[HN Gopher] George Orwell's 1940 Review of Mein Kampf
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George Orwell's 1940 Review of Mein Kampf
Author : Edmond
Score : 345 points
Date : 2022-07-17 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| Bud wrote:
| Very timely post given the threat of the fascist movement in the
| US right now.
|
| Especially interesting that Orwell mentions the right to birth
| control, since that, too, is now being threatened and destroyed
| in the US. Orwell understood the link.
| [deleted]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, there's a lot to be said about Hitler and fascism and
| propaganda and all the other fascinating topics Orwell brings up
| here, but I'd just like to point out how routinely excellent
| Orwell's analysis is. Of course I mostly see the best bits
| brought out and dusted off, no doubt he did mediocre stuff as
| well, but it is worth noticing how often it turns out that
| Orwell, nearly a century on, still has plenty in his writing
| worth revisiting.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Yes.
|
| There _are_ spots where Orwell gets convoluted. His famous and
| impactful (on me, lol) essay "On Nationalism" includes a
| confusing/backtracking carve-out for (presumably) Churchillian
| patriotism. But I think this is the nature of such ideas. They
| aren't absolute, falsifiable, scientific ideas. Just
| observations about people.
| notRobot wrote:
| Any recommendations for other writings and analyses by Orwell?
| jvalenzu wrote:
| Homage to Catalonia is his highly personal analysis of the
| events of the Spanish Civil War. It isn't at all
| comprehensive, but very plain spoken and perceptive and helps
| frame all of his fictional work.
| lostlogin wrote:
| His description of trench warfare and hand to hand combat
| is horrifying. I understood his views on communism better
| after reading the book.
| robocat wrote:
| The words "communism" and "socialism" have particularly
| slippery modern meanings - they depend where you are
| internationally, in time, and your partisanship. I have
| read a lot of what he wrote, and I am still unsure what
| he exactly meant by socialism. I find his essay 'On
| Nationalism' difficult to follow, although very
| interesting.
|
| I love all his writings about his own experiences,
| because his observations are so exceptionally well
| written, with the foreignness of early last century, plus
| the familiarity of his daily life. He then often writes
| later in those books about his political thoughts, which
| can be a bit more difficult to read e.g. Road to Wigan
| Pier.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| The US is the only place where the word "Socialism" isn't
| used properly. The rest of the world understands it
| perfectly well.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > I have read a lot of what he wrote, and I am still
| unsure what he exactly meant by socialism.
|
| Depends what you mean by "exactly". Having a precise
| vision of everything Orwell puts under the "socialism"
| umbrella, is of course impossible, but at the same time,
| there are things that are clear: when he says socialism
| he definitely means means no capitalism, that is no
| bourgeoisie sitting atop the society by the virtue of
| being the owning class.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Read that recently. I'd advice anyone who reads it and
| isn't familiar with the time period to at least get an
| overview of the factions involved. Worst part of the book
| IMHO (though it wouldn't be fair to blame Orwell for that).
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| - Christopher Hitchens (possibly THE biggest expert on Orwell
| in the late 20th century, and a great intellectual IMHO) on
| "Why Orwell Matters" + Q&A (2002) [0].
|
| - Why I write [1]
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I-FfrkGiWQ
|
| [1]: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel...
| robocat wrote:
| Perhaps skip 12 minutes 30 into the YouTube video to where
| he starts talking about George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
| if you want to avoid a long-winded intro.
| efxhoy wrote:
| Shooting an elephant is a brilliant short essay from his time
| as a police officer in Burma.
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel...
| Fnoord wrote:
| Other than what? This? 1984 and Animal Farm?
|
| I saw the (?) cartoon Animal Farm on elementary school.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Down and Out in Paris and London.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Politics and the English Language, Animal Farm, 1984
| Bud wrote:
| Since nobody else has brought them up yet, I would recommend
| ALL of Orwell's Essays, which can be had in various editions.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| See "ESSAYS AND OTHER WORKS: A selection of essays,
| articles, sketches, reviews and scripts written by Orwell.
| This material remains under copyright in the US and is
| reproduced here with the kind assistance of the Orwell
| Estate."
|
| "Politics and the English Language" is a particular
| delight.
|
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel...
| superb-owl wrote:
| > Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with
| exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want
| comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and,
| in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently,
| want struggle and self-sacrifice
|
| This fact has been the downfall of every utopian ideology, and
| ignoring creates a vacuum that fascist regimes readily fill.
|
| I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government might
| be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort and our
| need for adventure.
| mcnamaratw wrote:
| Maybe the strange centrist form of government that the US had
| from about 1935 to maybe 1995.
| TingPing wrote:
| Only if you were white middle class.
| tehjoker wrote:
| star trek, which depicts a moneyless quasi-communist society
| but with the fleet organized along traditional navy lines is an
| interesting concept
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Offer free sex-change surgery for everyone ?
|
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture -style)
| antupis wrote:
| Capitalism does it pretty well problem there is that outside
| information technology those frontiers are kinda closed now at
| western countries thanks strong regulation or need for several
| years of education.
| moomin wrote:
| I dunno, but they'd probably use catchphrases like "And so, my
| fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you --
| ask what you can do for your country."
| onelovetwo wrote:
| Maybe we should stop looking to government for that?
| EUROCARE wrote:
| Why can't people struggle and self-sacrifice for utopia?
| tehjoker wrote:
| they did in the Soviet Union very admirably.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And in the US, which gave the world May Day (a day to
| remember the fight for worker's rights.) Sadly, it gave the
| US (the country that ruthlessly crushed and salted the
| fields of the organizations that fought for worker's
| rights) "Law Day," where we celebrate _obeying the law._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Day_(United_States)
| nelox wrote:
| Strictly speaking, utopias are fantastical and by definition
| unattainable.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I mean they can, they'll probably just fail.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Most do. Most often, the problem is not that people are bad
| but that people choose to fight for a good that isn't
| compatible with others. From their point of view, they are
| fighting for an utopian society.
| colechristensen wrote:
| "There should be a science of discontent"
|
| Many modern political problems stem from people needing
| something to struggle for and other people fighting against it.
|
| There's also a lot of shaping going on where if people weren't
| so upset about X they'd realize Y was a huge problem so let's
| distract them permanently with X.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Full quote (Frank Herbert):
|
| > "There should be a science of discontent. People need hard
| times and oppression to develop psychic muscles. (Collected
| Sayings of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan)"
|
| There are certainly many ways to fulfill this apparent
| necessity without resorting to war and other forms of tribal
| conflict. Exploration of wilderness, sporting competitions,
| running marathons, etc. They all have a kind of 'passing
| through the ordeal' similarity.
|
| (Incidentally this is a central reason why preservation of
| large expanses of wilderness areas is very important)
| huijzer wrote:
| >> "There should be a science of discontent. People need
| hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."
|
| If you're interested, Andrew Huberman talks a lot about how
| it is important to work for your dopamine. If you get it
| almost for free, like in for example drugs, food, and
| Netflix, then that will cause unhappiness in the long run.
| busyant wrote:
| > Many modern political problems stem from people needing
| something to struggle for and other people fighting against
| it.
|
| Reminds me of the lines in Fight Club: "We have no Great War.
| No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. Our
| Great Depression is our lives."
|
| I'm not sure if that precise quote is in the book, but it's
| certainly in the movie and it echoes your sentiment and those
| above.
| refurb wrote:
| And the saying "Good times create weak men".
|
| And it's true. You often see a growing discontent among
| wealthy societies where everything is taken care of.
|
| People need purpose in what they do and "my purpose is to
| fight for the survival of my country" is a pretty
| compelling one to many people.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > wealthy societies where everything is taken care of.
|
| Which ones would they be? The one that I live most of my
| time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing
| discontent, yet it is quite definitely closer to
| "everything is taken care of" than others, such as the
| UK, where "growing discontent" seems to be a thing.
|
| So unless you can name those that "You often see" I don't
| think the idea can be taken seriously.
| alex_sf wrote:
| > The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does
| not seem to have growing discontent
|
| The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing
| seems like a reasonable counter to that idea. Along with
| steady suicide rates despite massively increasing
| spending on it.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _The mass shooting_
|
| singular
|
| > _and terrorism rate there increasing_
|
| er, no?
|
| > _Along with steady suicide rates_
|
| So not growing, then.
|
| I don't think anyone's going to argue Norway has solved
| society but let's not twist things to try to fit
| someone's off the cuff head canon.
| alex_sf wrote:
| While I do love the quote line-by-line format, you are
| splitting up sentences and completely changing my post,
| which is, at least, in bad faith.
|
| > singular ... er, no?
|
| Mass shooting and terrorism _rate_. Are you familiar with
| the concept of a rate?
|
| Also, 'mass shooting' is very much not singular, unless
| you have an exceptionally short memory.
|
| > So not growing, then.
|
| You are, again, changing what I wrote. Here, let me fix
| that for you:
|
| > Along with steady suicide rates despite massively
| increasing spending on it.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Pretty sure it's meant to be parsed as "(mass shooting
| and terrorism) rate": that is, he's claiming that the
| rate of mass-shootings and the rate of terrorist
| atrocities are both increasing. I don't know whether
| either part of that is true, but if it's wrong what's
| wrong isn't that "mass shooting" is singular.
|
| (And if, as grandparent claims, suicide rates are "steady
| [] despite massively increasing spending on it", that
| does seem like evidence of something getting worse.
| Again, I don't know whether it's actually true and I
| wouldn't be surprised if it weren't, but the criticism
| here doesn't seem fair.)
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| > And the saying "Good times create weak men".
|
| Ah yes, the the folks partying around in the 1920s were
| sure weak and certainly had no other events to deal
| within their lifetime.
| linspace wrote:
| > Good times create weak men
|
| They give you strong science, economy and as a byproduct
| strong military.
|
| > You often see a growing discontent among wealthy
| societies where everything is taken care of.
|
| Like in Sri-Lanka, what a decadent society.
| refurb wrote:
| When the wheels fall off (Sri Lanka does have a history
| of stability long ago) it's hard to get them back on.
|
| Sri Lanka's problems go back decades.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The fallen off wheels create bad times, which create all
| these stong men, ready to slap the wheels right back on,
| right?
| refurb wrote:
| Exactly. It's not always the right strong men, but strong
| men certainly come out of adversity.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > "Good times create weak men"
|
| Convert it to any form of observable, measurable
| phenomena, and you will see it doesn't make any sence.
|
| How do we measure 'strength' of a man - perhaps military
| success? Then best fighters should come from background
| of poverty and deprivation - is that true? Medieval
| knights and samurai were the best of their time, did they
| recruit recruit starving peasans? No, they were a social
| class and were offered the best training and considerable
| social cloud. Commanders and officers where basically a
| nobility.
|
| Well, perhaps those social institutions didn't recruit
| the best, what about sports - if this statement was
| actually true, we should find best MMA fighters in places
| where they encounter tought times, like Russia or
| Somalia. Does that match observation - do they win all
| the MMA championships or something? It doesn't.
|
| Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and
| doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you? If
| this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption and
| fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right? Does
| that sound like the world we live in?
|
| Bad times only create bad things - they create
| uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged
| people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that
| ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of
| them.
| trashtester wrote:
| > Medieval knights and samurai were the best of their
| time, did they recruit recruit starving peasans?
|
| The best fighters of the Medieval period were probably
| the Mongols. But even Medieval knights and Samurai were
| often leading lives that were so rough that it's hard for
| most modern people to realize it. And they knew that if
| they failed to train properly, that in the next war
| (which was probably coming soon), they were likely to die
| first.
|
| > No, they were a social class and were offered the best
| training and considerable social cloud. Commanders and
| officers where basically a nobility.
|
| During times of war, capable warriors tend(ed) to
| increase their rank. Capable yeomen can become men-at-
| arms, men-at-arms can be knighted, knights can become
| commanders and maybe given a barony, on so on.
|
| Such soldiers might certainly provide good training to
| their sons, making this multi-generational.
|
| > we should find best MMA fighters in places where they
| encounter tought times
|
| If you look at the backgrounds of a large set of MMA
| fighters, you would find that a LOT of them come from
| rough working-class conditions. (Or at least they did
| when I stopped following MMA about 10 years ago). For
| practitioners of golf, tennis or polo, you will find more
| upper class people, of course.
|
| > Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and
| doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you?
|
| 'Strong' men tend to develop strong codes of honor, that
| may be considered un-empathetic or even brutal in
| civilized societies. Look at present day Afghanistan. 50
| years of almost constant conflict has hammered the
| Taliban fighters into such a group. Their sense of
| morality is quite different from the western sense, but
| they seem to feel it very strongly. Currently, opium
| production is being shut down at a high rate, for
| instance. Whether or not their sense of honor will lead
| to prosperity over the longer term remains to be seen.
|
| > If this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption
| and fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right?
|
| Maybe that will be the outcome 500 years from now. But
| short term, corruption and crimes lead to poverty faster
| than poverty leads to a strengthening of moral character,
| so such cycles may take a long time.
|
| > Bad times only create bad things - they create
| uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged
| people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that
| ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of
| them.
|
| Really bad times also remove the damaged people from the
| population, either by death or inability to have
| offspring, partly because of that violence you mentioned.
| Over Darwinian time that is an absolute necessity to keep
| random genetic drift (random mutations) from destroying
| the gene pool.
|
| Over shorter periods, the same MAY be the same for the
| "meme pool", to use the Dawkins original use of "meme".
| Cultural shifts that accumulate randomly over time are
| likely to result in a reduction of social and economical
| robustness in an area. Only when a society is under some
| survivial pressure, will cultural elements that reduce
| the "fitness" of the culture be weeded out.
|
| External pressure can lead to increased group cohesion,
| while economic downturns CAN lead to improvement of
| economic organization. Or, if a culture is not able to
| build robustness against such preassures, it can collapse
| and be replaced by a new culture.
|
| Now, I'm looking at these things like a biologist would
| when describing animal populations. I'm not making the
| claim that the societies created by "strong men" are
| morally superior to older civilizations where men have
| become "soft" or "weak".
|
| My point is rather that if a civilization makes life very
| easy for the inhabitants, if will over time lead to the
| same outcome that you will get if you start feeding wild
| animals. Eventually, those "wild" animals will come to
| depend on beeing fed, and may face extinction if the food
| stops arriving. If what you want is a pet, that's ok. If
| you want to ensure a sustainable species, you really have
| to limit the amount of food and other help you provide to
| wild animals.
| cgh wrote:
| Yes, I absolutely agree. For much of our evolutionary history,
| young men were optimized to fuck and to fight. I'm not sure how
| we square this with the needs of modern civil society.
| jl6 wrote:
| Honestly it sounds like exactly the form of government we have
| today, where all of those positive and "negative" features are
| available in varying quantities.
| swayvil wrote:
| A real explorable, pioneerable frontier would serve this need
| for adventure. A new continent. Or space.
|
| The present popularity of gender-flux might be an expression of
| that. Gender as a wild frontier to conquer?... Ok maybe that's
| a stretch.
| euroderf wrote:
| By all means check out the film The Tenth Victim.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I've actually seen it, and even read Shekley stories it was
| based on. How is it relevant?
| jancsika wrote:
| > I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government
| might be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort
| and our need for adventure.
|
| A serious specification for such a thing is going to be bigger
| than the SVG spec.
|
| At that point it's almost certainly cheaper to fulfill our need
| for adventure through eternal vigilance in a representative
| democracy.
| a-dub wrote:
| > I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government
| might be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort
| and our need for adventure.
|
| i think that's supposed to be sort of the idea behind free
| market capitalism. whether or not we should be fulfilling our
| emotional needs with the system of production is an open
| question, but i think that's basically the idea. business as a
| risky adventure with exaggerated potential upsides and
| downsides.
| flipbrad wrote:
| It's also an observation made by Agent Smith in the Matrix.
| It's even observable in the schoolyard, with kids subjecting
| themselves and others to utterly avoidable drama, for no
| discernible reason
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Kids do it for the same reason politicians do it - there is
| an entire social hierarchy and jockeying for the position of
| the top dog that lets you boss around others. All
| psycologically healthy people can easilly tell that apart
| from 'real' conflict, as most kids do not try to open each-
| other's skull with a rock.
| yrgulation wrote:
| > I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government
| might be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort
| and our need for adventure.
|
| Any government that will satisfy my need of adventure and
| struggle in colonising the solar system and exploiting the
| endless amounts of resources it has and harnessing the
| virtually unlimited energy of our star will have my vote.
|
| But people prefer tribal adventures and struggles and here we
| are debating the very risk of an ideology promoted by a half
| testicled man 100 years ago making a comeback.
|
| Why dont we just struggle for the greater good instead of all
| this pettiness is beyond me.
|
| Anyway crazy comment on my part but i think we are wasting time
| as a species on petty crap.
| [deleted]
| numpad0 wrote:
| > adventure and struggle in colonising the solar system and
| exploiting the endless amounts of resources it has
|
| My hesitation won't last a minute before voting for such an
| adventure, but I think I cannot really rule out a rogue
| entity in such expedition that could cause a "kinetic winter"
| situation on Earth, that has to be first addressed(or taken
| as a managed but ultimately inevitable risk) before we would
| be able to do this.
| superb-owl wrote:
| You should read the Parable books by Octavia Butler. By the
| sound of it maybe you have already!
| yrgulation wrote:
| Thanks for this - havent heard of her books, but after a
| quick google search they do sound like something i should
| read!
| [deleted]
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The counterpoint is that regional support for the Nazis
| generally indicates the opposite. Their weakest electoral
| performance was in the West and South, which generally was the
| wealthiest and most liberal part of Germany. By contrast their
| base of support was the Prussian hinterlands which was already
| the most militaristic part of the country to begin with, as
| well as having a weak region economy.
|
| I think it's under-appreciated how much the rise of the Nazis
| was a direct result of Germany's loss in World War One. It's
| hard to overstate how central the prestige of the military was
| to the national consciousness of the German Empire. The failure
| of the military was largely internalized as a failure of German
| culture itself.
|
| The Nazis offered a do-over, revisionist view of World War One,
| and a promise to restore Germany's traditional militaristic
| prestige. (Not to mention being directly astroturfed by the old
| guard of the General Staff.) German liberals were more than
| happy with "comfort and safety". It was the traditionalists
| stuck in the pre-liberal past that dragged the country into
| "struggle and self-sacrifice"
| Animats wrote:
| _" I think it's under-appreciated how much the rise of the
| Nazis was a direct result of Germany's loss in World War
| One."_
|
| Under-appreciated today, well-known at the time. See the
| beginning of "Triumph of the Will".
