Was Orwell redpilled?

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No, he was blackpilled by Spanish civil war.

He was a leftist of a previous era, so yes he was redpilled in a sense. He fucking hated bourgeois liberals and despite his dislike of fascists was more similar to them than to what the former has become these days.

Politics and the English Language is a pretty based breakdown of the linguistic trickery that's all over the place now.

Yeah on the dangers of a totalitarian state. But not fully, the guy was a socialist.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

He was literally commie

Absolutely based

Orwell made a list of prominent leftists (including ones like Paul Robeson that he deemed ‘very anti-white’) and sent information about that to the IRD/Foreign Office so they would get sent down.

He certainly had an insider's perspective on marxism, what we would now call anti-fascism and the workings of giant bureaucracies like the state secret services and the BBC. Perhaps more importantly to his art, he was a master of psychological warfare, propaganda and thought control.

And then fought with the anarchists and Trotskyist's in Catalonia...

In a word, yes. You have to make allowances for the time period. He was a socialist, because it seemed entirely plausible in the late 30s/40s that capitalism WAS in fact a failed system and socialism was the only reasonable alternative. He was wrong, obviously, but his position was reasonable based on the evidence available to him *at that time.*

He certainly wasn't afraid to face up to hard truths. He would not have had a hard time at all admitting that 1) many immigrants and refugees are in fact fleeing from appalling conditions and making sensible choices from their perspectives and 2) mass immigration is still deadly to western countries. There's no contradiction there but many people insist on seeing one; Orwell wasn't the sort of person to conflate "underprivileged" and "good person."

Can't even count how many times he took the left of his day to task for being in love with the Soviet Union, despite the fact that it was betraying all of their principles left and right. There's no doubt in my mind that he would have shit all over modern liberalism for its weird alliance with Islam. They're very similar situations.

He would've thought the whole "redpilled" thing was fucking stupid, though, and he'd have been right.

He basically started the "Fascists and Communists are the same" meme, every centrist revers him as a demi god now

Despite the fact he fought for Communists in Spain

Blackpilled leftists are best leftists as long as they don't crave for power.

Capitalism did look like it was failing. Its starting to look like that now But I don't think socialism is the answer.

My point was that a "lefty" during those times was in many ways more similar to a race woke natsoc today than your average lefty today.

1984 is not a book about a totalitarian state using mind control and propaganda to keep people from independent thought, it's about the dangers of sex. Big brother, the anti-sex league, etc. represent the superego. The political backdrop is just a substrate for exploring how women ruin men.

Thats one of the weirdest interpretation of it I have ever seem.

Orwell reminds me a lot Christopher Hitchens.

Yes.

He is rolling in his grave with the amount of Russian shilling and cock-sucking in this board though.

>He basically started the "Fascists and Communists are the same" meme
Saying that both Fascists and Communists were in favor of totalitarian regime was not wrong though.

It's considering that it applies to modern society and modern far-left and far-right movements that is wrong.

Orwell foresaw the sexual revolution. Julia represents free love. Winston has a sexless marriage. Things end badly.

Orwell was bluepilled but unintentionally wrote redpilled work. Despite being a socialist his greatest work is the brutal reality of socialism

What? 1984 makes it very clear that it's the SUBVERSION and SUPPRESSION of the sex drive that's a bad thing. If anything it's really pro-sex. Winston has a bunch of health problems that are pretty clearly due to a suppressed libido; when he starts fucking Julia, they go away. She literally even says at one point, "We need the Anti-Sex League because all that screaming and marching that you have to do for Big Brother is a perversion of the sex drive. When you're burning up all your energy having good sex you can't be bothered to give a shit about any of that." You do realize that it's a dystopia, and that (and Winston's sexless marriage) are not supposed to be good things?

You literally swallowed (hee hee) the opposite of the book's intended message. One of its messages, anyway, it's not actually primarily about sex.

Society was the ultimate sacrafice man made for woman. Its against our nature, but provides them with the best protection we can provide, which was our sole reason for existence. There is a reason the right is considered more masculine (anarchy) and the extreme left is much more feminine (socialism/communism).

Orwell would have called Hitchens and untrustworthy kike and a imperialist warmonger trying to force bourgeois liberal values on the entire world instead of genuine socialism for the proletariat.

Pretty much this. He fought with socialists against the fascist s and anarchists. After that experience he wrote 1984, a speculative fiction of a totalitarian socialist dictatorship

Never thought about it that way.

In 1984 the government is said to have 'Betrayed everything the socialist movement stood for'

Probably because it's fucking stupid.

No.

