I used to like 1984 when I was still eating up Western narratives about communism and socialism, but after researching for myself about actual communism and then re-examining that book, I realized that the entire thing is a goodamn strawman. That book described neither communism nor socialism, it described some nonexistant over-the-top ideology Orwell thought up in his head. Same with Animal Farm.
So yeah, TLDR I used to be an ignorant anticommunist, but no longer.
I still adore Orwell’s writing, but FUCK is most of it just strawmanning from a heavily anti-communist British government provided position.
It’s been a few years since it was pointed out to me, but Orwell’s ‘2+2=5’ critique is literally being mad that the 5 year plan finished early. ‘2=2+5’ shows up on a Soviet propaganda poster too, celebrating that the construction was completed sooner than estimated, and is likely what inspired Orwell’s critique.
2 + 2 + the enthusiasm of the workers = 5
Imagine turning a poster encouraging the workers into some kind of dystopia fiction…
I can honestly imagine Orwell looking at that poster and literally thinking it’s telling Soviet citizens that’s a fact. As far as I know he can’t read Russian.
He couldn’t (or at least I could find no sources that said he did), literally everything he heard about the USSR came either from his government, or from fellow anti-communist academics in his country. I’ve said he’s like the Twitter liberal of his time, and honestly I stand by that statement. Everything you’d expect from a Twitter liberal, you can find in Orwell.
wow, it seems we forget Spanish civil war, i wonder why the Spanish left losed if they have the mighty power of the greatest red country have ever existed lol it’s hilarious how we criticize an “enemy” who is like us
TIL