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yes, the Nazi appeal was largely a response to the absolutely
| crazy things that had happened to Germany between 1914 and
| 1933. Losing a world war, and all the death and humiliation
| and privation that entails (The winter of 1916 was known as
| the Turnip Winter, because of food shortages, and that was
| barely halfway through the war!). Hyperinflation, where an
| egg might cost a billion marks. Then a Depression! And all
| the while, a ton of money gets siphoned off to pay
| reparations to the WW1 allies.
|
| I'm not at all saying Nazism was justified. I'm saying that
| the insane German experience over the 20 years leading up to
| it had caused the average German citizen to accept extremely
| radical solutions.
| etempleton wrote:
| It is always a poor choice to humiliate your opponent after
| defeating them. You either completely annihilate them or
| help them back up.
| aj7 wrote:
| Good comment.
|
| JFK government.
|
| Reagan demanded nothing, started the stuff we're in today,
| perhaps inadvertently.
| xg15 wrote:
| it might be a start to actually archieve "comfort, safety,
| short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general,
| common sense" for all. Then we can see if they still want
| struggle and self-sacrifice.
|
| There may be some dispositions of the human mind that are
| susceptible to this sort of thing, but for now, I find it
| somewhat remarkable that this supposed need for struggle and
| self sacrifice is almost always employed by classes in power to
| keep lower classes at bay. Hitler is no exception:
|
| > _He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the
| property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost
| anything._
|
| This stuff seems less like a "science of discontent" and more
| like a "science of distraction" to me. As in: let them argue
| about race, gender, religion, patriotism and whatever else as
| long as they don't argue about classes.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes - comfortable people saying that comfort isn't enough for
| people; they'll still just complain, kill each other and die.
| Without ever having tried giving people comfort, that will
| always sound like a rationalization. It's an excuse
| comfortable people use to excuse everything from the wealth
| and income gap between US blacks and whites to silencing
| complaints about UI changes on software projects.
|
| It's a statement that people don't actually want what they
| say they want, all they want is attention and drama. The
| logical way to respond is by not acknowledging anything they
| say, and enforcing the behavior that you want to see, by
| force if necessary.
|
| The real problem is that improvements in general comfort are
| difficult, and require lots of force to be organized and
| applied in a rational way. It's easier just to insure that
| you and your friends stay comfortable, and to silence or
| redirect elements that may intrude on that comfort.
| Ultimately, though, the failure mode on that is catastrophic.
| Once discontent overwhelms the institutions created to
| suppress it, the institutions shrink or convert while the
| discontent grows. Very soon, the discontent becomes the new,
| young establishment, and if you haven't joined yet, you're
| now the problem that the new institutions are intended to
| eliminate.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The funny thing is we are facing a deep crisis that will
| require sacrifice and huge effort, but 50% of the country
| claims it's a hoax and the other 50% accept the problem but are
| whistling past the graveyard. I speak, of course, about climate
| change.
|
| We have had a century of millions of people worldwide working
| ferociously and spending tens of billions of dollars every year
| to extract coal and oil for profit. To fix this problem will
| require a similar, sustained investment in labor and capital to
| halt that process and even capture and sequester some amount of
| what we are releasing at this very moment.
|
| That seems like a struggle and self-sacrifice that is
| sufficient to unify not only nations but the world. Yet
| apparently it is not. I admit it lacks the adventure aspect.
| lampshades wrote:
| > I wonder what sort of strange centrist form of government
| might be able to strike a balance between our need for comfort
| and our need for adventure.
|
| America
| lostlogin wrote:
| You'd describe American governance as centrist?
| IntelMiner wrote:
| America is the worlds richest third world country
| j3s wrote:
| this is tangentially related, but i've always loved reading this
| critique of orwell & 1984 by asimov:
| http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
|
| i've always thought it a valid critique, and it makes me think
| less of orwell's writings
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I read it just now and I think Asimov is being far too hard on
| Orwell in that review.
|
| > The great Orwellian contribution to future technology is that
| the television set is two-way, and that the people who are
| forced to hear and see the television screen can themselves be
| heard and seen at all times and are under constant supervision
| even while sleeping or in the bathroom. Hence, the meaning of
| the phrase 'Big Brother is watching you'. This is an
| extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping everyone under
| control. To have a person being watched at all times means that
| some other person must be doing the watching at all times (at
| least in the Orwellian society) and must be doing so very
| narrowly, for there is a great development of the art of
| interpreting gesture and facial expression.
|
| > One person cannot watch more than one person in full
| concentration, and can only do so for a comparatively short
| time before attention begins to wander. I should guess, in
| short, that there may have to be five watchers for every person
| watched.
|
| Except as I sit here and write this now with tape over my
| webcam "television set is two-way" hardly seems like an idea
| worthy of derision.
|
| Nor does the idea of government mass surveillance seem
| laughably impractical.
|
| Of course, we have computers now that make this type of mass
| surveillance possible, Isacc couldn't conceive of the advances
| in computer and ML that have unlocked these terrifying
| government capacities.
|
| In this way it was Asimov not Orwell lacking imagination.
|
| And he takes George to task for not mentioning computers:
|
| > Orwell was unable to conceive of computers or robots, or he
| would have placed everyone under non-human surveillance. Our
| own computers to some extent do this in the IRS, in credit
| files, and so on, but that does not take us towards 1984,
| except in fevered imaginations. Computers and tyranny do not
| necessarily go hand in hand. Tyrannies have worked very well
| without computers (consider the Nazis) and the most
| computerised nations in today's world are also the least
| tyrannical.
|
| Oh the irony.
|
| As for the rest of the review he dresses down Orwell for not
| envisioning the rise of new drugs (vices) or the liberated role
| of women in society.
|
| These are only flaws if you assume Orwell's goal was to
| accurately predict the future.
|
| Personally I don't.
|
| I wouldn't criticize Animal Farm for not having the most
| accurate of farm equipment in its depiction and I don't read
| 1984, especially now, to get a sense of what the world will
| actually be like in 1984.
|
| It's a silly and unfair framing of the objective.
|
| I read both Animal Farm and 1984 as allegorical retellings of
| historical events which separated from the specific details of
| those events allow us to see general patterns and apply them to
| our own societies.
|
| Animal Farm isn't less of a book because Stalin was not
| literally a pig and 1984 is not less of a book because gin
| wasn't the primary vice of the youth in the literal year 1984.
|
| To dismiss the book for saying so is to miss the point
| completely.
| bliteben wrote:
| this is great, but I smirked at this line
|
| >Tyrannies have worked very well without computers (consider
| the Nazis) and the most computerised nations in today's world
| are also the least tyrannical.
|
| Which is very not true as punch cards (hollerith machines) were
| very important to the Nazis, and the second part is in the eye
| of the beholder, perhaps no relationship actually exists there.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Yeah, that's clearly wrong. The Nazis were about as far away
| from Luddites as you can get. The whole point of the post-
| WWII recoil at the horror of Nazi-ism was the realization
| that a culturally-advanced high-tech progressive society was
| capable of using all of that advancement as a lever to do the
| same barbaric and horrible things humans had done before,
| only much more efficiently.
| bliteben wrote:
| much better put
| robocat wrote:
| Wow - awesome! Asimov's review reads like every engineer's nit-
| picking arguments (including my own!). In this case they are
| almost all strawman arguments, seemingly painting 1984 as a
| work of science and prediction. Asimov saying Asimov's writing
| is great, and another style is bad.
|
| Big Brother was not a person, but an immortal simulcrum of the
| party. Asimov ignores that and assumes that Big Brother is just
| an individual dictator that will die.
|
| Pick a sentence in the second half, and think about whether
| Asimov is critiquing like an engineer or not.
|
| 1984 is not a book written as a coherent hard sci-fi novel, it
| is more akin to a allegorical fairytale where you need to pick
| up the concepts by implication.
|
| Asimov is annoyed 1984 uses Stalin as a setting. That is like
| being annoyed that Asimov uses starships as a setting. The
| story is not the setting.
| axxto wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. I really enjoyed it.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Asimov spends criticizes how Orwell got future technology
| wrong.
|
| But I wonder how the technology "1984" corresponds to the
| technology in Eastern Block countries circa 1984.
|
| HBOs Chernobyl is praised for its accuracy of Soviet life in
| the 1980d, and it looks a lot like what Orwell describes in
| 1984.
|
| And some of Asimov descriptions of 1980s tech were fads:
|
| > His hero finds it difficult in his world of 1984 to get
| shoelaces or razor blades. So would I in the real world of the
| 1980s, for so many people use slip-on shoes and electric
| razors.
|
| I've purchased two sets of shoelaces and 20 sets of razor
| blades (in bulk) this year.
| mbg721 wrote:
| 1984 didn't have the concept of outsourced manufacturing.
| (For that matter, I guess the Soviet view of the world didn't
| either.)
| schuyler2d wrote:
| I enjoyed reading Asimov's review, but I'm surprised that it
| makes you think less of Orwell rather than understand that
| they're two polar points in perspectives on writing.
|
| I don't think I've read a character in Asimov that had more
| than 1 or 2 deviant terms in an otherwise averaged society
| utility function -- and he's far more interested in what the
| future 'looks like'
|
| While Orwell engages (similar to Dostoyevsky, et al) the
| _psychological_ aspects that deviate from an Enlightenment
| world-view /vision.
|
| It's even more hilarious to read > The great Orwellian
| contribution to future technology is that the television set is
| two-way, and that the people who are forced to hear and see the
| television screen can themselves be heard and seen at all times
| and are under constant supervision even while sleeping or in
| the bathroom. Hence, the meaning of the phrase 'Big Brother is
| watching you'.
|
| > _This is an extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping
| everyone under control._
|
| It sure is inefficient! -- all of our web-browsing and Internet
| connections would be so much faster and efficient if 80-90% of
| it wasn't spying on us -- but that hasn't stopped the big tech
| companies, nor did it stop the Soviet Union, the Nazis, or J
| Edgar Hoover.
|
| And I don't think those things in Heaven and Earth, Asimov
| dreamt of in his philosophy.
| belter wrote:
| "...All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by
| imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism,
| and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people
| 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you
| struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation
| flings itself at his feet....
|
| ...Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their
| minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of
| slaughter and starvation 'Greatest happiness of the greatest
| number' is a good slogan, but at this moment 'Better an end with
| horror than a horror without end' is a winner. Now that we are
| fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate
| its emotional appeal..."
| d23 wrote:
| > He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock,
| the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against
| impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how
| to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon,
| that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet
| that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is
| of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some
| such theme.
| [deleted]
| soperj wrote:
| josh_fyi wrote:
| The British Empire was more than "the training of young men for
| war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder". During
| the nineteenth century, the British army was absurdly small
| compared, for example, to the armies of continental powers. See
| e.g https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14218909
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I don't think that's a useful comparison, since Britain's
| military instrument was (and continues to be) its navy, with
| a small but largely proportionate land force. By contrast,
| you never hear anything about, say, the Austrian navy because
| there isn't one that matters.
| ixtli wrote:
| Exceptional point. I hadn't noticed this bit when I read just
| now.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Empires in general. I wonder if it wouldn't equally describe
| the Mongolian or even the Roman. But it's also hard to discount
| the amount of technological progress that comes from such
| empires, so "brainless empire in which nothing ever happens"
| felt like a stretch.
| orf wrote:
| I'm not a fan of this description because it's reductionist to
| the point of stupidity. It can be applied to any empire, from
| the Romans to the USA.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Empires do tend to have a lot of features in common and run
| into the same difficulties. I recommend _The Fate of Empires_
| by John Bagot Glubb for a concise statement of the problem.
| orf wrote:
| Thanks! I'll check it out
| simonh wrote:
| What else is it but a description of almost any empire? Of
| course German expansionist ambitions were largely driven by
| envy of other European power' empires overseas.
|
| One essential difference though was in Hitler's attitude to
| race and racial purity. He didn't want just an empire ruled by
| Germans, he wanted an empire consisting only of Germans, and
| that's the distinction Orwell is pointing out.
| rr808 wrote:
| The main difference is that the British Empire was to exploit
| resources, trade and people. Hitler's expansion main goal is to
| completely replace the local population with Germans
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum.
|
| Interestingly the wiki article mentions why it is a good idea:
| _During the First World War, the Allied naval blockade of the
| Central Powers caused food shortages in Germany and resources
| from Germany colonies in Africa were unable to slip past the
| blockade; this caused support to rise during the war for a
| Lebensraum that would expand Germany eastward into Russia to
| gain control of their resources to prevent such a situation
| from occurring in the future_
| advisedwang wrote:
| Orwell wasn't exactly pro-british-empire either [1]. But he
| British empire's vision was of economic exploitation (at the
| parallel of a gun) not of racial replacement.
|
| [1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel...
| fumblebee wrote:
| AFAIK: the British Empire caused much suffering, but your
| comment is a blatant fabrication of it operated. For example,
| the British East India Company succeeded in gaining control in
| India not through war, but by striking deals with (or strong
| arming) local rulers and land owning elite, whom they rarely
| interfered with directly but instead used them for collecting
| taxes and enforcing law and order. The size of the British
| military in India was apparently very small.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I find this statement deeply ignorant of history. I am no
| defender of imperialism in general, however, Hitler started his
| conquest with the idea of a systematic genocide of anyone not
| of the master race. He started with Jews and polish and had
| plans to mass murder Slavs, and eventually all the mixed races
| of the world.
|
| Britain's empires (there were more then one) were usually
| accidental and commercial in nature. They were not founded with
| the goal of deliberate mass genocide and replacement by a pure
| race. They tended to be extraordinarily under staffed for their
| purpose.
| tgv wrote:
| That's not entirely true. The systematic killing of the Jews
| was formalized in 1942. Before that, there were other plans,
| such as evicting them to Madagascar, and even Palestine.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution
| Bostonian wrote:
| The Journal of Finance just published this paper: "Financial
| crises and political radicalization: How failing banks paved
| Hitler's path to power" https://www.bis.org/publ/work978.htm.
| theptip wrote:
| The recent biography of Keynes ("The Price of Peace" by Carter)
| spends a lot of time discussing similar theories put forth at
| the time; Keynes was very critical of the Treaty of Versailles
| as he considered it an inevitability that crushing the German
| economy post-WW1 would produce a nationalist demagogue.