I actually think Orwell is the final boss that you have to defeat ideologically if you want to ascend from the 20th century.

Elaborate

Sexual morality--as you call it "suppression" or "subversion"--is necessary for social stability. Winston tries to secretly cheat the system and satisfy his sex drive outside the legal and social norms, and is punished for it. Eventually he falls into line with the prescriptions of sexual morality. But the Big Brother is internal. That's why he sees all and knows all. It's about the conflict within oneself between living within the proper standards and living according to animal desires. When Winston "loves" Big Brother at the end of the novel, he isn't broken, brainwashed and defeated, he's come to understand the requirements of morality. It's through torture representing moral emotions like guilt and shame that are both self-inflicted instructive.

..eternal redpiller

..was born in India too.

..love his writings on India and Burma.

..

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Orwell's little digs in Homage to Catalonia always makes me laugh when I think about them

>the trouble with fighting a war in Spain is that the Spanish are always late for everything, even battle
>when watching artillery fire from a safe distance, it's quite difficult to not hope for it to hit its target, even when its target contains several dozen of your comrades, and your dinner

Orwell was writing at a time when there were a lot of seeming alternatives to capitalism (that were taken seriously by the intelligentsia), not just one. All of his works distinguish between capitalism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and communism (of the Stalinist flavor). Most of the posters in this thread aren't really doing a great job of understanding where he was coming from. It was a very different time.

1984 is about totalitarianism, full stop. If you read his essays he is very definite that he sees fascist totalitarianism and Stalinist totalitarianism as very similar systems, with some cosmetic differences, but ultimately about the same things at their core. He would've found the modern tendency to blame conservatism for fascism and liberalism for communism very childish. Probably he would have found the whole left-right dichotomy childish and oversimple.

>against totalitarianism
>socialist

He did have some good points though.

I wish there still were viable alternatives to capitalism. Its not a very good system. But socialism doesn't work so I guess were stuck with it.

He became a socialist during the Spanish civil war and fought alongside commies. Read Homage to Catalonia and you'll see that he's no different from pic related.

Yes.

>And the whole huge town of a million people was locked in a sort of violent inertia, a nightmare of noise without movement.
Easily the best part of Homage.

By that standard Karl Marx was red pilled.

I'm not sure if this is bait or you're serious, but you're wrong. If you want to write an English lit paper arguing that as an alternative interpretation of the novel then be my guest; at least it's creative. If you argue it well enough it might even be interesting and worth reading!

But this thread is about Orwell himself, and we pretty much know from his other writings what he was thinking when he wrote that novel, and you're wrong. It is not a metaphorical novel. Speculative, but not metaphorical. It is about actual totalitarianism, not totalitarianism-as-a-metaphor-for-sexual-morality.

Again, it's quite clear in the novel that Winston wouldn't HAVE to satisfy his sex drive "outside the legal and social norms" if he didn't live in a society where the legal and social norms were UNJUST.

Homage to catalonia was published before animal farm and 1984. He was against the Stalinists

I believe that "Redpilled" is the wrong word to describe such a great man whom has given so much to the world in the form of literature.

I feel as if he was someone who should not be looked down or disregarded just because of his socalist views, and instead should be embraced and thought of as someone who has benifited humanity in many ways through his books.

He gave the commies a fucking manual on how to do exactly what he suspected they wanted to do.

Status:
>Not redpilled enough.

I've seen like 50 definitions of Blackpill

someone hit me up with a quick rundown on "Blackpilled Leftism"

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Anarchism/Democratic leftism.

I'm also pretty sure that's a misquote. So far as I know no one has ever actually been able to track down the article that quite supposedly appears in, although they have tracked down the article that it was probably distorted/misremembered from.

He did say similar things, though.

>democratic socialism is totalitarian communism
you said it, not me

>Tfw I was anarcho-syndicalist years back
>tfw all my "anarcho" buddies were fucking awful

How do we take over? I still find the concept of Syndicalism attractive.

i like the bit where he gets shot in the neck and describes it as an "interesting experience". what a boss

I read Orwell and fell in love with his prose and literary analysis. He was an idealist, rebellious, drifter as a youth, almost proto-beatnick. He once got himself arrested in London for drunkenness just to see what the criminal system was like for the rabble. He refused to go to university after Eton, figured it wasn't for him, and instead he bummed around for a while writing but doing nothing much of note until he fucked off to Burma to join the Imperial Police. Of coure this was a peeeerfect opportunity for a young aspiring writer to learn about the brutality of empire, and even shot an elephant.

