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

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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

@CountScrofula And this is misleading how? I just pasted a part of his essay.

Oh, and "joined with the communists", he fought for a faction that called themselves "The Spanish Republic", which a lot of diffrent left-wing political faction allied themselves with. When it comes to the end goal, there was a lot of inn-fighting for what that was supposed to be. Because these left-wing factions all had diffrent views and were joined together by a common enemy. I don't think Orwell joined with the communists, he just fought with all the other left wingers [i](including social democrats, because he was closer to a social democrat then anny of the other more radical factions)[/i]. Because we don't want to be misleading here.

CountScrofula · 41-45, M

@Kwek00 It's misleading because it feeds into a tendency people have to read Orwell as a centrist and he really, really was not.

His sympathies and worldview are clearly socialist (in a broad sense), and he spent an extensive amount of time looking at the left as a movement without particularly tying himself to one branch of thought. He was an outsider looking in, but was still looking at his own scene.

Read Homage to Catalonia. It's clear he saw the Spanish people building something beautiful that was destroyed by Stalin and then Franco. And that beautiful idea was a post-capitalist world where everyone was equal.

And from that book you can tell he joined the POUM:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POUM

basilfawlty89 · 31-35, M

@Kwek00 he also later said in retrospect he'd have joined with the Anarchists. We was not a social democrat. He was broadly socialist.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@CountScrofula Wtf are you talking about. The story group is: "I like a good Quote". I quoted a part of his review of Mine Kampf, because I liked it and I think it might contribute if people would think about this more. That's it. There is not context of reading Orwell what so ever, but you probably got triggered and felt that it means something that it doesn't because God knows what reason. You are seriously barking up the wrong tree.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@basilfawlty89 Okay triggerboy, what ever you say.

basilfawlty89 · 31-35, M

@Kwek00 so I'm "triggered" because I pointed out a fact that Orwell wrote that he'd have joined the Anarchists?

Interesting ideology. It's always the notes you don't play that need to be questioned. You have an agenda here and it's for promoting social democracy and center left policies.

Kwek00 · 41-45, M

@basilfawlty89 Hey man, at least I'm not talking about the Anarchist Utopic example during the Spanish war, where all the 8 milion catalonians just revelled in one of the best examples ever for anarchism. An example so good, that you had to bring it up.

basilfawlty89 · 31-35, M

@Kwek00 no instead you're willfully excluding information pertinent to the point with which to promote your world views as ideal when it's at best a band aid on the problem.

I still strangely see homelessness, addiction, crime, poverty and police brutality in your social democratic utopias.

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.

CountScrofula · 41-45, M

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow We contain multitudes. He can be a snitch and a leftist at the same time.