|
| Indeed, the treatise by Keynes after which the biography was
| named provided a technical argument for that thesis.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| > "Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way,
| have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to
| them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a
| whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they
| will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the
| last war."
|
| I think there's been a profound change in popular thinking on
| this since the end of World War II, and it's all due to the
| nuclear arms race. Maybe the aerial bombardment of cities in the
| later years of WWII had an influence as well, and to some extent
| the reality of chemical and biological warfare, but it's really
| the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation that has made the
| 'world leaders' less enthusiastic about sending the young people
| off to die in wars in the name of national patriotism and defense
| of the country.
|
| The result, however, has been a long string of proxy wars between
| the so-called 'Great Powers' (which are now defined as those
| having a sizeable nuclear arsenal), right on up to Ukraine today,
| and the rise of smaller nations with nuclear arsenals (Israel and
| North Korea) who view them as an indispensable protection from
| external forces. There's also the case of India and Pakistan, who
| likely would have fought several WWII-scale tank/air/sea battles
| by now without the looming threat of MAD to dissuade them.
|
| It's not an argument that the nuclear disarmament organizations
| like to hear, but I think if we really got rid of nukes then we'd
| be back in large-scale aerial bombardment and mass tank battles,
| and of course in that situation there'd be frantic efforts to
| rebuild the nukes. I don't see them going away ever, sans their
| actual global-scale use, in which case it'll be back to sticks
| and stones.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| WW2 without nukes already made the entire European continent
| destitute. Thanks to Hitler the US could take over as a
| superpower.
| sorokod wrote:
| "made the 'world leaders' less enthusiastic about sending the
| young people off to die in wars in the name of national
| patriotism and defense of the country."
|
| Not supported by current events.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| Less enthusiastic != Completely against
|
| NATO os certainly very reluctant to send forces into Russia,
| or even Ukraine for that matter. They can only send weapons
| to Ukraine.
| sorokod wrote:
| Russian leadership has no such reservations.
| taf2 wrote:
| It's possible that MAD is wearing off as more conventional war
| emerges because no one believes the other side will dare use
| them... so it's almost as if they are not there or a threat.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| MAD is also not as simple as generally described in the
| popular press. Power Transition theory is a school of thought
| that has some interesting ideas about the emergence of
| conflict and fits into a social physics type analysis.
| asah wrote:
| Dunno, sure seems like Russia would've been attacked by now
| if it weren't for MAD...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I suppose that's true, and humans have regrettably short
| memories it seems. However, Ukraine has 15 nuclear power
| plants IIRC, and WWII-era 'total war' strategies would have
| included their immediate destruction to cripple Ukraine's
| power grid. This was the strategy the USA and allies followed
| in the Gulf War against non-nuclear Iraq:
|
| > "More than 90 percent of Iraq's electrical capacity was
| bombed out of service in the first hours... This comprised
| the country's 11 major electrical power stations and 119
| substations. Existing generating capacity of 9,000 MW in
| December 1990 was reduced to only 340 MW by March 1991."
|
| https://aldeilis.net/english/physical-destruction-iraqs-
| infr...
|
| Bombing functioning nuclear power plants would create a
| radioactive disaster and Russia wasn't willing to do that. By
| that metric, MAD is still in effect to some extent. It's also
| keeping Russia from attacking NATO bases, and NATO from
| attacking Russian bases, at least for now.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _sending the young people off to die in wars_
|
| This does of course happen, but one shouldn't underestimate
| people's own enthusiasm for fighting. A lifetime of peaceful
| toil is immiserating to many, and toil in the service economic
| competition is destructive of liberty and leisure.
| iammjm wrote:
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Just have to admit to being impressed by how succinct and clear
| yet deep this writing was. Easy to read and understand, and
| certainly gets the point across.
| johndhi wrote:
| That's Orwell for ya. Journalism background.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| That's too charitable. It's a rhetorical tool that Orwell uses
| to invoke a sort of comradery with the reader because it lends
| itself to the largely anti-establishment points he tried to get
| across. It's the old Etonian going "I'm one of you guys" which
| has a long tradition in British political rhetoric.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| So?
|
| You say it like it's a bad thing to use rhetoric. But even pg
| has his own sharp set of rhetorical tools.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it's a bad thing to mistake rhetorical skill for
| profundity. The same is true for pg. Most of what he writes
| is trite but he's popular because he's mastered the skill
| of talking to his audience in a tone that has convinced
| them they're all secret geniuses with access to forbidden
| knowledge. If Orwell was alive today, he'd probably have a
| thriving substack.
|
| In reality much of Orwell's output was the result of his
| personal feud with Stalinism, deeply conventional and
| elitist, and not that deep, and it's not surprising that he
| is today probably the most mindlessly-quoted writer around.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Reading the comments below the article (generally a bad idea)
| show that a paragraph of the article seems to have been
| 'redacted'. Sources are quoted but I don't see a reason for the
| change.
|
| "I should like to put it on record that I have never been able
| to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power - till then,
| like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he
| did not matter - I have reflected that I would certainly kill
| him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel
| no personal animosity."
| [deleted]
| throwaway202022 wrote:
| I think he made it a point to write like this. Check out his
| essay "Politics and the English Language".
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| I agree, but I am not surprised.
|
| Today's writing about politics mostly seems much more
| convoluted, bloodless and meaningless.
|
| I don't think that the main reason for that is with the writer
| though.
|
| I think the reason is the "triumph of liberal democracy" or
| capitalism.
|
| We have invented a pretty robust sugar-coat for the interests
| of the powerful.
|
| Nowadays, we even call some of our exploitation schemes "eco-
| friendly".
| pydry wrote:
| tacitusarc wrote:
| I think the driving desire for purpose is not exclusive to
| delivery drivers without girlfriends. Fascism is compelling
| because it seems to fill that void. The power element is simply
| a byproduct. This is also why all ideologies which purport to
| offer meaning struggle to coexist with other ideologies with
| the same goal.
| pydry wrote:
| Purpose is only a component of what fascism is about.
|
| Wielding power - _owed_ power - is certainly not a byproduct
| of fascism. Its the core promise of the ideology to its
| "chosen" people.
| [deleted]
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Interesting the way that you group "not very smart" and
| "girlfriendless" with "delivery rider" as if being a gig worker
| makes you some kind of undesirable loser. Nice casual elitism.
| usrusr wrote:
| Did I miss something? At what point have women stopped
| looking for a higher income man?
| moffkalast wrote:
| <insert any other job that will be also automated in the next
| 15 years>
|
| If a job can be done by a starship robot then it's not much
| of a job then is it? In the short term it's more productive
| and admirable than being unemployed but in the long run it
| won't be much different.
| hef19898 wrote:
| So it seems. Same goes for islamic terrorists and extrimists,
| white power neo nazis and incels. Those guys have way more in
| common than they think, and like.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Why do you inherently ascribe it to "male loser" vs. just
| "loser"?
| planarhobbit wrote:
| Probably because the only thing that can physically stop a
| man is another man, and when men get so unhinged as to
| support ruthless leaders to get what they want, all bets are
| off and you're dealing with a carnage waiting to happen.
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Because patriarchy. To females, being a "loser" was simply
| the status quo; there were no "winners" to aspire towards.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| humbug. just because men have different measures of status
| and success does not mean women don't have some of their
| own
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Imagine erasing such murderous despots as Kathrine the
| Great and Elizabeth Tudor because of their genitalia.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Neither of whom were outside of a single standard
| deviation from the norm in Europe at this time.
|
| I find the GP argument less the convincing, but I believe
| that women haven't been the face of genocide and war
| because of lack of opportunity - But all such are
| historical outliers - regardless of sex.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Queen Victoria killed more people with famine than Stalin
| did.
|
| The only way people can lie to themselves that women
| rulers have less blood on their hands is by not studying
| history.
| sealeck wrote:
| Queen Victoria had a _lot_ less power than Stalin did
| (Stalin had virtually complete control of the entirety of
| the state machinery, whereas Victoria was much more of a
| figurehead, although certainly less so than the British
| monarchy has thankfully become)
| usrusr wrote:
| Those stand-ins for men that didn't have a trace of
| parallels anywhere lower in the hierarchy.
| alangibson wrote:
| How many female dictators or mass shooters are you aware of?
| forgetfulness wrote:
| They've been mostly outside the West.
|
| Tansu Ciller in Turkey, continued state policy of
| suppressing the Kurds
|
| Khertek Anchimaa, Sukhbaataryn Yanjmaa, both chairwomen in
| Soviet satellites in Asia. I'm not aware of atrocities,
| just leading authoritarian regimes.
|
| Isabel Peron in Argentina was democratically elected, but
| acted as a strongwoman in a time of political convolution.
| She was often eclipsed by her far more volatile, openly
| fascist Minister of Social Welfare, Jose Lopez Rega, so you
| can contend how much repression came from each.
|
| Sheikh Hasina, currently active, an electoral autocrat of
| modern times, violently suppresses opposition in
| Bangladesh.
|
| Right now Jeanine Anez is serving jail time in Bolivia,
| following a show trial, the likes of which she was
| arranging for political opposition, that she also
| suppressed with the military. She stomped into the Bolivian
| Government palace with Bible in hand and her goons tearing
| down indigenous banners, promising to bring God back into
| the country.
|
| And well, more, but none leading the great empires, no.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Queen Victoria has a death count much higher than Hitlers.
| Something quite impressive considering the world had a
| quarter the population of 1940 when she started.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Factually correct, but as head of state her direct impact
| on policy was minor - I'm not aware of her dismissing
| governments of whose policies she disapproved, for
| example. Accepting the fruits of imperialistic tyranny is
| morally culpable, but it's also a systemic problem,
| distinctly different from the active application of
| executive power.
| honkler wrote:
| As long as a woman has a womb, she's never the loser.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| A big part of early 20th-c. sociology was specifically
| concerned with their equivalent of "elite overproduction". The
| problem as they saw it was not so much "losers" in anything
| like an objective sense, but aspiring elites who _viewed_
| themselves as oppressed losers out of a misguided sense of
| entitlement.
| pydry wrote:
| "Elite overproduction" is the elites' own term for too many
| disaffected college graduates packing boxes at amazon (or
| equivalent).
|
| Put enough of them to work there and many will radicalize and
| unionize. Having an education and little investment in the
| existing social order makes them a dangerous political
| wildcard.
|
| I doubt the Economist is fretting about incels shooting up
| shopping malls when they use this term. Theyre probably more
| worried about a wave of Gabriel Borics taking the reins of
| power across the world and screwing over investors.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Having an education and little investment in the existing
| social order
|
| The problem back then was the latter. Many of them were not
| interested in productive work of any kind, simply because
| their pre-modern worldview would've equated this with a
| loss of station. Hence the sense of "elite" entitlement and
| ensuing "radicalization".
| pydry wrote:
| It's the combination. People with little investment in
| the existing social order without education dont tend to
| organize themselves sufficiently to be any kind of threat
| by themselves.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| > _aspiring elites who viewed themselves as oppressed losers
| out of a misguided sense of entitlement._
|
| Yep, sounds like the disaffected white males who kill others
| or themselves in droves, despite often having better
| conditions than (less aspirant/entitled) non-white males.
| mbg721 wrote:
| So...despair to the point of suicide is a marker of racial
| privilege??
| [deleted]
| claytongulick wrote:
| If you honestly reflect on your comment, do you see
| anything wrong with it?
|
| When I read it, I got very angry at what I perceive to be
| pointed racism.
|
| But I'd like to try to step away from that and instead of
| lashing out, to understand your perspective more.
|
| Would you mind explaining your thinking a bit more?
| scifibestfi wrote:
| It's just racism. You're not missing anything; there's
| nothing more to it.
| sealeck wrote:
| The point being made (as I understand it) is that given
| that it is true (if you believe the national statistical
| authorities of the relevant western countries) that young
| white men are often substantially better off than young
| men of colour (even when controlling for all non-
| ethnicity relating factors), it is perhaps unexpected
| that the suicide rates for those groups would be higher.
| Adopting the principle of charity, I think we can assume
| that the original poster does not mean to in any way
| minimise the plight of desperate people who are suffering
| from mental health conditions. Instead, I think it is an
| interesting question as to why suicide rates are so much
| higher (and at least in the UK this is not an
| exaggeration - see e.g. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopu
| lationandcommunity/birthsde...) than those of groups
| whose material circumstances are worse.
|
| p.s. I am aware that suicide is not a function solely of
| material circumstance (and material circumstance relative
| to other people's)
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Are you being serious? This is a pretty low grade comment.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >I sometimes wonder if I were not very smart, girlfriendless
| and a delivery rider if it wouldnt appeal to me too.
|
| How do you explain that 45% of votes for Nazis came from Women?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Nazi_Germany#Nazi_fem...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| extensive family policies and benefits during a time of
| extreme economic insecurity in Germany, rather than
| ideological or martial aspects of Nazism. Same reason the
| more conservative, less capitalist, more social and Christian
| wing of the Conservatives in Germany today (the CSU) is more
| popular with women than her larger sister party, the CDU.
| jhgb wrote:
| ...or the 90-ish percent of votes for Henlein in the Sudeten?
| That would mean that at least 80% of all women voted for
| Henlein.
| hef19898 wrote:
| As stated in a sibling comment, the elctions you mention
| are, I assuke, the last communal (!) elections in the
| region before the Sudetenland became part of Germany in
| 1938. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split between men and women,
| and a SdP result of 90%, including 80% of the women
| (curious on were you got those numbers from so...) means
| close to 100% of men voted SdP.
|
| In elections that involved quite a lot of harassment of non
| SdP voters, communal elections in a region in Chekoslovakia
| dominated by a German minority.
|
| Well, I have to brake it to you so: women are by no means
| easier to come by in radical political movements than
| elesewhere.
| jhgb wrote:
| It's a lower bound estimate: Even if _all_ "male losers"
| voted for the SdP, at least 80% of women would have to
| vote for the SdP, too, for SdP to get the results it did.
| So I assume you'd refer to them as "female losers",
| then...
| hef19898 wrote:
| You mean that 55% of pro Nazi votes, and thus a majority,
| were male? And that the NSDAP had, at least when the election
| was free, nowhere near a majority, so a vast majority of
| women actually voted against them? Well, I think because
| women just didn't like em that much.
| sealeck wrote:
| The point that is being made is that the Nazi's electoral
| support base had a _lot_ of women, and the question is "how
| did a party which had a patriarchal ontology of society
| attract support from women". Your comment is missing some
| evidence - the Nazis did not achieve a majority in a number
| of elections, but to conclude that women as a category
| specifically disliked them (given that many men also voted
| against them, likely for much the same reasons as women) is
| not evidenced by this.
| jhgb wrote:
| At least 80% of German women voted for Henlein and SdP in
| 1938 long after Hitler had been in power and known for what
| he was. "Women just didn't like em that much" is pure
| fantasy.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Henlein's SdP, the Nazi-aligned party of the German
| minority in Chekoslovakia, got 90% of the vote of that
| minority in the last elections before the Sudetenland was
| absorbed by Naz-Germany in 1938. All German women never
| did vote for the SdP, basically becaise the SdP was a
| party in Chekoslovakia and not Germany. Also, by 1938,
| elections were no longer free and thus are a bad
| baseline.
|
| So, as a matter of fact, the only German women that ever
| voted for the SdP / Henlein were part of the German
| minority. And even there, women voted less for SdP than
| the overall German community did.
|
| That a German minority would be largely in favor joining
| Germany is propably not a big surprise, is it? And as
| said, even then women voted less for the SdP.
|
| So please stop posting unsubstantiated claims.
| jhgb wrote:
| The May 1938 elections were absolutely free. Where did
| you get that they weren't free?
|
| > And even there, women voted less for SdP than the
| overall German community did.
|
| 80% minimum is "less than overall German community"?
|
| > That a German minority would be largely in favor
| joining Germany is propably not a big surprise, is it?
|
| "Of course they voted for Nazis" is the exact opposite of
| "but they didn't vote for Nazis".
|
| > And as said, even then women voted less for the SdP. So
| please stop posting unsubstantiated claims.
|
| You yourself admit it's not unsubstantiated.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Which elections were free? The once in Germany, which the
| SdP didn't participate in definitely were not.
|
| The communal ebelctions in Sudetenland of 1938? Kind of
| free, but people bot supporting the Nazi allied SdP were
| already harassed and presured to vote SdP.
