Some nerds were doing that thing where 40k fans are like "OH NO SEXZ IS HERESY!" when it's pretty definitively not and is basically one of the only things in 40k that isn't heretical (as long as you're not doing evil slannesh shit) and it got me thinking about repression of sex under "in bad country regimes".

And a whoooooooooooooooooooooooooole fucking thing in 1984 was how liberating and humanizing it was that the author's grungy middle aged self-insert was boning a 19 year old member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and, like... America has several thousand different Junior Anti-Sex League and I'm not sure if the USSR ever had any? Like, yeah, maybe they did, but under capitalism Americans have literally convinced themselves they'll go to hell if they see a tiddy and the English famously just hate joy. So what the fuck was Orwell trying to critique with his "Junior Anti-Sex League" in spoooooky Stalinist England?

  • DanicaTheRebel [comrade/them,she/her]
    ·
    1 month ago

    The greatest irony about 1984 is the the bulk of the concepts in it like "memory holes", "doublethink", "room 101", perpetual war ect. ect. were directly inspired from Orwell working in a British propaganda ministry during WW2. NOT THE SOVIET UNION. Orwell never even visited the Soviet Union and had an admiration for Hitler. Everything else in the book is literally just a rehash of tired old anti-communist memes from the 1930s.

    • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
      ·
      1 month ago

      Yeah 1984 is a great takedown of Churchill-era policy stretched to its extremes, which is why modern-day Britain and other capitalist countries fit the mold much better despite the anti-stalinist brainworms.

      • heggs_bayer [none/use name]
        ·
        1 month ago

        I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett's edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.

        -- Review of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"

        • Hewaoijsdb [none/use name]
          ·
          1 month ago

          I dunno, saying this is admiration is a mischaracterization. It is possible to find someone charismatic without admiring them. I mean, Orwell literally says he would kill Hitler if he had the chance - a sentiment I would not associate with an admirer.

          • heggs_bayer [none/use name]
            ·
            1 month ago

            You are correct. Orwell sucked and all, but saying he admired Hitler is at best stretching the meaning of his words and at worst outright slander; I see this take way too often in tankie spaces.

            That said, I do find it kinda weird that he found Hitler having a persecution complex "deeply appealing". I think most well adjusted people would find Hitler to be a pissy little insufferable brat even if he didn't do the Holocaust.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              1 month ago

              It is deeply weird that Hitler was so effective as a politician, but then Trump is effective as a politician and that is also deeply weird. And Hitler was at least provably literate, at least enough to write a book.

      • miz [any, any]
        ·
        1 month ago

        you got your direct link but I highly recommend these as additional reading

        • https://redsails.org/on-orwell/
        • https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/
    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      What's the connection between Britain and Room 101? Well, I guess they probably did a fair amount of torture.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        Yeah, it's pretty standard for MI5 and MI6. The Met does it too but not on the same level and especially not recently. Orwell was a colonial cop, he likely had first or second hand knowledge of British torture practices. Never put that together before.