In terms of his politics he was a classic interwar British socialist, highly idealistic, of a certain social class, connected but without social utility; he wasn't exactly what you'd call nationalistic (he hated nationalism and did a good deal to popularise the term in the first place) but he was fiercely patriotic. He mentions at one point that he'd love his country "even if it were communist". However, what is stark, and even ironic -- considering the depth and intellectual honesty of Animal Farm's breakdown of the perverted power structures of late stalinism, was, still, how ignorant of, and hopeful for, Orwell was, and generally the rest of the post-war working class were, a comprehensively socialist state. He viewed general welfare as being something of a common decency, and was probably tinged with one-nationism.

These facts, combined with his prescient critique of surveillance, and the limits of the influence the state can have on the individual, in his novel 1984, leaves me in no doubt that he was more of a writer and creative than serious politico.

>Leaf pretending the left isnt totalitarian

Well, top of the red square is.

Huxley had a better understanding of Totalitarianism.

His point was simple - Fuck the Media

You're right that if there are no restrictions, you can do whatever you want. Part of being human is realizing that the sort of restrictions (or lack of restrictions) your animal drives would wish are not adequate for human life. All law is about restraint and morality about self-restraint, not about maximally satisfying animal drives. Now, if the restrictions in 1984 are unjust, the measure is something other than the plain fact that Winston wants sex, and wants to dissolve the restrictions.

You're right, in any case, about Orwell's overt intentions. Of course, those overt intentions in writing the novel are not important to a psychoanalytic interpretation, since the meaning is subconscious in origin.

>Karl Marx
>not redpilled af

youtube.com/watch?v=ox-shlDXKO4

He was no Huxley.

Yes, he was. Leftist from the past weren't like modern ones. They only wanted some economic policies similar to the ones we currently have. Immigrations wasn't even a thing back then.

This. The totalitarian world Orwell describes in 1984 doesn't seem like something that can take hold in today's world. I can get behind Brave New World and the world government slowly making the population docile by promoting hedonistic lifestyles and the destruction of family unit as it's happening RIGHT now.

Pic related is a great comic comparing the two.

Agreed conflating the two is ridiculous, by almost all measures canada Is the democratic socialism Orwell was talking about. Soviet union Is what he was warning about. Regardless I don't agree with everything Orwell believes, however I do agree that totalitarian communism Is dangerous.

>Immigrations
Buddy plz.

Are you talking mass replacement migration required to keep the capitalist pyramid scheme going?

1984 is very possible in any political ideology that demands perfection.

If any government is willing to accept that perfection isn't the goal but scientific advancement is, they are safe from a 1984.

But the second you demand society should have limited and controlled restraint, 1984 can happen.

He is useful because he was anti-centralism/statism. He was a leftist, but as far as I am concerned, I'm ok with anyone being a leftist as long as they don't involve the government

>However, what is stark, and even ironic -- considering the depth and intellectual honesty of Animal Farm's breakdown of the perverted power structures of late stalinism, was, still, how ignorant of, and hopeful for, Orwell was, and generally the rest of the post-war working class were, a comprehensively socialist state.
>These facts ... leaves me in no doubt that he was more of a writer and creative than serious politico.
Don't really think you're being completely fair to the man. Again, at the time capitalism really, really looked like it was failing, and socialism seemed like a viable alternative. NO ONE in the intelligentsia (well, not no one, but very few people) knew capitalism in postwar Europe would make the somewhat amazing recovery it did.

You can't just take the biggest thing he got wrong without also looking at all the things he got right that almost no one else did. He was completely right about nuclear weapons, for example, and anticipated the Cold War, which is a pretty incredible degree of foresight. He got the number of power blocs right (3) and even anticipated what they would be VERY accurately, something that a lot of people who LITERALLY LIVED THROUGH IT get wrong (The Sino-Soviet whaaa? No, it was just East vs. West!)

Only Tankies like Stalinism, though. Don't worry.

We're living in a Huxleyite world right now

Call it as you wish. Modern left is defending it (although I don't like to use the terms left-right, what is considered modern left is defending it).

How is Canada socialist?

Virtue signalling liberals being useful idiots to capitalists and coopting socialist movements isn't new.

First-wave feminism was socialist, everything afterwards was idpol and a mistake.

Literally who

It's not. He's dumb.

It seems like were sort of going through another period of doubt in pure capitalism.

this is a meme, there isn't that level of dichotomy between them

brave new world is not society drowning in a sea of irreverence, its simply a unified culture with the same outlets (sports) as any culture

none of the classical dystonian novels predicated what actually happened: the clash of manifold cultures and ideas and drowning in information, much of which is untrue or manipulated

" pure" anything doesn't work. This is nothing new and intelligent people already understand this.