|
| That under these circumstances women voted less for Nazis
| then men is kind of note-worthy.
|
| But since I do not expect you to argue in good faith or
| to provide some facts, I'll stop it here. The Anschluss
| and the Munich Agreement, along with the history of the
| Sudetenland, is too conolex a topic to discuss in such a
| manner.
| jhgb wrote:
| "Kind of free?" Are you kidding me?
|
| The absolutely laughable claim above was that women were
| not to be blamed for the electoral victories of Nazis.
| The fact that at least 80% of German women in
| Czechoslovakia voted for Nazis in free elections
| demolishes that absurdity.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ok, apparently I can't stop...
|
| Source to the claim that elections in 1938, those we are
| talking about were _not_ free:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20111110054101/http://www.uni
| -du...
|
| And yes, a difference of 20% is quite significant.
|
| Also, German citizens enabled the Nazi, no doubt about
| that. The situation in Czechoslovakia in 1938 is
| different:
|
| - the Sudetenland was dominated by a German minority,
| that German candidates fare better among German voters is
| not a big surprise
|
| - joining Germany wasn't an unpopular policy, not in
| Austria nor in the Sudetenland, that a party favouring
| that policy does well during elections isn't a big
| surprise neither
|
| - those elections envolved a lot of intimidation to vote
| for the SdP, that means better results for the SdP
|
| Just one question, what is it with you trying to pin
| those Henlein election results on women?
| jhgb wrote:
| The Czechoslovak Republic was pretty much the last
| democratic country in the region. To say that those
| elections were "not free" requires a massive amount of
| guts. They were as free as you get in that time and
| place. If 90% of a German minority votes for an openly
| Nazi politician with an openly Nazi agenda, then 90% of
| that German minority are openly Nazi. Case closed,
| period.
|
| > the Sudetenland was dominated by a German minority,
| that German candidates fare better among German voters is
| not a big surprise
|
| Ah, so they _had_ to vote for the Nazi.
|
| > joining Germany wasn't an unpopular policy, not in
| Austria nor in the Sudetenland, that a party favouring
| that policy does well during elections isn't a big
| surprise neither
|
| Ah, I see. "That doesn't count because it was popular." I
| assume you must also be an apologist for illegal Russian
| annexation of parts of Ukraine as well?
|
| > those elections envolved a lot of intimidation to vote
| for the SdP, that means better results for the SdP
|
| Yes, so many years after comparably free German
| elections, Nazis got _even more votes_ in a country with
| less previous Nazi influence, and that means that these
| vastly higher results (2x or so?) were due to
| "intimidation".
|
| > Just one question, what is it with you trying to pin
| those Henlein election results on women?
|
| I'm not "pinning the results on women". I'm pinning them
| on _all Germans_ who voted that way, which does _not_
| exclude German women as some kind of a group repressed by
| some "male loserdom", as claimed above. They were
| complicit in it to pretty much same degree as the male
| part of the population.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You didn't even look at the source, did you? An election
| is not free if one party, the SdP, uses intimidation
| againstvall other candidates. Up to the point that in
| some districs the SdP list eas the only one available.
| The SdP, with help from the Nazis, build up pressure on
| families of DSAP (social democrats) candidates.
| Economically, not supporting the SdP was a death
| sentence. The list goes on. It was the SdP who made those
| elections not free, not Czech authorities.
|
| And despite this climate of fear, women voted, again
| using your numbers, 20% less for the SdP than men.
|
| Nitpick so, those Sudetendeutsche enabled the _local_
| Nazi allies to win a communal election and get to "go
| home to the Reich". They did not enable the Nazi's rise
| to power in Germany.
|
| As far as losers go: The German minority was economically
| desperate in the 30s, unemployment was rampant, industry
| loosing contracts, self determination was deteriorating.
| So yes, in a sense those were losers. Men, apparently,
| felt more like losers than women. Or they lacked the
| courage to not fall in line. The election results clearly
| show that.
|
| I say that as being a direct decendant from those losers,
| and I have no idea how my grandparents voted back then,
| or would have if they were old enough to vote in 1938
| that is. I assume so, that they would have clearly
| favored Henlein, both of them.
| throwaway29389 wrote:
| What you describe is well documented in psychology. A lot
| people who are attracted by power, hierarchy and domination are
| sexually frustrated and more often man than women.
|
| A quick search online yields many reliable publications on the
| topic.
|
| The fact that your comment is being downvoted worries me.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| _" Suppose that Hitler's programme could be put into effect. What
| he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250
| million Germans with plenty of 'living room' (i.e. stretching to
| Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in
| which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of
| young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-
| fodder."_
|
| That bears reading twice.
| fmajid wrote:
| Hitler tried to use copyright law to prevent translations from
| being published, notably in France.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| Interesting point, that lead me to finding this article about
| the French translations. [1] Ironically, until 2016, the German
| government also used copyright to prevent republications of his
| book. [2]
|
| [1]: https://theconversation.com/amp/the-curious-history-of-
| mein-...
|
| [2]: https://france24.com/en/20160108-germany-mein-kampf-
| bookstor...
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Something similar is happening these days too, only they don't
| use copyright but intimidation:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/05/gr...
|
| Meanwhile the actual leadership is busy reviewing the writings
| of a fascist political theorist...
|
| https://www.oxfordhouseresearch.com/xi-jinping-carl-schmitt-...
| yokoprime wrote:
| Dear YouTube, do you know who else tried to copyright claim
| content? Thats right ....
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| He was smart enough to hide what he was. In the same way that
| the American far right _are_ the Nazis and hide it. Just like
| the Nazis were an ideological continuation of the American
| Confederacy, the American right supported Nazi Germany
| (https://time.com/5414055/american-nazi-sympathy-book/), and
| the John Birch Society and offshoots are just Naziism under
| different branding. They are not idiots, either. Hitler wanted
| to fly under the radar as long as possible to achieve his goals
| for an Aryan Empire. Hitler tried to prevent people from seeing
| what he was doing with copyright law, the money behind Heritage
| and various other far right political vehicles uses campaign
| law to the same ends.
|
| They understand leaderless resistance. Note the DHS and Secret
| Service "losing" SMS records. Look at the Oath Keepers. This is
| real and understanding and bringing it out into public is
| critical.
| hellgas00 wrote:
| Any group with unpalatable views to the general public don't
| want to have their views expressed in the open. There isn't
| some grand parallel to be had here. The meetings in Davos are
| never televised despite their influence on the masses.
| Recently the Washington Post Doxxed the LibsOfTikTok account
| creator, who's only crime was posting the views of socially
| liberal people on tiktok. Once your uncommon views become
| mainstream they become ripe for criticism on a mass scale.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| _" Any group with unpalatable views to the general public
| don't want to have their views expressed in the open"_ I
| agree.
|
| I disagree however with your bigger point. The American far
| right in particular has gone through great lengths to be
| hidden. They financial backing is hidden through shell
| corporations and with protections they fought to carve out
| with Citizens United. Davos is widely publicized and the
| press covers it. Have you even heard of the Council for
| National Policy?
|
| What I'm talking about is the subject of academic research,
| and is published
|
| * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.202
| 0.1...
|
| * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.201
| 9.1...
|
| * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2020
| .18...
|
| Right wing views are fine, in the context of following the
| law. I don't care about other people's politics to the
| extent they don't try to impose them on me. Seditious
| conspiracy is another story, and the American right is
| crossing into that territory recently.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Drop me a line when you get time.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Recently the Washington Post Doxxed the LibsOfTikTok
| account creator, who's only crime was posting the views of
| socially liberal people on tiktok.
|
| Puhleeze. Can totally understand the anger at what WaPo
| did, but I call major bullshit on "who's only crime was
| posting the views of socially liberal people on tiktok."
|
| Libs of TikTok regularly took things _egregiously_ out of
| context, like I remember watching a post of hers and
| thinking "damn, that's fucked up", and then went and
| investigated the full source material, which in no way said
| what she intended, and got mad at myself for falling for
| Libs of TikTok's false outrage in the first place. She's
| the poster child for arguing in bad faith.
|
| She also regularly republished obvious troll accounts as
| fact - anyone remember the insane "litter boxes in schools"
| troll posts? And then when called out on the obvious
| bullshit, instead of simply saying "yeah, I was wrong",
| goes into some ridiculous defense of "well, there must be
| some truth there somewhere because the school board didn't
| immediately denounce it."
|
| There are _plenty_ of commenters that accurately, and
| fairly IMO, point out some of the most egregious excesses
| of the progressive left. Libs of TikTok is not one of them.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >I remember watching a post of hers and thinking "damn,
| that's fucked up", and then went and investigated the
| full source material
|
| Any specifics ? what was the actual post and how did LOTT
| misrepresented it ?
|
| >She also regularly republished obvious troll accounts as
| fact
|
| The cat litter thing is the only factual incident where
| LOTT did in fact post false things, you are free to prove
| me wrong with links. Besides the fact that she did in
| fact apologize for it, so you seem to be doing a fair bit
| of misrepresentation yourself, it actually kinda proves
| her point nonetheless. The kind of people LOTT makes fun
| of are so far out there that this is the kind of thing
| you would believe they would do. Like imagine if I told
| you "Mainland China makes its citizen report dissenting
| journalists on social media", regardless of whether its
| true or not (I just made it up, I have no idea), you will
| believe it because it's the kind of thing you imagine
| Mainland China does to its citizens, and there is plenty
| of precedents of it doing far worse things.
|
| Regardless of how this incident happened or developed, I
| find it quite telling that this the only incident LOTT
| detractors seems to reach for when they need an example
| of her supposed misinformation. A twitter account that
| posts nearly daily or more since march 2021, and the only
| thing you can find is 1 post. Because news organization
| and nearly every single source of information out there
| totally doesn't make mistakes ever.
|
| The truth is that, just like GP said and apparently
| upsetted HN progressives too hard, progressives (and most
| people, but we're talking about progressives in this
| case) hate to have a mirror held up to their faces. They
| see the ugliness and the raw insanity and think that it
| must be in the mirror itself ("She's MISREPRESENTING
| us"), there is no polite way of telling them that mirror
| is just a neutral reflection.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| anonu wrote:
| plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
| sk8terboi wrote:
| Barrera wrote:
| > But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if
| it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which
| one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which
| is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches ... The fact
| is that there is something deeply appealing about him.
|
| A commenter here (and one on the original article) has noted that
| the part being elided appears to be the following:
|
| > I should like to put it on record that I have never been able
| to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power--till then, like
| nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did
| not matter--I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I
| could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal
| animosity.
|
| The full review is, apparently, here:
|
| https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html
|
| That this is the only elision seems very strange. The passage is
| crucial to understanding how Hitler was able to do what he did.
| Orwell is expressing his admiration for Hitler's deep
| understanding of human nature while at the same time despising
| its application. It's a lesson too hard-won and too relevant
| today to be brushed aside.
|
| Still, I can't help but think that Orwell, who gave us the
| Ministry of Truth and its capacity for historical engineering at
| scale, would be highly amused.
| fumblebee wrote:
| I can't help but think one of the most appealing aspects of
| Hitler would've been his ability to deliver passionate
| speeches.
|
| For example, I have no idea what he's saying in this speech
| [1], but the tone at which he delivers it is undeniably quite
| mesmerising, especially when compared to the tone of, say, Joe
| Biden [2].
|
| In a time where radio ruled, it's hard not to think he wouldn't
| stand out, irregardless of the content contained in his
| speeches.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ3N_2r6R-o
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c6R6nllpsc
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yeah charisma is one of those things that can draw people in.
| Look at many cult leaders too. Charles Manson often went on
| just entirely nonsensical tirades, but could sound almost
| profound while speaking them. Jim Jones speeches have a
| similar angry rallying cry type of feel.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| watwut wrote:
| Hitler was trying to make Germans more violent and
| aggressive. He wanted them to feel under threat.
|
| Biden is not planning genocide and is not trying to raise
| level of violence in America.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| They would have been more open to it because Weimar Germany
| absolutely sucked, to put it lightly.
|
| You lose the world war, your currency hyperinflates away,
| and now in places like Berlin mothers and even their
| prepubescent daughters are selling sex as a combo-deal to
| get money to survive, being taxied around to strange men,
| like Uber Eats for sex.
|
| Should these conditions have been embraced tolerantly and
| lovingly or promised to be aggressively corrected?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| A historical survey of political personality cults, from Martin
| Luther to Mao, is _The True Believer_ by Eric Hoffer, the
| "longshoreman philosopher":
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eric+hoffer+the+true+believer&t=ip...
| simonh wrote:
| >The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about
| him.
|
| I think the magic ingredient is utter, palpable self
| conviction. Complete unwavering dedication to your own
| rightness, regardless of any counter argument, any
| prevarication, even evidence to the contrary, is intoxicating.
| You don't need to argue, you don't need to convince, you don't
| need reasons, you're just right by definition. The simplicity
| and lack of complexity is intoxicating.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| a.k.a. reality distortion field
| simonh wrote:
| If that's a Jobs reference, I don't think so. He talked
| about hiring smart people so they could tell him what to
| do, owned his mistakes, changed course when things didn't
| work as expected. He said making mistakes was good as long
| as you learned something. Yes he could be an arse, but he
| was no Donald Trump.
| benreesman wrote:
| I think the grievance husbandry is part of the cocktail too.
|
| Obviously if your message is too complicated you're going to
| lose people, but if you're operating at an effective
| complexity level, you still need a story to tell.
|
| "You've been very badly treated by not rich people, rather
| someone else" sells in job lots even today.
| simonh wrote:
| Good point. Resentment is the root of all evil. You create
| a narrative where you're actually the real victims, and
| then that justifies 'retaliation' at almost any scale or
| severity. It even justifies lies or distortion because it's
| in the service of a 'greater truth'.
| watwut wrote:
| He was highly charizmatic and could adjust the way he talked
| to audience very well. Both in personal encounters and in
| public speeches. He would told you what you wanted to hear
| and project exact kind of personality he needed to project.
| zwkrt wrote:
| On a smaller scale, this is how people are able to build
| fiefdoms inside of companies, become successful local
| religious leaders, start cults, and maintain abusive domestic
| relationships.
|
| Strong conviction is like a magical spell because it
| literally changes reality. Most people, myself included, are
| not really wired to be able to resist a constant force which
| is informing them of what "reality" is (not of its actual
| constituent components, but the framework of meaning and
| importance). This is normally a natural part of being human
| and living in society. We speak the language of the people
| around us, make the same foods, use the same body language.
| We think of society as the totality of what there is, but in
| reality it is providing us only a finite number of infinite
| options.
|
| But every once in a while someone comes along who sense of
| reality is so self possessed that they create a force field
| around them. They change the set of available options for
| assigning meaning . Anything that falls into their event
| horizon is twisted and mangled by their totally consistent
| and unchangeable worldview, and it is contagious. If that
| person also happens to be charming, it's all over.
|
| The only way that I know not to fall into these kinds of
| traps is to regularly practice intentionally subverting or
| rejecting the norms around me. Not all of them, just the ones
| that don't serve me. If I'm used to evaluating and
| potentially rejecting common practices in my culture (both
| societal and interpersonal), Then I know that if someone in
| my life is living in such a warp field that I will notice it
| since I am practiced in resisting its pull.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| leoc wrote:
| His "Wells, Hitler and the World-State" is probably better:
| https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/english/e_whws
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The top comment points out that a part is redacted, removing "I
| should like to put it on record that I have never been able to
| dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power - till then, like
| nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did
| not matter - I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if
| I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no
| personal animosity.". This Gutenberg version appears to include
| that line: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600051h.html
| swayvil wrote:
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Note, this review is from March 1940. At that point in time,
| WWII was 6 months old. Germany and the Soviet Union annexed
| land from their neighbors, and in response a number of
| countries declared war.
|
| I suspect he would have even stronger feelings a few months
| later when the Air Battle of Britain begins... or when the mass
| murder of jews in concentration camps is discovered in June
| 1942.
| swayvil wrote:
| greatpostman wrote:
| Quotes from Churchill and general patton paint a very
| different picture than we are told
| swayvil wrote:
| hef19898 wrote:
| Wasn't Patton a PTSD denying, proto wheraboo who thought he
| fought the wrong enemy? One that was removed from Getmany
| due his treatment and view of displaced jews?
|
| As with all WW2 generals, I would take his quotes, and
| memoires, with a ton of salt.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of
| him_
|
| Hard to get more black and white than that.
