Progsplaining Orwell

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The left’s urge to control thought has gotten to none other than George Orwell himself – a push that is positively…

…well, you know where I’m going.

The piece is an object lesson on how American education has failed society in completely abrogating the teaching of critical thinking. How can we tell?

The gaping irony of this bit, for starters, responding to people who “reduce” Orwell to “tyranny bad, liberty good”:

But Orwell’s book is much more sophisticated. Orwell was interested not just in communicating the badness of totalitarian regimes but also dissecting how they succeed through the manipulation of language.

And in comparing the fascists Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War (on the side of the doomed communists) with Trump supporters, the writer and USAToday participate in the reduction of the language to a tool of political coercion.

16 thoughts on “Progsplaining Orwell”

  1. Yeah Mitch, Orwell was so much more nuanced than you crypto Fascists believe. Big Brother is clearly a prescient description of Trump. By the way, your neighbor Karen reported to me that she saw twelve (12!!) people in your house and most weren’t wearing masks.

  2. Let’s dissect a paragraph from the article to analyze how the author employs Orwellian techniques herself.

    The term “Orwellian” has become lazy shorthand for exercises of authority with which one disagrees. When a publisher drops your book because your brand has become toxic, it’s Orwellian. When an internet platform enforces its terms of service and kicks you off, it’s Orwellian. When a store has you removed from the premises for refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic, it’s Orwellian.

    When a publisher drops a book because an activist Twitter mob attacks the content, it’s Orwellian.

    When an internet platform enforces its terms of service and kicks you off but allows others to say even worse things, it’s Orwellian.

    When a store has you removed from the premises for refusing to wear a mask during a pandemic on the basis of sketchy science at best, it’s Orwellian.

  3. Fascists love to misuse Orwell as part of their Hatespeech(tm). The Department of Children, Families and Learning(tm) should send 1984 for a timeout(tm) along with Huckleberry Finn, The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird.

    Colored people People of Color, or POCI(tm) need to be empowered(tm).

    LGBTQ(tm), Gender fluid(tm), Queer and Furry pronouns, customs and traditions must be respected not only in their own spaces(tm) and in public schools, but everywhere; cakes must be baked. Love is Love(tm).

    Systemic racism(tm) and White privilege(tm) is Hatecrime(tm). The faster old, white people are replaced by a vibrant(tm) urban(tm) population the better.

  4. I’ve posted this before, but it fits this topic perfectly.

    We can all see similarities between 1984 and the reprobates utopian worldview, especially in regards to Newspeak and memory hole-ing history, but no one foresaw the current year more clearly than Aldous Huxley. The man had the Third Eye.

    Watch this interview. It will raise your hair.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40

    Even the fact that Mike Wallace (Chris Wallace’s father) is doing the interview is prescient.

  5. Dr Pete: the Department of Children, Families and Learning has already done what you asked. My middle schooler’s reading assignment was a propaganda hit piece called The Hate U Give. I pushed back and he got an exemption. Sadly no other parents objected.

  6. Calling people breaking into and vandalizing the Capitol “Patriots” is Orwellian. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Thugs are patriots.

    To accuse the opposition of being Orwellian while actually being Orwellian has become the stock and trade of the right. How Orwellian.

  7. Neil Postman on the difference between the “1984” and “Brave New World” dystopias:
    “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

    In 2021 people are controlled by the threat of being denied access to their pleasure, and pleasure has been redefined.

  8. 1984 is a good novel, but its appendix — The Principles of Newspeak — is pure genius. As for the now-degraded term “Orwellian,” I think right-wingers use it because they think it makes them sound smart, and their various audiences don’t know what it means and are impressed by it.

  9. Night Writer, as I’ve alluded to, it’s clear to any rational person living in America today that Aldous Huxley was looking at the US In the current decade.

    Reprobates hate Trump because he pissed in their surrogate.. He refused to take a Soma holiday, and told Americans not to take one either. He invited everyone to take a gyrocopter ride and look at the landscape from an unobstructed viewpoint.

    The response from the reprobates was to turn up the speed on the centrifugal bumblepuppy game, and to call anyone who refused to engage in their OrgyPorgy Savages, or Nazis, or Klansmen.

    It’s not going to work. And it’s not going to end well for them.

  10. Trump also forced the Reprobate “Alpha’s” to expose their Gamma natures.

    Just watch them in action in Washington, smearing the walls of the US House of Rep’s with their own excrement.

  11. 👆Say maybe you could help out here.

    I’m conflicted over how history will consider the stain Trump leaves with. A shart or a painful bowl movement. 💩

  13. Ah, so there were “Occupy” street shitters mixed in among the Antifa infiltrators. Fascinating.

    I suppose the opportunity to engage in their well documented proclivities in the US Capital was just too much to bear.

    Not gonna lie; I hope they wiped their asses with Pelosi’s coat and left a generous skid mark on her chair.

    Thanks for that uplifting visual, Faphammer; you’re a big helper!

  14. Say, Cheese Whiz? Hate to burst your bubble, but Trump is at 49% approval right now.

    Your degenerate leadership isn’t even registering.

    #sad

  16. Just missed the target guys.

    The topic is actually “progsplaining”, not “poopsplaining”.

    Good effort though. You’ll stick to a topic someday and we’ll all be proud.

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