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

bugeye · 26-30, F

"Better an end with horror than a horror without end"

That's a nice quote right there. part of me always wanted to read it at least once. just out of a morbid curiosity of what it actually says.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@bugeye He used a similair idea in 1984.

[quote]There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

[b]If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.[/b]

- George Orwell, [i]1984[/i][/quote]

The vision of eternal struggle, and continously reaching for power and greatness... BY THE INDIVIDUAL or by a clique of thinkers. Because the concept of "humanity" is the enemy of those kinds of thinkers. In Fascism, "humanity" as a concept, does not excist. There is only the state and the state represents the nation. The nation is the state, and the state is the nation. And everyone else is an enemy even when they are potential allies for a brief moment in time, they will never be trully friends.

Hence, the human or humanity, will have to endure the eternal struggle of a small group seeking for continuous victories and greatness. A boot stamping on a human face, forever.