| swayvil wrote:
| I would certainly kill him, and I also feel great animosity
| towards him.
|
| That would be blacker and whiter.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Gp is referring to the redaction, not the language.
| [deleted]
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| >[...] at this moment 'Better an end with horror than a horror
| without end' is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the
| man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional
| appeal."
|
| Orwell's attribution of the quote here seems to be incorrect.
|
| While it's true that Hitler used the saying in his speeches [1],
| it predates him by many decades, and is often attributed to
| Ferdinand von Schill (the guy who unsuccessfully rebelled against
| Napoleon). [2][3]
|
| [1]: https://comicism.tripod.com/341108.html
|
| [2]:
| https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lieber_ein_Ende_mit_Schreck...
|
| [3]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6564585-better-an-end-
| with-...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Thank you! I was surprised to hear that Hitler coined such a
| phrase, so it's great to see it attributed properly.
| mdtancsa wrote:
| I am surprised no one has mentioned Paul Bloom's "Sweet Spot". He
| looks at the psychology behind chosen pain / suffering / struggle
| (e.g. running a marathon )
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/56922622-the-sweet-sp...
| emacsen wrote:
| [deleted]
| davedx wrote:
| Whoah way to paint us all with a broad brush.
|
| Think the downfall of Labour's last leader shows how patently
| untrue this thinking is.
| ixtli wrote:
| Oh come on. You know well that the interparty collaboration
| to take down Corbyn was far from due to earnest concern about
| Jews safety. On the contrary, they are once again using us as
| a rhetorical cudgel to achieve their ends.
| smcl wrote:
| I'm still shocked that nothing really came of the report
| that the anti-Corbyn activities within the Labour party. It
| should've rocked the party to the core and caused heads to
| roll.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Which means your institution has been captured.
| smcl wrote:
| If you're going to make a sweeping generalisation about a
| religion or ethnicity that "Brits" (whatever that means) have a
| weird negative fixation on, it would be Muslims not Jews.
| There's an ongoing moral panic kicked off by September 11 (and
| inflamed further by the Tube bombings) that gets eyeballs on
| news stories and ballots in boxes. It's stupid, it's hateful
| and I've never been into it but it's something that's in the
| public conscience and (through "Prevent") in law too.
|
| Probably the worst thing you could say about the overwhelming
| majority of the population's views on Judaism or Jews is that
| they're ignorant of it. I was completely unaware of the
| negative stereotypes some people have of Jewish people (or even
| things like - which names were more Jewish than others) until I
| was on the internet and came into regular contact with
| Americans who _were_ aware of it. My views until then were
| roughly "Judaism is sorta like Christianity but older, and
| Hannukah occurs around christmas time and involves candles".
| After that I thought the same, but also "and Americans don't
| really like Jews". Obviously that's not correct, but I wanted
| to share the experience of one of the "Brits" you're casually
| dismissing as anti-semitic.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Similarly that Slavs are excluded from the holocaust in the US
| speaks volumes about the culture.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Would you mind explaining more what you mean? I'm half Jewish,
| so I feel confused because I didn't get any antisemitic vibes
| from it at all. But I wasn't raised in Jewish culture so I am
| still trying to learn about these aspects.
|
| It sounded like maybe you're saying that since hitler's focus
| was to eradicate my ancestors, Orwell should have at least
| mentioned that. But I don't understand why it's related to
| Orwell's point -- his thesis is that Hitler was a profoundly
| appealing leader.
| josh_fyi wrote:
| Not antisemitic, just that it ignores Jews, who were Hitler's
| bete noire. There is a tendency to ignore the fact that Jews
| were a special target and say "Hitler did bad things to
| people." (The USSR was especially bad in this.) Kind of like
| "All Lives Matter" -- a fine slogan, but sometimes (not
| always) it holds a willful ignorance of specific suffering.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| True, but recall that the holocaust hadn't happened at the
| time Orwell was writing and the extent of conditions for
| Jews inside Germany wasn't fully known to the degree that
| it is now. In 1940 it probably looked as if Hitler had
| leveraged antisemitism to get elected and consolidate
| power, but then moved on from oppressing minority groups to
| a broader program of international aggression.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| But why do we need to be mentioned simply to be mentioned?
| I don't understand why it was a bad thing that Orwell
| didn't mention Jews in this essay. The essay was about
| hitler's appeal as a leader, not his specific goals.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| The world is completely unaware of concentration camps at
| this point in the war. It literally just started 6 months
| before his review.
| detaro wrote:
| Persecution of Jews in Germany didn't exactly start with
| the concentration camps... By 1940 it had been going on
| for quite a bit.
| ogogmad wrote:
| I'm Jewish and I'm tired of this interminable grievance-
| mongering. He should've mentioned the Romani and Slavs too in
| this short essay, right?
|
| The UK fought Hitler.
| [deleted]
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Not just Brits, but Europeans in general. Consider the Dreyfus
| affair, which happened in developed, _La Belle Epoque_ France.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes antisemitism was widespread in Europe at the time, not
| only in Germany.
| SecuredMarvin wrote:
| I wonder no more why my people, after Habeck announcing more than
| a uncomfortable winter, are united in supporting the people of
| Ukraine. He offered suffering for a cause. While the morale is
| quite different, the social mechanics repeat.
| yomkippur wrote:
| He might have decided so but the people don't share his cause.
| They are suffering with the heatwave and will also freeze
| during winter. Time will tell just how far his cause is going
| to last (it wont)
|
| People in the West are quick to forget that fight against
| Nazism wasn't unanimous. Many in America supported it. Many in
| Western Europe supported it.
|
| It was only when there was economic interests at stake they
| jumped in the war. Not to save people from Nazism (although
| this is what their decendants have been taught in schools) but
| to protect their own interest.
|
| Very few occasions countries enter into a war based on some
| goodwill or emotion. It just so happens that a common enemy and
| common goal appear enough to threaten their selfish interests
| that momentarily, countries rally around it.
|
| I can already see public opinions sliding against Zelensky here
| in the West. People's livelihood is impacted and not everybody
| feels that they need to suffer for a foreign country that they
| are far away from. For countries who border with Russia its a
| different story.
| jokabrink wrote:
| But its a lot more than just about the "need to suffer for a
| foreign country", isn't it? Its about the geopolitical
| interest of Europe. To be dependent on an autocratic foreign
| power (in this case gas) shows the problems.
|
| For example, if Russia takes over Ukraine, it would make
| Russia by far the largest exporter of wheat in the world
| (from 22% to 33%) (second: US 16%) [1]. They would gain
| additional power in other market commodities like corn,
| sunflower, steel, etc.
|
| Russia is already playing with their resource exports, I
| expect them to use it more whether or not they managed to
| achieve their goals regarding Ukraine. And other partnerships
| are building and increasing too like BRICS, CSTO, SCO.
|
| Step back and think for a second: Countries staying neutral
| because they are dependent on the aggressors export resources
| are exactly that type of influence that superpowers like to
| have.
|
| Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_
| by_wheat_exp...
| yomkippur wrote:
| Yes but if they piss off Putin arent they already forgone
| that scenario? It's guaranteed that Russia will target
| countries that helped Ukraine by weaponizing its captured
| commodities. So it puzzles me why rest of Europe would do
| this because NATO and Russia is NOT going to engage in WW3
| like so many people have you believe.
|
| Europe will go on its own way while experiencing shortfalls
| and Russia will go on theirs. They both suffer but in
| different ways. Europe's middle class will pay the price
| for this war. Russia's entire population pays the price.
| The United States benefit massively here 1) destroying an
| old enemy 2) several new customers to buy their energy and
| food supplies from.
|
| I think whats clear is BRICS emerging as its own
| sustainable barter economy of sorts (its sure as hell not
| going to be able to push its reserve currency beyond its
| own borders) with some onramp/offramp to precious metals
| that becomes impossible to track when melted down and
| cleared in second/third tier merchants.
|
| Nobody wins from this multi-polar world order, its really
| bad for the global economy and the middle class suddenly
| finds itself unable to afford the lifestyle that they
| enjoyed not too long ago. (ex. PS5 is prohibitvely
| expensive, think back to PS1, PS2 how affordable and liquid
| the supply was).
|
| This is the new norm, get ready for even more expensive
| stuff you took for granted. Eventually it will cause a
| deflation as boomers wallets dry up as their pension is in
| limbo. The biggest losers will be the MZ generation.
| [deleted]
| ogogmad wrote:
| I consider it a good thing in this case.
|
| Germany could try rationing its natural gas to ensure that
| everyone gets at least a minimum amount. Could that work?
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Orwell omitted a few details: Hitler never had a majority in the
| Reichstag/german parliament - he benefited from the enmity
| between the Social democrats and the Communist. I mean a popular
| front, like in France of 1936 would have stopped them. The German
| soial dems and communist were mortal enemies, because the social
| dems shot a lot of communists in the aftermath of the Kapp
| putsch.
|
| Also Hitler had the massive support of German industrialists,
| they bailed him out in 1932, and both Thyssen and Schlacht urged
| Hindenburg to appoint Hitler. They all thought that they would
| control Hitler, von Papen certainly thought so.
|
| Also the social dems were very passive (to say the least). Von
| Papen dissolved the Prussian state, where they social dems were
| the government - that was the state with the largest police force
| in the country. What did the social dems do? They went to court,
| when they should have called a general strike (they did exactly
| that during the Kapp putsch, some thirteen years earlier)
|
| Hitler wasn't acting alone, I wonder why Orwell didn't mention
| that. I think Orwell didn't like the idea of a popular front,
| because of his negative experience with the communists during the
| Spanish civil war.
| dalbasal wrote:
| IDK if I'd call that an "omission." There was a political
| system, and Hitler came to power within it. France _still_ has
| a political norm of banding together to defeat populist far
| right parties, and an electoral system that lends to it.
|
| The fact remains that Fascism, Hitler, and Nazism _was_ popular
| and that was key to achieving power . This is essay is about
| that. Why, despite promising burdens and hardship, was Fascism
| popular. It just isn 't about electoral tactics, negative
| politics or such. I'm sure he would have conceded the point
| that any given elections could have been determined by such
| tactics.
|
| I agree with Orwell. The tactical-electoral subject isn't
| really that interesting, even if it is/was consequential. The
| point about promising voters burdens, hardship, & "military
| virtues" is interesting.
|
| For example, I think this gives us clues about Russian
| communism's decline (also in the West, ideologically) after
| Stalin.
|
| ^Also I doubt Orwell was against "popular front politics." (a)
| I've read a lot of Orwell and can't recall any statement that
| suggests this and (b) Orwell himself volunteered in a communist
| militia against fascism. He himself was a socialist. If you're
| willing to join a communist militia to fight fascism, surely
| you'd be OK with joined ticket.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > For example, I think this gives us clues about Russian
| communism's decline (also in the West, ideologically) after
| Stalin.
|
| The decline only started well after that, even after the 1968
| Prague Spring debacle. Only a few of the faithful in the west
| were put off by it.
|
| I'd put it at late 1970s, maybe really sinking in with
| Poland's Solidarnosc turmoil around 1980.
| helge9210 wrote:
| > he benefited from the enmity between the Social democrats and
| the Communist
|
| To support Hitler Stalin ordered German Communists to not join
| forces with Social Democrats.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| When? In 1918 when the KPD split from the SPD? Or in 1920
| when the SPD and the Freikorps shot all of their leaders
| dead? Perhaps when the death of those leaders and the ensuing
| infighting allowed the Comintern to take influence? No,
| because Stalin wasn't in power when the SPD and KPD became
| literally mortal enemies. You don't join forces with people
| that gave the order to kill your friends. Pretending Stalin
| was the reason they were alienated is ridiculous - the
| alienation predated him taking power.
| pessimizer wrote:
| More like the center-left SPD failed to respond to the
| depression well (i.e. govern properly) and made alliances of
| convenience with the right and the Nazis to marginalize and
| ban Communists along with anyone else on the left.
|
| That's how it's going to happen in the US, too: The governing
| center/center-left party expends all of its effort attacking
| the left, and becomes completely ineffective at governance
| through incompetence, corruption and self-dealing, losing the
| support of the voters. The far-right (rising in popularity)
| eats into the center-right through direct targeting of
| individuals and the rewards of conversion to a movement
| currently rising in popularity. Eventually a charismatic far-
| right speaker starts giving popular speeches indicting the
| corruption and incompetence of the governing center, probably
| during a deep economic crisis, and insisting that this
| corruption and incompetence is disarming the country in the
| face of the real existential threat that everyone from the
| far-right to the center-left agrees upon, which is the left.
| And the left is actually covertly foreign-based, funded by
| powerful Jews and enemy governments, so their opinions are
| actually a form of invasion. So we need to cleanse this
| country of the traitors, then take the fight to the countries
| that supported them.
| [deleted]
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| I think I agree with you.
|
| I don't think that the integrity of elections and democracy are
| the main point of this essay.
|
| Orwell wrote a lot about authoritarianism, and as you say,
| "communism" was the prime example at the time.
|
| What he hints at here is not only the fragility of democracy.
| It's about the fragility of civilization.
|
| It's about the "will to power" as defined by Nietzsche, and the
| power of belief systems, as well as the primal underpinnings of
| our society.
|
| This essay makes me think about the authoritarian side of
| capitalism, "freedom" (to take what you can), slavery and many
| more topics.
|
| My takeaway is that our contemporary masquerade of
| "capitalism=freedom=human rights" is nothing but an illusion of
| a select few.
|
| But that's what makes Orwell great, everybody reads him
| differently.
|
| I'm well aware that Orwell is favored for "anti-
| socialist"/"pro-freedom" stances and I have read 1984 and
| Animal farm.
| yucky wrote:
| Slavery pre-dates capitalism. Slavery is more a product of
| feudalism. In fact, it was the capitalist successes of the
| northern states in the US that drove the defeat of the
| southern slave states.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I must disagree.
|
| Orwell is not the bible, or an if-by-whiskey politician.
| Everybody reads him differently because they're combining
| hearsay, random quotes and attributions.
|
| If you read Orwell's essays or articles directly, he's
| extremely clear and unambiguous. The fact that people think
| Orwell agrees with them despite having polar opposite views
| is a testament to people's laziness, not Orwell's
| interpretability.
|
| On capitalism as a belief system, Orwell was a critic. Not
| because of freedom, or lack thereof... but because he thought
| capitalist politics didn't offer enough hope. I can't find
| the quote but somewhere he goes into Socialist, Communist &
| even Fascist promises of a better future. Capitalism offered
| a very modest amount of hope on a very long timeline.
| Conservatism offered none, which is why (according to Orwell)
| Fascism succeeded it.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Thanks for the reply.
|
| I have read Down&Out and the odd essay in addition to the
| ones I mentioned.
|
| I have heard the shortened trope "Orwell was a socialist,
| even fought in the Spanish civil war, then became a vocal
| critique and disillusioned socialist" often enough so that
| my reply partly argued against this simplification.
|
| There's some hard-to-explain background for my comments:
|
| 1) The above-mentioned simplification: I grew up with
| socialism and fascism equally being put under the
| "totalitarianism" umbrella in media and education. In
| German we call it "Hufeisentheorie". There's probably some
| truth to this. But I incrasingly feel that for capitalism
| to appear "human", an exponentially growing amount of
| available natural resources and slave labour is needed.
|
| 2) The post-war generation of which i.e. my parents were a
| part; they were in a way the undertakers of mainstream
| leftism.
|
| 3) You hint at it: Fascism and capitalism tend to go hand
| in hand. We have just been brainwashed to forget about it.
| See US foreign policy in Latin America.
