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What is your opinion on George Orwell's novels? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 day ago* by to c/communism@lemmy.ml
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I'm mostly talking about Animal Farm and 1984, not only because they are more well known, but also because Orwell drew inspiration from the USSR in writing them.

I'm a beginner at communism, I'm not exactly the most well-read, and in trying to broaden my horizons, I read these two.

I'm simply curious to see what all of you have to say about them.

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[–] 14 points 1 day ago (6 children)

"Doublethink" is too good of a concept to have been thought up by an aristocratic rapist snitch mad about the USSR in 1942. The guy was an alleged socialist but all his books show a massive contempt for the proletariat. It is no wonder that Animal Farm was turned into a movie by the CIA and 1984 was dropped like leaflets over East Germany

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  • [–] 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

    To be fair, he didn't come up with it, Freud (who would have a field day analyzing Orwell's books) had the concept of Verleugnung ("denial" or "disavow"). Scott Fitzgerald, of Great Gatsby fame, once wrote that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function".

    Heck, if we squint a little we could track back a lot of concepts of 1984 all the way back to Hobbes.

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  • [–] 1 point 14 hours ago (1 child)

    I moreso meant the word. It is very descriptive

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 10 hours ago

    Still, it's surprising just how unoriginal Orwell was. The idea of pigs running an animal farm as an analogy to an authoritarian state was stolen, the world of 1984 was just a bastardisation of the USSR transposed to London, and even the concept of doublethink, so central to the novel, was plagiarized. I'm starting to think this man had nothing original to say. Just a professional copy machine.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

    I never quite understood his blind hatred of nothing but the USSR.

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