The same way the U.S. is a socialist country.

All Democracies and Modern Republics are a mix between Capitalism and Socialism but you guys are backwards

We have Capitalism for the poor, Socialism for the rich
You have Socialism for the poor, and Capitalism for the rich.

USSR's existence was the only reason capitalists ever "played nice' with the working class, lad.

25 years after it disappeared, everything went to shit.

orwell is a paradox - a redpilled cuck

it's actually both. Look at sweden. actual problems are unreported or "racist", and they pump the air full of distractions. We live in a terrible fusion of Orwell and Huxley.

Oh, just one of the greatest authors of all time...

>Polish education

No I totally agree that his political insight was vast, but you misread. I think you would agree with me that his talent first was as a writer.

There were plenty of European capitalist thinkers in the fifties and the Austrian school was making a comeback while Orwell was still harping on about the proletarian.
Also, the Cold War was not really that incredible a deal of foresight, many commentators beat him on that one. What he did, however, predict, more specifically, was the inevitable collapse and dissolution of the USSR. I think you're also being childish about China.

Have you *read* the novel? In the world of 1984:

- you are not free to marry who you want, you need to get approval from the gov't
- a couple being attracted to each other is grounds for automatic disqualification (!!)
- the gov't indoctrinates women with the idea that sex is disgusting and not to be enjoyed (it's even mentioned that their scientists are working on "abolishing the orgasm")
- unhappy couples (i.e. all of them with those restrictions) are only allowed to separate once they're proven to be infertile
- once separated they are not allowed to divorce or remarry
- sex not for the purpose of procreation is prohibited

All of this is explicitly stated.

Those restrictions are not reasonable. Neither Orwell nor his characters want a world without any restrictions. It's implied that Winston and Julia would be happy if they were allowed to simply marry each other and live together in peace; it's the political climate that forces their relationship to be something transgressive.

why

>Paul Robeson
>very anti-white
FUCK

why do all my favourite artists have to be full retards outside of music?

Large centralized government. Lots of federally owned public utilities. Incredibly high tax rates. Of course technically we are defined as a constitutional monarchy, but much of our legislation like Sweden Is dyed in the wool democratic socialism

He fought for the anarchists and the communists killed all his friends and tried to kill him, it sounds like you DIDN'T read the book.

Black pill is nihilism

At least Fascist and Commie dictatorships simply put the boot to a face.

These "Irenic Dictatorships" that liberal democracies are turning into just censor their critics, call them bad people, and throw them in jail.

>not real socialism

Orwell states he was a socialist but I don't understand how he can make that point. Even in Road to Wigan Pier which is held up by modern day socialists as a very pro socialist book is 50% about how contradictory and retarded socialists are.

You can't criticize muslims

He died in 1950, man. EARLY 1950. And do remember that 1984 was one of his latest works. Most of his writings were published earlier and have their roots in the late 30s and early 40s, when capitalism really looked like it might disappear in Europe (and possibly even in America, eventually), and the vast majority of political thinkers in Britain had socialist/communist sympathies. You can't compare him to intellectuals in 1955 or, hell, even 1950 -- those were *very* eventful years and things changed very, very quickly. Do you really think that if he'd lived to 1960 or 1970 he wouldn't have adjusted his thinking?

I'm aware other people predicted the Cold War; I'm not aware of anybody else who predicted the Cold War less than three months after the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

How am I being childish about China?

He said he was a Dem Soc.

Who is the girl?

I would never argue that every element of the novel has a single purpose. The points you've mentioned regarding marriage are the characteristics of the institution of marriage. Those rules indicate that the basis for marriage, its essence, is not being attracted to your partner or even being happy. Would pleasure or satisfaction increase without those restrictions? Surely, and happiness is not in principle opposed to marriage, but it is not overriding. The interest is the stability and advancement of society, not the contentment of any particular marriage. This may seem extreme or old-fashioned, but look at the mess we have today because we treat marriage so flippantly and allow no fault divorce.

This.

If I were born in early 20th century europe, I would have had some serious issues with the existing inherited distributions of wealth as well. Reading his work, its never hard to see where he is coming from.

Orwell was always reasonable in his beliefs, and one of the few people to really have a nuanced understanding of what was so monstrous and retarded about leftist regimes in practice. He learned the lessons of the 20th century as they came rolling in like no other, and i bet if he were still alive he would be triggering beta leftists harder than trump and spencer combined.

this

Marx himself would be banned from r/socialism for being a "brocialist".