George Orwell - Review of "Mein Kampf" (1940) [I Like a Good Quote]

[quote][b]Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues.[/b] 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. [b]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, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades.[/b] However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. [b]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.[/b] Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. [b]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.[/b]

- George Orwell - [i]Review of "Mein Kampf"[/i] (1940)[/quote]

Dostoyvskys' view on a similair toppic (1864): https://similarworlds.com/4429978-I-Like-a-Good-Quote/3855173-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky-Notes-From-the-Underground-1864

CountScrofula · 41-45, M

This is misleading and a pet peeve of mine.

Orwell was a radical leftist, a socialist, and most importantly anti-authoritarian.

When he's writing stuff like this, he is attempting to tell other people on the left that Stalin is a monster and cannot be
separated so easily from Hitler because they are both dictators.

That [b]authoritarian[/b] left politics may as well be fascism for all the good it does the people.

But Orwell was an [b]anti-authoritarian leftist[/b] and remained so his entire life.

Orwell was not a centrist, capitalist, or liberal. For the love of God he literally joined with the communists in the Spanish civil war to go fight fascists as a volunteer, and he fought and killed people.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@basilfawlty89 It was a direct quote from his essay. There is no agenda you fuckwit. It's just a quote. There is no other context delivered, so you don't have to make shit up.

Sure, you can see all of that, because a social democracy isn't a utopia. It's just a phase that allows progress later on when people are with the program. Instead of radically implementing a program and expect people to just adopt to it as if that is ever going to happen. Societies don't change over night, because people don't change over night. That's why, a number of left wingers at the beginning of the 20 centrury came up with this concept of a Vanguard party in the first place, because they were frustrated that the prophecies didn't materialise. So instead of getting from A to B in a democratic sense, they let an elite clique dictate what people should do and those that didn't were just removed from society. Because if you want to put a round shape in a square hole, you either hammer it in there or throw it out with the rest of the garbage that doesn't fit the mold that the utopic thinker uses.

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@CountScrofula The idea of him just being an "anti authoritarian leftist" is also a bit misleading because one thing he was also later famous for was ratting out other leftists to MI5.