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>I have heard the shortened trope "Orwell was a
| socialist, even fought in the Spanish civil war, then
| became a vocal critique and disillusioned socialist"
|
| I don't think the last part is true. ASAIK, Orwell
| remained a socialist all his life. I don't think he was
| disillusioned, because he wasn't a kool aid kind of guy
| at any point.
|
| Orwell died young, before the cold war so he didn't
| really weigh in on that dialogue. The terms and cliches
| we tend to use came after he died.
|
| In _my_ opinion fascism courted, supported and leaned on
| capital _ists_ , not really capital _ism_. The
| ideological view of capitalism (in the Rand
| /Hayek/Neoliberalism sense) was still new ATT.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Yes that all makes sense to me.
|
| In hindsight I made some vague points partly because I
| misread your original comment.
|
| I am myself annoyed by some popular misconceptions about
| Orwell and his work.
|
| I had read some nuanced articles about him as well and
| they didn't all paint him in the way that I put in
| quotes.
|
| Regarding capitalism and fascism, I misleadingly wrote
| "you hint at it", but maybe we disagree here at least
| partly.
| baybal2 wrote:
| aqsalose wrote:
| True, Orwell has a worldview (though it evolves over time)
| and it connects his thoughts if you pick up a collection of
| his essays and study them systematically. But one does not
| need to agree with everything to find agreement with some
| particular elements and thoughts.
| gumby wrote:
| > The fact that people think Orwell agrees with them
| despite having polar opposite views is a testament to
| people's laziness, not Orwell's interpretability.
|
| This is common and always amuses me. My favorite is Adam
| Smith, beloved of the most demonstrably ardent self-
| described "capitalists" who would be shocked and repulsed
| by what he actually wrote.
|
| Sometimes this property is considered a feature, not a bug,
| in particular by Marxists and religious leaders, and
| doubtless by many more.
|
| As it happens I really love Eric Blair's writing even when
| I disagree with him.
| gumby wrote:
| > Also Hitler had the massive support of German industrialists,
| they bailed him out in 1932, and both Thyssen and Schlacht
| urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler.
|
| From the essay: "It is easy to say that at one stage of his
| career he was financed by the heavy industrialists, who saw in
| him the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists. They
| would not have backed him, however, if he had not talked a
| great movement into existence already. "
| watwut wrote:
| That is true, but also that tend to be true in multi-party
| voting system in general. Having over 50% is not routine at
| all. Generally, the leading party must make coalition of some
| sort.
|
| I think that if you want to attack legitimacy of that election,
| going through the street violence and voter intimidation Nazi
| party produced is closer to mark.
|
| Also communists were actual communists alien with Russian
| communist party. And news of purges going on Russia previously
| were available in Germany. Socialist party was the pro-
| democracy party on Germany. That is not compatible with party
| that takes their instructions from Stalin as communists were.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| By the time of the KPD-SPD split, Stalin was not in power. In
| fact, the KPD split from the SPD in 1918, when the USSR was
| still being born. And far from taking orders from the
| Bolsheviks, they actually had a fair amount of influence on
| them. The idea that they split because the meek SPD was
| afraid of the Stalinists is revisionist history, and the SPD
| itself at various points in its history was far from above
| purges and political violence
|
| The reason the KPD split from the SPD is that the SPD
| supported WW1 and the KPD were against the war. The reason
| they became mortal enemies was because in 1920 the SPD and
| the Freikorps killed many KPD members, from then on there was
| no hope at reconciliation.
| masswerk wrote:
| What is often forgotten, by the early 1930s, the split
| between SPD and KPD (which dates back to Marx and Engels
| and the condemnation of the "Bernsteinian revisionism" on
| the one hand and the SPD not being a revolutionary party
| after 1903) had become an abyss: to the KPD the SPD was a
| "social-fascist movement" and the SPD had adopted the
| three-arrows symbol, which symbolized an equidistance to
| fascism, communism and monarchism. There was probably not
| much room for a scenario of united forces.
| watwut wrote:
| Stalin took leadership of the country in 1924 and lost it
| when he died much much later.
|
| By the time of elections of 1933, Russia was full
| totalitarian and that is what communist party wanted for
| Germany.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yes, and the SPD banned anti-war socialists and
| communists in 1918, and then ordered to have leaders of
| the KPD shot in 1920. As you surely know, 1920 is before
| 1924. The point being, the KPD and the SPD were
| irrevocably alienated from each other past the point of
| no return before Stalin took power.
| rr808 wrote:
| Does anyone know why Hitler hated Stalin and communism so much?
| The article alludes to how Russia was always the main target, and
| he was friends with industrialists, but I've never seen a good
| reason why.
| throwaway202022 wrote:
| Because Jews are the primary enemy in Nazi ideology, and the
| idea of communism being a Jewish plot was an existing
| antisemitic belief well before Hitler was a known entity in
| Germany's political scene:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Bolshevism
| [deleted]
| scifibestfi wrote:
| Dictators hate other dictators. There can only be 1 winner and
| Stalin was his main competitor.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Hitler was a nationalist, the Communists were
| internationalists. Communists wanted to improve the lot of
| people, Hitler wanted to improve the lot of the German people.
| A random German could become a Communist, but a random
| Communist would never spontaneously turn into a German.
|
| So the same reason why all kings hate universal
| philosophies/religions. They bypass border defenses.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| How does that fit with the Nazis forming alliances with
| Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Thailand and even China at
| one point? Hitler agreeing to a pact with the Grand Mufti of
| Jerusalem to further German nationalism in the Near East?
| Then they had Muslim SS officers that had to stop training
| multiple times a day to pray to Mecca. Because Hitler was so
| anti-internationalist, the Nazis were eager to host the
| Olympics and invite people from around the world to show off
| their regime? What were they doing in Africa, were they
| defending the interests of the German state in the Sahara?
|
| Don't be blinded by their propaganda, both Stalinism and
| Hitlerism and any totalitarian ideology is inherently
| internationalist. Because they tolerate nothing beside and
| beyond their own ideology, so they end up getting involved
| with the entire world always. It's about control and these
| regimes do not stop until their are either defeated of
| control the entire world.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Communism was the main competitor with Nazi ideology. They
| offered competing solutions to the problems of the downtrodden
| and destitute population. As the main competing vision, it was
| also the main threat to nazi success.
| gvv wrote:
| He probably saw what happened during the Holodomor
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| He'd either not care, or actively cheer for it. More
| _Lebensraum_!!
| visiblink wrote:
| From Hitler's writing, it is clear that he despised
| socialism/communism because socialist ideologues promoted class
| antagonism and internationalism, both of which undermined the
| unity of the German people.
|
| Of course, at a practical political level, leftists were also
| his rivals for the votes of the dissatisfied in inter-war
| Germany.
| Konohamaru wrote:
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| > [...] because in his own joyless mind he feels it with
| exceptional strength, knows that human beings don'tonly want
| comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and,
| in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently,
| want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and
| loyalty-parades.
|
| One wonders whether this desire for struggle, self-sacrifice,
| drums, flags and loyalty-parades is not a right/left thing, and
| whether the consequences of indulging it are independent of the
| stories we tell about it.
|
| There's a deeper cause for it though I think. The civilization
| from which I write this comment offers comfort, safety, and
| hygiene and really everything you could possibly imagine, so long
| as you don't challenge its weaknesses and falsehoods. There is a
| (very partisan) quote from UK physician and author Theodore
| Dalrymple that captures it well, " _When people are forced to
| remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or
| even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves,
| they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to
| obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to
| become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus
| eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is
| easy to control._."
|
| The urge for those drums, flags and parades is a desire for the
| dignity that the comforts don't provide, and in the fascist case,
| it was also an opposite reaction against the indignity of
| precieved comfort and lies. My pet theory about the nazis was
| what made them so explicitly and sickeningly cruel was they were
| compensating for the psychosexual shame and humiliation, not only
| from war reparations, but from a generation of mostly fatherless
| boys (post-WW1) raised in the culture of the Wiemar Republic.
| They envied the masculine eros of Mussolini's fascism and
| directly adopted its aestheics combined with a new occult
| mythology to compensate for the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian
| empire, and with the promise of largely ethno-socialist policies.
| Jews in Germany were not total outsiders at the time (though
| there is no denying anti-semitism before NSDAP, Europe's historic
| anti-semitism practically defines it), many Jews having fought
| for the country and Kaiser, but nazi propaganda against them was
| all about scapegoating them for the liberalism (so-called
| "degeneracy") of Wiemar, and crucially, for the psychosexual
| shame of a generation of German boys who would eventually join
| the nazi party. Add freely available meth (pervitin) to the mix,
| and the dictator had everything he needed.
|
| This doesn't excuse or explain at all, but rather, asks whether
| these factors have any predictive power, where if you add these
| ingredients together again, do we get a similar result, and how
| do we know the reaction is occurring as predicted without it
| becoming a chain reaction throughout the whole system? It seems
| like an urgent contemporary question to me.
| ncr100 wrote:
| >[my civilization offers support] so long as you don't
| challenge its weaknesses and falsehoods
|
| Yowch. To be clear, just challenging it results in the blanket
| ripped from one's bed? Romania?
| nabla9 wrote:
| > clumsy writing of Mein Kampf,
|
| Mein Kampf is clumsy but offers real insights into propaganda. He
| really thought about it. He clearly understands the value of
| propaganda in the war: _" propaganda demands the most skilled
| brains that can be found."_
|
| When Hitler talks mass psychology and propaganda, he says
| something very insightful even if it's inconvenient to hear for
| some. He calls masses feminine. When he talks to his followers,
| he talks to a beast that knows to be emotional and irrational.
| Rational reasoning is useless. Just emotion, repetition, never
| backing down, or admitting mistake.
| [deleted]
| mbg721 wrote:
| Was Hitler particularly good at that, or did he just have a
| desperate audience? The usual downfall that people point to
| with autocratic governments is that their leaders think they're
| in touch with their citizens but are really a million miles
| away.
| nabla9 wrote:
| He was at least good at it.
|
| His chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels was really good.
| Goebbels made propaganda that was way subtler than Hitlers.
| Nazi cinema created expensive movies under Goebbels until the
| end. Nobody sees them today but they are very subtle and
| clever in a way they build a sentiment. Not at all like the
| short clips they show you.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolberg_(film)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opfergang
| mbg721 wrote:
| I appreciate the added perspective; the Anglospheric view
| is often either "Look at those monsters, we would never do
| that" or "If only the German language had the concept of
| humor, they wouldn't have taken that guy seriously."
| nabla9 wrote:
| If you want to see a American movie that has similar feel
| to the Nazi wartime propaganda movies, watch "Acto of
| Valor" (2012) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1591479/ It's
| Navy Seal action movie, and not a very good movie
| (propaganda rarely is) but it has the "dark undertone"
| where individuals, enemies, heroism, duty and sacrifice
| are presented in the same way as it was in the Nazi
| propaganda.
| watwut wrote:
| By all accounts, he was good at it. Nazi party was not the
| only rough party fighting for dominance over audience. There
| were multiple of them. When Hitler joined, they were rather
| small party. Hitler as a speaker was drawing crowds, but he
| was not the only guy trying to get attention. They got large
| under his leadership.
| Coolerbythelake wrote:
| Obviously the parallels to what we're living through with our
| last president are plain and should be alarming. The ridiculous
| idea that the secret service sms messages aren't available
| somewhere from the NSA or some other agency is a joke. We are in
| the midst of a slow moving coup and as long as 45 remains free,
| spewing his vitriol and handing out cash to his devotees
| unimpeded we should be very concerned.
| [deleted]
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Ooh! I just read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". In it, he
| describes how he and his wife almost got into serious trouble for
| having a copy with them in Barcelona. Orwell had joined a
| loyalist political faction as a volunteer to help fight Franco's
| fascists, which were backed by Germany. However, communists took
| over the Catalan government, using Orwell's party as a scapegoat
| to gain power. They started rounding them all up as traitors.
| Thousands were put in jail or summarily executed.
|
| The police came to search Orwell's wife's hotel room in the
| middle of the night and found a copy of Mein Kampf, which given
| the circumstances, was incredibly incriminating. But apparently
| they found other political books and luckily for her, decided it
| wasn't incriminating. I have no idea how.
|
| I thought the book was enlightening and Orwell really is an
| amazing writer. I lived in Spain for a few years and visited most
| of the areas he went to, which made the whole book even more
| vivid. Orwell was sooooo lucky to escape the country. Just a week
| after he and his wife left, formal charges were brought against
| them as traitors in Spain.
|
| By the way, I have no idea how I went this long without knowing
| it (maybe I forgot) but George Orwell is a pen name. I was
| reading the Wikipedia page about his wife and I was like, "Who
| the hell is Eric Blair?"
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| [deleted]
| plazmatic wrote:
| helloworld11 wrote:
| >Probably, in Hitler's own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents
| no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in
| Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention
| of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out,
| England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the
| more easily bribed of the two. But Russia's turn will come when
| England is out of the picture--that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees
| it.
|
| Unsurprisingly, Orwell here was wonderfully prescient, even as
| many contemporaries failed to see that this exact plan was the
| case.
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human
| nature with this bit:
|
| "The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is
| usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for
| the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won't do."
|
| The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with
| construction workers or something, but I can't deny enjoying war
| games growing up. These days "peace games" like Stardew Valley
| are more appealing to me, but maybe I'ma little odd.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Kids just don't know any better. I would imagine that those who
| actually spent some of their childhood in a war zone would have
| a _very_ different perspective. What 's toxic is when
| _grownups_ end up glorifying war or thinking of it as a
| solution to hard problems.
| watwut wrote:
| The people who started and promoted and wanted WWI
| experienced WWI - either as soldiers or as kids. The young
| ones glorified army and wanted to prove themselves.
|
| Wars don't make people peaceful. Instead, they normalize
| violence, hate and desperation.
| notch656a wrote:
| I spent some time in Northern Syria and there were quite a
| few "child" soldiers there (mostly teenagers), as well as
| people who grew up as children in war. I'm sure it was
| partially a coping mechanism, but I found many of them
| embraced and enjoyed their existence fighting the enemy that
| claimed the lives of their family members. The military also
| provides a sort of place for brotherhood and oddly stability
| (food / depending on where youre stationed shelter) at least
| until things really go sidewise.
| schroeding wrote:
| (Second-hand) Anecdata: My Grandpa was born in '39, was 6
| when the war ended and lived very close to a big city /
| region that was bombed regularly by the Allies from '42-'45.
| He was old enough to remember this and the (light) fighting
| when the Americans arrived.
|
| After the war, he and the local kids played with _live_ guns
| that the German soldiers just threw away. They used a Flak
| (anti aircraft cannon) as a carousel, played with the shells
| of it and used the local bunkers to play "soldier", with
| some playing the Germans and some playing the Americans.
|
| So I'm not sure whether or not spending the childhood in a
| war zone actually changes the perspective of children (to the
| better). It sure can later, when they become adults, though.
| Pamar wrote:
| Did you know anything about role preferences (if any)?
|
| I mean: would children prefer to be Allies (because they
| won) or Germans (because, well, they _were_ Germans)...
| schroeding wrote:
| My grandpa prefered the Americans, because the local
| soldiers gave him (and the other kids) sometimes sweets
| or stuff like an orange (which he thought was a ball at
| first, being disappointed that it didn't bounce :D) and
| were generally very nice to them.
|
| Some older kids only wanted to play as the Germans or
| Hungarians (at the end of the war, apparently some
| Hungarian troops were stationed in the local bunkers to
| fight off the Americans).
|
| I don't know what the other kids in his age group
| prefered, though.
| bombcar wrote:
| _Adults_ are often more traumatized by it than children
| are; for them it 's just the new normal, and something to
| play with.
| zweifuss wrote:
| As a small child in Essen, my mother lived through the
| bombing nights of 44/45 and the also harsh post-war
| period. The trauma that people close to her can suddenly
| disappear (e.g. suicide, abandonment, sometimes result of
| canibalism) still shapes her behavior today.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > I would imagine that those who actually spent some of their
| childhood in a war zone would have a very different
| perspective.
|
| They very much play war games, even incorporating the
| realities around them into the games, like checkpoints,
| airstrike alarms, and such.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Speaking of:
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/amp/ukraine-war-children-with-
| toy...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Eh, war is simply fun. It's appealing to males in particular,
| and our testosterone tends to lock in the intoxication.
| There's a reason that Battlefield is one of the most
| successful gaming franchises of all time, and that it's very
| hard to find any videogame that doesn't involve some kind of
| warfare. (There are dozens of wonderful counter examples:
| Minecraft, celeste, undertale, sim city, stardew valley. But
| for every one of those, there are dozens of Halo wannabes,
| and even Quake and Doom were one-man wars against demons.)
| watwut wrote:
| None of the things you mentioned is like war, like not at
| all. They are fantasies designed to be as pleasant as
| possible.
| 8jef wrote:
| > There are dozens of wonderful counter examples: Minecraft
| ...
|
| Younger boy of mine spent years fighting and smashing and
| destroying other avatars /players in Minecraft, not so
| interested in _building_ anything. One's experience may
| vary.
| axiomsEnd wrote:
| But Battlefield is not war, it's a simulation of war. It
| lacks real stakes, extensive physical activity, death and
| basically everything that make war a war.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| War is plenty of fun as long as nobody gets hurt - but
| that's kind of tautological. Real wars are no fun, and
| that's what pacifists argue against.
| [deleted]
| nazka wrote:
| Sometimes it's a little too much. And it starts to be a
| little dumb. One time on an Assassin's Creed I was like wow
| why kill that guy?? It wasn't even for the part to gather
| info. That was so unnecessary (even for the story itself).
| Can I just talk to him and persuade him first or something?
