed in this thread (except for noting that there is a crease in the picture), and I don't know enough about the other people in the picture to comment on that. So, this was pretty much about Trotsky's presence.
As for the relevance to the topic at hand (1984 and George Orwell), is is that Orwell participated in the Spanish Civil War as a socialist fighting against the nationalists. There he ended up caught up in the whirlpool of infighting between socialist groups. While this didn't cause him to immediately leave, as infighting reached dangerous levels, he eventually had to hide and flee from the people he originally fought alongside.
One of the accusations Stalinists levied against him was that he was a Trotskyist. This was at the height of the Trotsky-scare, and was a typical accusation against any socialist or social democrat who questioned Stalin's autocracy. The Stalin / Trotsky feud is a rather perfect example of the themes we see described in Orwell's works, and Trotsky's removal from pictures in the Soviet Union is the type of historical revisionism we see practiced by "the Ministry of Truth" in "1984".
So, the question about the picture is a partially asked in jest, partially asked in seriousness. If you tow the Stalinist line about Orwell, are you also willing to tow the Stalinist line about this photograph? Because according to Stalinists of Orwell's time, this has to be the doctored version. It is basically asking "How Orwellian are you willing to be?"
Well thanks, I learned something new. I will leave the error up, so your post makes sense, even if it hurts my soul.
Well thanks, I learned something new. I will leave the error up, so your post makes sense, even if it hurts my soul.
Lol don't worry about fixing it, I would. But then again, I have raging OCD when it comes to these things.
Lol don't worry about fixing it, I would. But then again, I have raging OCD when it comes to these things.
In my language we do not have an expression that matches "toe the line", but we have a lot idioms about pulling / being dragged (some of which we also find in English). I have just always assumed that it referred to "tow" as in being burdened with / forced to have an opinion.
It is good to learn something new, and the etymology was interesting.
That strikes me as likely. Like I said, I am not claiming my take was fresh. It is just not one I have seen a lot. I can't speak to the other theories of the pictures proposed in this thread (except for noting that there is a crease in the picture), and I don't know enough about the other people in the picture to comment on that. So, this was pretty much about Trotsky's presen
ok but I didnt say anything about him being a Trotskyite. its a documented fact that he was an informant and a colonial police officer in Burma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s...
looks like he wasnt spying for mi6 but some other British deep state apparatus so sorry about that.
anyway, its my conjecture that he preferred the Nazis considering he wrote a ton condemning the SU during WW2 but didnt seem to have much to say about the Nazis.
as for disappearing people from pictures, its a pretty crude way to do things. the Soviets should have been shrewder with it like how the modern media whitewashes the crimes and history of people like the Azov boys and ISIS headchoppers.
So, the question about the picture is a partially asked in jest, partially asked in seriousness. If you tow the Stalinist line about Orwell, are you also willing to tow the Stalinist line about this photograph? Because according to Stalinists of Orwell's time, this has to be the doctored version. It is basically asking "How Orwellian are you willing to be?"
In fairness, one of the major themes of Orwell's critique of totalitarian socialism (or what we now call radical leftism) is that it's adherents often engage in "doublethink".
So one could easily argue Orwell was a Trotskyite (or in Victor's case just make up he was a Nazi sympathizer) and be agnostic about the doctored picture. And be perfectly indifferent towards the contradictions in your worldview.
or in Victor's case just make up he was a Nazi sympathizer
I didnt say that. I just said he preferred the Nazis to the Soviets.
you guys routinely make this failure in logic. when I compare the Russians favorably to the USA, that doesnt mean I am sympathetic to Russia, its just that I recognize the genocidal depravity of the rapacious West.
ok but I didnt say anything about him being a Trotskyite. its a documented fact that he was an informant and a colonial police officer in Burma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s...
looks like he wasnt spying for mi6 but some other British deep state apparatus so sorry about that.
Fair enough.
anyway, its my conjecture that he preferred the Nazis considering he wrote a ton condemning the SU during WW2 but didnt seem to have much to say about the Nazis. as for disappearing people from pictures, its a pretty crude way to do things. the Soviets should have been shrewder with it like how the modern media whitewashes the crimes and history of people like the Azov
As for Orwell and his views on Nazis, I think one simply needs to consider that he fought against the nationalists in Spain and even caught a bullet for his troubles, I think it is safe to say that he was not a fan of nationalists and nor was he particularly enamored with Nazis.
One can also read Orwell's 1940 review of "Mein Kampf".
A thing to note is that Orwell, as a commentator and journalist, writes with a lot of nuance, admission and introspection. He could be sympathetic or empathic to the traits of individuals or towards reasons for why extremism appealed to people. He could also be critical of things he supported. That makes him easy to misrepresent when people take sentences / paragraphs out of context.
And of course, he is a man of of his time. That's not everyone's cup of tea either.
I didn't even notice toe vs. tow but I actually really like "tow the line" to mean carrying the burden of whatever endeavor too. A lot of people toe the party line to tow the line pulling progress forward.
"toeing the line" does not imply the intention to progress forward. in fact its meant to describe cowardly self interest at the expense of what is right or what a person previously claimed as principles.
"toeing the line" does not imply the intention to progress forward. in fact its meant to describe cowardly self interest at the expense of what is right or what a person previously claimed as principles.
Probably more often it's used to imply that a person is coming close to violating the rules (e.g. going out of bounds).
toeing the line is a reference to standing in line, not brushing your toe up against a philosophical line
It means to fall in order
its like, AOC styled herself as a radical that would upend the establishment but instead she decided to toe the party line and support genocide.
looks like he wasnt spying for mi6 but some other British deep state apparatus so sorry about that.
It was MI5, and he wasn't spying exactly, he supplied a list of people he believed to be Communist fellow-travellers.
he preferred the Nazis
No, he didn't, he despised Communists and Nazis equally.
I mean, I hate beets, but I prefer them to broccoli. But, you'd never catch me eating either.
That was simply because he was a member of the largely anarchist-Marxist POUM militia in Spain, which the Stalinists violently suppressed as 'Trotskyist' (that is, not under Moscow's control). He and his wife were lucky to escape Spain with their lives -- if caught, they could have been shot, as many POUM were. But he only joined the POUM because, not being a Communist, he couldn't get a letter of introduction from Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, to join the 'International Brigades'. On his return from Spain he joined the Independent Labour Party (some way to the left of Clem Attlee's Labour), but he never thought much of either Trotskyists or Stalinists.
Although in late 1938, in the run-up to Munich, he put his name to an ILP pacifist manifesto claiming, 'If war comes, we shall resist it,' when war did in fact come he changed his mind, joined the Home Guard and kept applying for war jobs (eventually landing one as a talks producer with the India service of the BBC), because he couldn't abide Nazis either.
