“the novel limits their ability to conceive of an oppressive government that does not resemble the one Orwell described” Absolutely.
The final oppressive government is becoming clearer, as we see the complete inversion of truth on full display in all the protest marches around the world.
Oct 25, 2023·edited Oct 25, 2023Liked by Auron MacIntyre
This is absolutely correct. The fight against authoritarianism is actually a spiritual war. Good vs. Evil.
The most practical steps that Christians can take include getting married, having kids, going to church regularly, and preserving our traditions and heritage. In other words, take a lesson from the death of Europe.
According to the book ‘The Cultural Cold War’, the film adaptation and therefore the mass popularization of 1984 was the explicit prerogative of the CIA…
“Even greater liberties were proposed when the CIA turned to Orwell’s later work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell died before making over the film rights, but by 1954 they ended up in the hands of producer Peter Rathvon. Rathvon, a good friend of John Ford’s, had been president of RKO until he was ousted by Howard Hughes in 1949. That year, he formed the Motion Picture Capital Corporation, which was engaged in film production and financing. The corporation—and Rathvon himself—enjoyed a close relationship with the U.S. government, financing films for the Motion Picture Service. According to Lawrence de Neufville, Howard Hunt solicited Rathvon’s collaboration on the film version of Orwell’s classic. Through Rathvon’s corporation, government money was made available to start production on the film, which appeared in 1956, starring Edmond O’Brien, Jan Sterling, and Michael Redgrave.”
A good piece as usual but I think it's very unfair to describe 1984 as “a complete failure”. Orwell wasn't trying to describe our society. He was describing Soviet Russia, and did an excellent job of it. Brave New World is similarly useless at describing the totalitarianism of Soviet Russia (and when you actually read it rather than carefully curated descriptions of it on social media it is itself wildly useless for the present moment).
And you're straight-up wrong when you say 1984 was written about vanquished foes. In 1948 the Soviet Union was mighty and on the rise. It would not take many counterfactuals to have seen it take over the whole of Continental Europe and persist to this day. Orwell wrote his book about a specific threat, and that threat was eventually vanquished in part due to his work. That it is someone else's task today to do as good a job at combatting our own evil regime does not diminish his achievement.
I think nowadays if people have a recollection of the novel, they have just resigned themselves to things moving toward the dystopia described there in. It's almost like predictive programming.
Jack Vance's novel "Wyst" actually takes on what today's fluffy Marxists think Real Marxism is. A fun read, but a bit too adult to mandate in high school.
Although I found ‘1984’ to be a more enjoyable read, I would say that ‘A Brave New World’ more accurately reflects the current zeitgeist.
All that being said, the best introductory read for newbies/normies is ‘Animal Farm’ IMO.
“the novel limits their ability to conceive of an oppressive government that does not resemble the one Orwell described” Absolutely.
The final oppressive government is becoming clearer, as we see the complete inversion of truth on full display in all the protest marches around the world.
This is absolutely correct. The fight against authoritarianism is actually a spiritual war. Good vs. Evil.
The most practical steps that Christians can take include getting married, having kids, going to church regularly, and preserving our traditions and heritage. In other words, take a lesson from the death of Europe.
I've always insisted: it's not 1984, but Brave New World, that we are experiencing.
According to the book ‘The Cultural Cold War’, the film adaptation and therefore the mass popularization of 1984 was the explicit prerogative of the CIA…
“Even greater liberties were proposed when the CIA turned to Orwell’s later work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell died before making over the film rights, but by 1954 they ended up in the hands of producer Peter Rathvon. Rathvon, a good friend of John Ford’s, had been president of RKO until he was ousted by Howard Hughes in 1949. That year, he formed the Motion Picture Capital Corporation, which was engaged in film production and financing. The corporation—and Rathvon himself—enjoyed a close relationship with the U.S. government, financing films for the Motion Picture Service. According to Lawrence de Neufville, Howard Hunt solicited Rathvon’s collaboration on the film version of Orwell’s classic. Through Rathvon’s corporation, government money was made available to start production on the film, which appeared in 1956, starring Edmond O’Brien, Jan Sterling, and Michael Redgrave.”
Modern ruling class have no intelligence to write anything new—from Hollywood, to political speech, they repackage old arguments in a dumber way.
A good piece as usual but I think it's very unfair to describe 1984 as “a complete failure”. Orwell wasn't trying to describe our society. He was describing Soviet Russia, and did an excellent job of it. Brave New World is similarly useless at describing the totalitarianism of Soviet Russia (and when you actually read it rather than carefully curated descriptions of it on social media it is itself wildly useless for the present moment).
And you're straight-up wrong when you say 1984 was written about vanquished foes. In 1948 the Soviet Union was mighty and on the rise. It would not take many counterfactuals to have seen it take over the whole of Continental Europe and persist to this day. Orwell wrote his book about a specific threat, and that threat was eventually vanquished in part due to his work. That it is someone else's task today to do as good a job at combatting our own evil regime does not diminish his achievement.
I think nowadays if people have a recollection of the novel, they have just resigned themselves to things moving toward the dystopia described there in. It's almost like predictive programming.
Jack Vance's novel "Wyst" actually takes on what today's fluffy Marxists think Real Marxism is. A fun read, but a bit too adult to mandate in high school.