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >Eh, war is simply fun. It's appealing to males in
| particular, and our testosterone tends to lock in the
| intoxication. There's a reason that Battlefield is one of
| the most successful gaming franchises of all time
|
| This seems like it's essentializing psychology into core
| biological elements (with a shaky, uncited relationship to
| evolutionary psychology) without question. When statements
| are made this way, don't you think it closes off possible
| avenues for research beyond the bare facts of war and
| competition in future societies, at least without genetic
| modification? I think questions like these should be left
| open rather than dismissed as "war is fun, testosterone".
| landryraccoon wrote:
| > Eh, war is simply fun.
|
| Well an idealized version of war that's designed to glorify
| it could be fun.
|
| Is actual war fun? Is the Ukraine war fun? I doubt it's fun
| for any of the participants. It's not fun for Ukrainian
| soldiers, it's not fun for Russian soldiers, and it's not
| fun for Russian or Ukrainian civilians.
|
| Maybe it's fun for some onlookers that like to cheer and
| spectate, but I would argue that speaks more to the nature
| of the spectators than to the nature of war.
| notch656a wrote:
| Eh it is fun to an extent. When I fought with the YPG I
| saw a lot of Kurds jumping with exuberance cheering at
| the enemy "he tried to shoot me" and then joyfully
| shooting back. Many wars are mostly intense boredom,
| punctuated by occasional bouts of terror or joy. Also
| there's a weird sort of release from the typical
| responsibilities of life -- _all_ you have to do is fight
| (which as fucked up as it sounds, can be more simple than
| worrying about the next side hustle / the wife / the
| kids). If you're on a rear-guard type of situation it's
| mostly drinking chai and smoking cigarettes.
| [deleted]
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| There's a video floating around of Ukrainian soldiers
| managing the unusual feat of destroying a helicopter (and
| obviously its pilot) using a Stugna-P anti-tank guided
| missile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8Um69fbHA Fun
| might not be the right word for it but you can't tell me
| that the cheer from the soldiers when the missile struck
| home wasn't born of positive emotion, even in the midst
| of the hell of war.
| psi75 wrote:
| > Is actual war fun? Is the Ukraine war fun? I doubt it's
| fun for any of the participants. It's not fun for
| Ukrainian soldiers, it's not fun for Russian soldiers,
| and it's not fun for Russian or Ukrainian civilians.
|
| War seems to rewrite the brain. People are miserable and
| bored most of the time, are terrified while in combat,
| and come back with psychological issues we're still just
| beginning to understand. It's hell. And yet, people do
| get addicted to the mayhem and the rush. The mercenary
| life is attractive to a lot of people. There's still a
| lot being debated here, but one of the theories about
| PTSD is that much of the damage is done (or, at least, is
| made permanent) when people return to civilian life.
| Having been exposed to life-or-death situations, they
| find daily life to be low-stakes and artificial; the time
| in which they were most alive as in combat (even if they
| hated the experience and what it did to them).
|
| Still, I agree that actual war is not at all "fun".
| inglor_cz wrote:
| _It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should
| grow too fond of it._
|
| Robert E. Lee
|
| There definitely seem to be combatants that enjoy at
| least some aspects of war. If you look at the historical
| military literature, including poetry, it is not all just
| negative.
|
| It is true that with increasing industrialization of war
| during the last 150 years, the overall tenor has changed.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Look how they re-enact the civil war. Nobody wants the
| historical truth of dying from cholera in a Confederate
| stockade or burning down farms in Georgia with crying
| families in the background. Humans are really good at
| cognitive dissonance.
| 8jef wrote:
| War is a way for mindless and aggressive men to do
| whatever they really crave (which is escaping from a
| state of victimhood), without much justification and
| little immediate consequences to themselves, mostly under
| cover of patriotism. To kill and rape for fun and
| pleasure, and hopefully die fast, absolutely ecstatic.
|
| To such men, please note: life never really ends, and you
| and your offspring gets eternally impacted by all
| miserable and soulless destruction of life's beauty you
| may have caused, inflicting more hardship and
| perpetuating novel state of misery upon flocks of others.
| notch656a wrote:
| War is a terrible waste. On the other hand, an able
| bodied man not willing to use destructive faculties to
| defend young and old against perpetrators of violence is
| as irrational as the able bodied man who refuses to use
| constructive faculties to provide necessities of life to
| same.
| 8jef wrote:
| Defensive action is for the most part formidable and
| magnificent. The stuff that builds and creates heroism,
| myths and legends. Never miserable or soulless, unless it
| goes beyond its original purpose.
|
| Every reality has at least two versions of it, or more.
| scarier wrote:
| Experiences in war vary greatly, and feelings about them
| are complicated and conflicted. I've met many people who
| genuinely seemed to enjoy it. This article nails it:
| https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28718/why-
| men-lo...
| notch656a wrote:
| "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those
| who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never
| care for anything else thereafter." --Hemingway
| landryraccoon wrote:
| That doesn't sound like fun to me. That sounds more like
| a nightmarish psychosis.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Strong or weak, in the long run all of them break down.
| All, that is to say, of those who are initially sane.
| For, ironically enough, the only people who can hold up
| indefinitely under the stress of modern war are
| psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the
| consequences of collective insanity
| zbrozek wrote:
| Outer Wilds! I just played it on the basis of a
| recommendation in an earlier HN thread and loved it.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Eh, war is simply fun. It's appealing to males in
| particular, and our testosterone tends to lock in the
| intoxication. There's a reason that Battlefield is one of
| the most successful gaming franchises of all time, and that
| it's very hard to find any videogame that doesn't involve
| some kind of warfare._
|
| I think there is an argument to be made that Battlefield
| doesn't involve any warfare.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| whatshisface wrote:
| You can't have an evo psych narrative where testosterone
| makes men "love warfare" and then point to a game that's
| nothing like actual warfare as evidence.
|
| Edit: Your reply is dead so I can't reply to it, but
| you're heading in the right direction to observe that the
| behaviors people actually seem to have evolved to prefer
| include those such as eating, resting and listening to
| stories.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Coolerbythelake wrote:
| I'm fairly certain you haven't been involved in a war if
| you make a statement like "it's fun"!! Or at least you've
| never had to kill someone !!
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Even minecraft has combat in the default game mode. No
| guns, but it does have swords, axes, arrows, and numerous
| kinds of explosives.
|
| Obviously it's better than Grand Theft Auto, but it
| definitely falls short of pure pacifism.
| alex_sf wrote:
| I don't think this counts as Godwin's law given the context,
| but:
|
| What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression
| by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?
| likeclockwork wrote:
| Lets translate your question.
|
| What exactly is your solution to the sort of [war] by
| Hitler in [war]. Is war not a solution to [war]?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No, those things are not synonymous.
| alex_sf wrote:
| Yep. I know what you meant to do here, and I still agree.
|
| You do not get to choose whether someone else is violent
| or not. If you aren't prepared for violence, you can only
| be a victim of it.
| likeclockwork wrote:
| I guess you appreciate any opportunity to restate your
| beliefs.
|
| I was just suggesting that offering war as a solution to
| the problem of already being at war is pretty circular.
| alex_sf wrote:
| I appreciate an opportunity to provide clarity when it
| seems like a point was missed.
|
| Whether it's circular or not isn't a meaningful property
| when bombs are dropping.
|
| In that spirit of providing clarity: what is your answer
| to the un-translated question I asked?
|
| > What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked
| aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to
| that problem?
| rhizome31 wrote:
| > What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked
| aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to
| that problem?
|
| With a 70-85 million death toll, I find it hard to
| describe it as a success. Saying there was no other
| choice seems fair but calling it a solution seems a bit
| far-fetched.
| alex_sf wrote:
| War stopped Hitler's germany. That's a solution.
| mbg721 wrote:
| indymike wrote:
| > Kids just don't know any better.
|
| Either that, or they are dealing with a scary, unknowable,
| potential direction their life might take and working through
| it by playing. This is normal, and how kids try to understand
| situations they might find themselves in. A kind in a war
| zone knows war and does not have to play to understand it.
| aqsalose wrote:
| >I would imagine that those who actually spent some of their
| childhood in a war zone would have a very different
| perspective.
|
| Not sure if it would imply less war. Around the Napoleonic
| wars, many officers started their careers as teenagers or
| pre-teens. Nelson joined the navy as about 12-year old, which
| wasn't unexceptional age during the Napoleonic times.
| Napoleon was 10 when he was enrolled in a military academy.
| He was admitted to Ecole Militaire around 15 years old,
| graduated in one year, and got a commission as 2nd
| lieutenant.
| agumonkey wrote:
| a few personal notes:
|
| - as kids we all did fight games, from just kung fu fights for
| fun, to team fights where we somehow considered a group
| strongly as "not our friends"
|
| - maybe remains of evolution needs to make kids ready to fight
| for survival ? it might sound primitive but some bits are
| important because life may become chaos and ability to secure
| your own vital space is life critical (even in a modern world)
| MikePlacid wrote:
| >as kids we all did fight games
|
| My daughter would not have touched toy soldiers with a stick.
| And her older brother always picked up war movies from a dump
| on the floor, while she picked up only films about
| "relationships".
|
| >team fights where we somehow considered a group strongly as
| "not our friends"
|
| I was amazed, watching myself playing on a PvP server in
| World of Warcraft, how easy it is to hate another faction -
| even though you play it yourself half of the time.
|
| >remains of evolution needs to make kids ready to fight for
| survival
|
| Evolution does not need anything. It just so happened that
| populations where boys did not like to play war games are now
| dead. That's the process of evolution. But it does not care
| if your population is dead or alive in the next step. It goes
| on anyway.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Yeah, no need for semantics, we agree on evolution
| "emergent" property.. I was just trying to explain that the
| aggressive nature of boys is not just a poor defect. In a
| random bath of beings, if you're too passive, the more
| aggressive ones will stomp you brainlessly.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > but I can't deny enjoying war games growing up
|
| Depending on the player and the social context around it the
| same game can be glorifying war, or be neutral, or even be a
| way to release steam and become more relaxed around people.
|
| Confusing real war, violence, genocide with a game is quite
| stupid. Or prudish.
| Banana699 wrote:
| I don't see it as a problem. War games don't transfer to real
| world violence, anymore than street racing games translate to
| real world dangerous driving.
|
| I remember when I played need for speed most wanted for the
| first time and they had the main actress in the opening
| cutscene to the game telling you that... this is all just a
| game and in real streets you should drive safely and
| responsibly and wear your seatbelts. I never skipped the
| cutscene because Josie Maran (the actress) is really really
| pretty, but the message is absolutely and unimaginebly dumb.
|
| You're sitting in front of your computer manipulating a car
| through an interface that doesn't look remotely like the
| controls of any real car, "driving" through a world with
| bizarre physics and collision logic with zero haptic feedback,
| again, an experience unlike any in a real car. Does any
| reasonably intelligent person really need an actress telling
| them that "remember, this is all just a game" ? isn't it all
| kinda obvious ? would a person who somehow got the idea that
| real driving is as easy as mashing some buttons on a keyboard
| with zero consequences be snapped back to reality by a
| character inside the game telling them that it's not true ?
|
| The only real way I can see a "fiction leads to the real thing"
| argument working is through propaganda, a military might invest
| in war movies and war games to make it look glamorous to a
| gullible teenager who will be of military age soon. But how can
| you prevent that without demonizing all fiction ? Before video
| games, before movies, before even reading and writing, the
| military had no problems whatsoever with getting recruits.
| Propaganda is just the symptoms, the real problems are all
| downstream.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The answer to this is sports. War is competition through
| violence. When you remove the violence you get peaceful
| competition. It satisfies the tribal urge to fight things
| different than you, but also encourages healthy behaviors.
| Respect for your opponent. Accepting loss. Recognizing your
| weaknesses and working to improve them.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Indeed, many sports serve as a way of developing and
| competing on "war skills": throwing, running, strength,
| coordinated maneuvers as a group, etc. All of which are
| useful in fighting, and a way of establishing a male
| hierarchy without fighting.
| zppln wrote:
| I've always thought of Wall Street and what goes on there to
| be our substitute for war.
| scottyah wrote:
| Big Law too
| anigbrowl wrote:
| True for both, and these are actually unhealthy outlets
| because it means everyone essentially lives under
| sanctions and oppression while norms fray altogether.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > The answer to this is sports. War is competition through
| violence.
|
| Absolutely not. Sports is competition through violence, as
| well. Watch a game of American football, or ice hockey, or
| basketball for that matter and be able to say otherwise with
| a straight face.
|
| The answer is cooperative, not competitive, activities.
| recyclelater wrote:
| Then how do you satisfy the real need for an outlet for
| aggression? I personally did this with motorcycle racing,
| which is competitive but mostly non violent. Cooperative
| activities are great and I really enjoy them, but don't
| scratch the same itch.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's no 'answer', violent competition is always going to
| exist because at some point the aggregate costs are lower
| than other forms of competition. A world completely
| dominated by war is bad, but so is a world completely
| dominated by productivity, which just creates and
| infantilized society.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Absolutely not. Sports is competition through violence,
| as well. Watch a game of American football, or ice hockey
|
| And golf, the worst one of them all!
|
| Also horse riding, Javalin throwing, etc. Mixed bag
| alar44 wrote:
| Calling football or hockey "violence" dilutes the meaning
| of the word. May as well call a high five violence.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I've seen plenty of people rejoice at the injuries of
| another team's players
| hirvi74 wrote:
| I assume the OP is completely unaware of "head hunting"
| in professional sports. An awful practice still subtly
| used today.
|
| Story Time:
|
| I play beer league/pick-up hockey as an adult, and we
| once had a suspected thief that was stealing from others
| in the locker rooms during pick-up games. It was believed
| said thief would get dressed with everyone, and would
| then "accidentally forget something" before his shift was
| up, and he would then return to the locker rooms when the
| rooms were unattended and proceed to shift through
| people's belongings.
|
| After some time and some mob mentality, people managed to
| figure out who the thief was. I heard numerous instances
| of all the various plots and methods other players were
| working on to ensure this guy would never be able to play
| again due to an unfortunate accident (i.e. premeditated
| and intentional permanent or long-term injuries).
|
| Thankfully, the police got ahold of the thief before any
| of the psychopaths managed to ruin the life of the thief
| and their own lives. I am also thankful that I was a
| goalie, so that I was never encouraged to participate in
| such barbarianism. I value the safety of another person
| more than a wallet full of replaceable items.
|
| Still, there have been instances where police have been
| called due to unruly players and/or unruly parents of
| children players, refs being assaulted by
| players/parents, etc..
