• RedQuestionAsker2 [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    As a rare Hexbear Orwell enjoyer, I wish these people would engage with his other work.

    His essay “Politics and the English Language” in particular is really relevant to how the press is covering Palestine now (or any enemy of the empire).

    “Shooting an Elephant” is also a cool look at how the imperialist mind reacts to decolonization and the idea of being irrelevant and powerless.

    Of course, I’m sure they wouldn’t take the right lessons from them

  • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The only people who misunderstand George Orwell’s 1984 are those that go around trying to imagine it has a leftist message. It is mistaken to imagine that children in the English-speaking world get his work drilled into them like a mantra because, somehow, genuine socialists managed to sneak his work past a censor that banishes the likes of Karl Marx and Malcolm X.

    The less complicated reading is the correct one: it’s an anti-communist book that the establishment pushes, and the right adores and cites constantly, because it is effective anti-communist propaganda.

    Let’s part from a very basic fact: The CIA loves Orwell.

    Between 1952 and 1957, from three sites in West Germany, a CIA operation codenamed ‘Aedinosaur’ launched millions of ten-foot balloons carrying copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and dropped them over Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia — whose airforces were ordered to shoot the balloons down. [1]

    The movie adaptation of Animal Farm was the UK’s first animated feature film, and it was entirely funded by the CIA. This fact was kept secret for 20 years, and only revealed in 1974, to no cultural impact. [2]

    Orwell enthusiasts insist that he would be horrified by this turn of events, that he was trying to preserve a genuine and humane socialism from the clutches of “Stalinism”. They insist Orwell was against all empires, not just the one he lived in. However, his life and his work rather undermine this interpretation.

    from https://redsails.org/on-orwell/

    • PeeOnYou [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      i had no idea… i’ve realized most people here and on hexbear hate him but I didn’t know exactly why… now I see

      thanks for the links

    • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The hat is too small. I have a fat head, too - getting measured for mortarboards for graduation with my classmates was a revelation - and most off-the-shelf hats look a little weird on me and give me a headache from being too snug.

      I assume he has enough money from grifting to be able to afford custom hats. Does he still party like he thinks he’s Hunter S? Maybe he hasn’t invested in hats that fit his head because he’s still constantly losing the cheap ones.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    While he’s not wrong, everything about this post is silly. His silly grin, his silly hat, phrasing it as though Orwell has recently appeared on some podcast and talked about this specific moment, using Orwell as your reference part at all really. And also that hat again because fuck that hat.

  • Łumało [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Why do they all have to wear a trilby to an incredibly boring, dull and mismatched set of clothes with jeans.

    Always blue fucking jeans. Not to mention the hat being always black and off the worst and tackiest material ever. Christ they are ruining a perfectly good hat style to feel good about themselves like they are from the 50s and they fuck it up hard.

    These dweebs have ruined my perception of the trilby, I get reflexively disgusted when I see someone wear one. Not to mention them calling it a fedora :cringe:

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Always blue fucking jeans.

      As a Pole you should recognize jeans as a part of the subversive propaganda carried by CIA basically everywhere they went. Jeans mean “i love America”. It’s weaker message nowadays after US cultural hegemony plowed everything but it is still there.