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Comparing American football and hockey and other brutal
| sports to a high five is what dilutes the meaning of the
| word. These are sports where men aggressively assault
| each other. They are institutionalized violence.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| I think intentions should be considered when describing
| something as violence in a sport.
|
| I assume you are unfamiliar with "head hunting?" If so,
| it's where a team or player intentionally tries to injury
| the better player(s) on the opposing team in order to
| secure a competitive advantage.
|
| Here are some examples of what I would consider
| "violence" in hockey, some of which, could be argued to
| be head hunting:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHPktgmbdbA
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| For people wired for competition, that's no answer.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Aldous Huxley's perspective was that competition is
| driven by the desire to dominate. We can play games -
| like wrestling or war - that cause us to dominate other
| people. Or, we can play games - like rock climbing - that
| cause us to dominate ourselves.
| Xeronate wrote:
| Sports are better, but I think encouraging competition and
| tribal urges are a waste of time in general. Better to
| encourage collaboration and self expression.
| afarrell wrote:
| You need some amount of brotherly conflict and competition
| in order to have healthy collaboration. Otherwise, you just
| get the pretense of agreement and a slow slouch into
| frustration and resentment.
| Xeronate wrote:
| Disagree that sports are a form of brotherly conflict.
| Maybe within the same team but definitely not considering
| the win/loss dynamic between teams. You can approach
| disagreements with the idea that both people are working
| together to make the best product and are are disagreeing
| with the same goal in kind; a different type of argument
| than the one opposing teams are engaged in.
| Xeronate wrote:
| Sorry I wrote this on my phone at the gym and should have
| proofread better.
| notch656a wrote:
| There may have been some genetic selection here. Societies
| without those who want to defend the tribe with violence,
| ultimately succumb to the violence of other societies that
| perpetuate that violence. Prisoner's dilemma means universal
| instinct of pacifism is a difficult steady-state to hold.
| varjag wrote:
| Nope, usually you get the cult of war and cult of sports
| together as a bundle.
| [deleted]
| warent wrote:
| Do people regularly mass murder each other over sports?
| Because that's the stakes we're talking about here in
| context.
|
| Brawling and screaming over a sport is much preferred to
| bombing and poisoning.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Both sports and war leverage the same dynamics, just as
| individual athleticism improves one's chances in a fight.
| Neither are ends in themselves.
| widdershins wrote:
| No (though it does happen, see Constantinople's chariot
| teams). But expansionist and militaristic societies are
| often obsessed with sport, for example imperial Britain,
| Germany at the 1936 Olympics, and arguably the modern US.
| rhizome31 wrote:
| Not to mention Ancient Greece. Sport as a substitute for
| war is a joke.
| pohl wrote:
| I'm with you in the abstract, but where I live there's toxic
| culture around sports that made it unpalatable for me as a
| kid. Back then what turned me off was belligerent parents on
| the sidelines yelling at the children, but the symptoms
| actually go way beyond that one little thing. (Conflating
| excellence with dominance is another example.)
| theptip wrote:
| This is a valid observation, however I wonder if the best
| frame is to consider if that toxic culture is preferable to
| a warmongering society.
|
| It may be that some level of toxic behavior is inescapable
| when humans release their tribal competition instinct. And
| if team sports is construed as a war-replacement, perhaps
| it is a better (though not perfect) mechanism to absorb
| that toxicity.
|
| Maybe there are better-still options to absorb tribal
| toxicity, bit I can't think of any off the top of my head.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >toxic culture around sports
|
| I was rather fond of practicing team sports as a kid, but I
| found the culture off putting for the same reasons
|
| Some people just _can 't_ behave, adults weren't even much
| better than your regular kid
| the_only_law wrote:
| > adults weren't even much better than your regular kid
|
| If life has taught me anything, it's that the notion of
| adults being emotional mature is a joke.
|
| I've seen numerous grown people suddenly turn into a
| character from _Mean Girls_ instantly after a petty
| slight.
| Retric wrote:
| I have noticed team sports tend to be vastly more toxic
| than solo sports.
|
| Climbing for example has a wildly different atmosphere.
| Just listen to the crowd in this or read the YouTube
| comments, people are supportive when several women have
| disappointing results.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfhGW6Bwyks
|
| People will complain about the route setting or camerawork
| not the athletes, that's a shocking amount of empathy IMO.
| bobochan wrote:
| One of my favorite sports memories was going to my son's
| first big cross-country running meet. There were hundreds
| of kids lined up for the race and parents lined the
| course to cheer them on. The crowds clapped loudly for
| the leaders, it died down for the long stretch of mid-
| pack runners, and then grew to a roar for the kids
| working their hardest at the back of the pack. Everyone
| there seemed to understand how hard it is to get started
| in endurance sports, but also how transformative they can
| be to a kid's confidence, especially if they have not
| felt welcome or successful in team sports.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Funny enough full cobtact sports are somewhat similar.
| Sure, you actively fight and beat each other in the ring
| or on tha mats, but outside ofbit things are surprisingly
| civil. Of ciurse over aggressive exceptions proof that
| rule.
| johnfn wrote:
| I don't know; I loved SimCity as a kid. I tend to think this
| sort of thing rather signifies a lack of imagination on the
| part of video game authors.
| etempleton wrote:
| I loved city builders and tycoon games as a kid. I think many
| of them tend to follow the same formula and so the returns
| becoming increasingly diminished.
|
| I am excitedly looking forward to a follow up to Cities
| Skylines.
| dleslie wrote:
| City simulators still exist and are still made; so are
| countless other economic simulators and puzzle games.
|
| Their popularity is a reflection of demand for them, not
| developer creativity.
| benreesman wrote:
| Giving in to the violent tribalism that's obviously part of
| humanity's matrix is bad, but pretending it isn't there will
| get you into a tight spot pretty fast too.
|
| Violence sells better than sex at the cinema.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The regulation in this space is weird. It's more acceptable
| to show someone getting shot than to show a nipple.
| alex_sf wrote:
| I don't understand why that's toxic. Striving, struggle, and
| violence are critical for any living thing to survive. Short of
| reaching post-scarcity, this can't change.
|
| If we define toxic as harmful, then violence is the opposite.
| It's the only reason we have civilization.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| Post-scarcity is not (ever going to be) reality
| refurb wrote:
| Pretty much this.
|
| Humans are not peaceful by nature. And when one group of
| humans want something another group of humans don't want them
| to have, violence is the ultimate option to solving that
| conflict.
|
| Thankfully many countries see the cost of solving conflict
| through violence and seek to avoid it, but it's always there.
| kruuuder wrote:
| > Humans are not peaceful by nature
|
| I also believed this until recently when I finished reading
| "Humankind: A Hopeful History" by Rutger Bregman. What an
| amazing book ... Bregman analyzes why we commonly believe
| that humans are not peaceful and that this assumption turns
| into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there is surprisingly
| little evidence that being aggressive or violent is in our
| nature, pretty much the opposite is true.
|
| To me, reading this book did the opposite of what reading
| the news usually does: I finished every chapter with an
| optimistic smile. :)
| refurb wrote:
| I mean peaceful societies only exist because of the
| threat of violence to anyone who attacks them.
| kruuuder wrote:
| Well yes, I already understood that's your point of view,
| but the book offers a different perspective which I found
| pretty convincing.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| | _Humans are not peaceful by nature_
|
| You can't make a broad sweeping generalization like this.
| There have been so many peaceful, even pacifist
| civilizations throughout history.
|
| That they have been wiped out or dominated by the violent
| ones is a valid historical point, but it doesn't disprove
| that human "nature" can just as easily be peaceful, given
| the right conditions. Failing to protect yourself from
| external violent pressure is not the same as intrinsic
| nature.
|
| The only strict statement about human nature that we can
| confidently make is that we are extraordinarily adaptive to
| and malleable by the conditions we live under.
| alex_sf wrote:
| That's semantics imo. If pacifism results in extinction,
| then any revision of human nature that involves it is
| irrelevant. Humans don't exist without violence.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| It's not semantics at all. "Human nature" implies a
| universal, inherent state. If we have peaceful, pacifist
| civilizations regularly cropping up throughout history,
| then saying that human nature is violence just simply
| isn't true. It doesn't matter if the violent
| civilizations come to dominate. That the peaceful
| societies exist at all (let alone are abundant and
| common) means that argument falls apart.
| alex_sf wrote:
| > universal, inherent state
|
| It's not a universal, inherent state in any humans that
| survive. It's an aberration.
|
| That being said, I'm not actually aware of any of these
| abundant/common peaceful/pacifist societies you're
| referencing. It's entirely possible I'm ignorant of them,
| but I'm suspicious that they weren't actually 'peaceful'.
| Can you name a few of them?
| michaelchisari wrote:
| | _It 's an aberration._
|
| It's common enough to disprove the statement "Human
| nature is inherently violent". It shows that
| understanding humanity is simply too complex to boil down
| to pat remarks like that.
|
| | _I 'm not actually aware_
|
| Anthropology has documented plenty. The Kung! come to
| mind. And this is not the early-days "noble savage"
| anthropology, the perspective that there have been many
| civilizations that operate through cooperation and
| peaceful negotiation is not controversial in modern
| anthropology.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00692-8
| alex_sf wrote:
| > It's common enough to disprove the statement "Human
| nature is inherently violent". It shows that
| understanding humanity is simply too complex to boil down
| to pat remarks like that.
|
| If we accept every aberration as disproving human nature,
| then there is no such thing as human nature. There are
| exceptions to any possible definition of it. Suicide
| disproves self-preservation, childless adults disprove
| reproduction, laziness disproves innovation.
|
| I'm not actually opposed to that argument, but it is, as
| mentioned and in context, semantics.
|
| > Anthropology has documented plenty. The Kung! come to
| mind. And this is not the early-days "noble savage"
| anthropology, the perspective that there have been many
| civilizations that operate through cooperation and
| peaceful negotiation is not controversial in modern
| anthropology.
|
| !Kung society absolutely had violence and homicide[1][2].
| It's very much noble savage anthropology. They did not
| operate through cooperation and peaceful negotiation:
| they were just isolated hundreds of kilometers from
| anyone else, so the scale was smaller.
|
| If anything, the !Kung disprove your argument. They spoke
| the same language, had the same beliefs, had a fair
| division of resources, were geographically isolated, and
| still killed each other.
|
| [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/680660 [2]
| https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-
| archaeological-e...
| michaelchisari wrote:
| I'm not arguing any societies were completely void of
| violence, obviously. There is a significant difference
| between a society where violence occurs and one in which
| violence is the defining principle and method of
| organization. Yet even in societies organized around
| violence and domination, the majority of people are not
| violent and do not commit acts of violence.
|
| At this point, it's not worth continuing the conversation
| here. You'd be best served engaging with anthropological
| sources themselves since your perspective has been well
| addressed by the field. _" Humankind: A Hopeful History"_
| by Rutger Bregman was suggested below. I haven't read it
| myself, but I've heard good things and it's sources might
| serve as a good jumping-off point. _" The Dawn of
| Everything: A New History of Humanity"_ by David Graeber
| I have read and it is a light read and works well as a
| starting point, despite it's issues.
| alex_sf wrote:
| Those are certainly interesting books, but Graeber's work
| in particular has been widely criticized by his peers[1].
| Dawn of Everything was a naked attempt at (further)
| politicizing the field, and was riddled with logical and
| historical errors. Much like his other writings.
|
| > One review it's known that he did read, because he
| wrote a response to it, is Kwame Anthony Appiah's in the
| New York Review of Books. Entitled Digging for Utopia, it
| accuses the authors of making ideologically driven
| arguments at variance with the studies they cite.
|
| > [historian David A Bell] referred to "an astounding
| collection of errors" and accused the authors of coming
| "perilously close to scholarly malpractice".
|
| _You_ would be best served by not basing your opinions
| on fringe material.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/12/david-
| wengro...
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > There have been so many peaceful, even pacifist
| civilizations throughout history.
|
| > That they have been wiped out or dominated by the
| violent ones is a valid historical point [...]
|
| The violent societies have also been wiped out and
| dominated by other violent ones. Or have caused their own
| collapse by other means. So violence has not yet shown
| itself to be a successful strategy for societial
| survival.
|
| Survival, it turns out, is a game one cannot win.
| Everything and everyone comes to an end eventually, even
| the universe itself apparently. Justification of violence
| on the sole grounds of continued survival is therefore
| very suspect.
| fwip wrote:
| Cooperation, not violence, is the reason for civilization.
| scandox wrote:
| I think possibly cooperation and violence. Or even
| cooperation for the purpose of enhanced violence.
| dotgov wrote:
| What if both are?
| umeshunni wrote:
| Cooperation within the group and violence outside the
| group.
| alex_sf wrote:
| Cooperation is certainly critical, violence is what allows
| for it to take place.
|
| You can build a utopian commune, but if your neighbors want
| your crops you would be wise to get a weapon.
| derbOac wrote:
| I think the substitute are explorers, where the enemy is the
| unknown. Tin astronauts works.
| rayiner wrote:
| Is war play "toxic" or "essential to the survival of human
| communities?"
|
| It's interesting to me how "humanism" veers into "human
| denialism" (denying the nature of the human condition) or
| active "trans-humanism" (seeking to transcend the human
| condition).
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's interesting that Socialism was so synonymous with pacifism
| in the early 20th century, and how that radically changed.
|
| Mussolini famously broke with his Socialist Party to abandon
| the pacifist doctrine of Socialism and form his own movement
| which he called Fascism.
| waffle_ss wrote:
| That speaks more to socialism's enduring PR successes than
| reality. Lenin's Red Army didn't roll into Poland in 1918 to
| spread worldwide revolutionary socialism with just flowers
| and poetry. That happened basically immediately proceeding
| from the success of the October Revolution.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Post-ww1 pacifism didn't do much good to France.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| And building a military machine didn't do much good for
| Germany.
| sbf501 wrote:
| Isn't Orwell kinda trolling here, or is he unaware of his
| fallacious statement? Not all kids of WW2 generation played
| with tin soldiers, like 50% of kids, namely: girls. This
| oversight is a bit of a bias in his false-dichotomy: there are
| only soldiers or pacificts as toys/role-models.
| etempleton wrote:
| Play fighting is observable in many adolescent mammals. It is
| perhaps, in a way, vestigial for humans, but not really
| because conflicts do still arise often enough.
|
| As you get older you become increasingly aware of the horrors
| of war and fighting and it losses much of the naive appeal it
| had when you were young.
| bitwize wrote:
| > The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers
| with construction workers or something,
|
| LEGO(r) Minifigs?
| brazzy wrote:
| While there are no modern LEGO soldiers, there are Knights,
| Ninjas and Pirates, all equipped with weapons.
| wffurr wrote:
| Stardew Valley has the monsters in the mines. I thought it
| would have been a cute farming simulator game to play with my
| toddler, but shortly after we discovered the mines it was all
| he wanted to do.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| There's an amusing short story about "tin pacifists", _The Toys
| of Peace._ [1] The introduction claims that this is a
| "primitive instinct"; but I tend to agree more with the
| conclusion.
|
| On a related note, a Tumblr post[2] that's been making the
| rounds recently:
|
| > "In a game with no consequences, why are you still playing
| the 'Good' side?"
|
| > Because being mean makes me feel bad.
|
| > Because my no-consequences power fantasy is _being able to
| help everyone._
|
| [1]: https://gutenberg.org/files/1477/1477-h/1477-h.htm#page3
|
| [2]: https://deflare.tumblr.com/post/157885054221
| anigbrowl wrote:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
| ant6n wrote:
| Duplo, Lego, Brio
| Latty wrote:
| You see a lot of children playing Minecraft, or when older,
| Factorio on pacifist modes where they can focus on "the good
| bit" of building something. Historically war management was
| what was available, I remember enjoying building a city in Age
| of Empires more than the battles, and I think with the options
| available, while combat will always be popular and engaging, it
| does have alternatives some people enjoy more.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'm waiting to see how Vic 3 turns out. Given the devs claim
| to focus on diplomacy and politics moreso than map painting
| warfare (much to the distaste of the paradox community)
|
| Ofc war is still an option, albeit the mechanics are rather
| high level and less micro involved than past games.
|
| If the mechanics are well designed in general I think I may
| find it really engaging.
| philistine wrote:
| Looking at Paradox's past promises and what was delivered,
| I expect the game to be just as focused on warfare as
| Europa Universalis IV.
| shostack wrote:
| I love the survival crafting genre but am so dismayed that
| the best games have gone heavy into combat or thriller
| directions. And I've played most of them. There may be a way
| to set a peaceful mode but it is rarely if ever a fully
| fleshed out experience.
| the_only_law wrote:
| That genre seems to be in the midst of a rush, with every
| publisher Indy or large trying to pump out games in that
| genre.
|
| I generally like it, but my steam queue are now filled to
| the brim with crappy, rushed survival games trying to copy
| everything else all because I played Ark and Valheim a few
| times.
| p1peridine wrote:
| Interesting read.
|
| Speaking of dystopian fiction authors; Aldous Huxley wrote the
| well-known book "Brave New World". [0]
|
| Doing a quick search for MK-ULTRA on Wikileaks one can find this
| now unclassified transcript from 1974:
|
| > ... AND OTHER CULTS LIKE IT ARE NOT RELIGIOUS, BUT WERE
| DELIBERATE SYNTHETIC CREATIONS PART OF A SERIES OF PROJECTS THAT
| INCLUDED THE MK-ULTRA OPERATION, THAT WAS RUN THROUGH BRITISH
| INTELLIGENCE CONTROL OVER A SECTION OF THE CIA, WAS RUN THROUGH
| ALDOUS HUXLEY AND GREGORY BATES OUT OF PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA. [1]
|
| Wonder if BNW is a blueprint, rather than a fiction book.
| Thoughts?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201109003500/https://wikileaks...
| rob_c wrote:
| Well, he wasn't wrong.
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