Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
wrote:
An Anonymous Coward wrote:

That is utterly offensive ****e. I have my real name, postal
address, and phone number in my signature, and have had it
there for more than 20 years and something like 20,000 Usenet
posts. Can you say as much, you gutless little slime?


Having read a lot of the anarchist literature about Lenin, I am well
aware of what he was like, and I'm none too impressed with Orwell
either.

Well, then maybe YOU can write one of
the most famous novels of the twenty-FIRST
century to show him up.

But I don't see that as a justification for portraying
Orwell as a sort of prefigurative Richard Perle, which I guess is
what you're up to. There are some ascertainable historical facts
about what he thought.

People always make a mistake when they drag
in a novelist's politics, or what they think is his
politics. Anyone who is in the used book business
can likely tell you that 1984 remains one of the most
requested novels by a Twentieth Century author who
has been gone a couple of generations -- and for
'the most part is read by people who could care
less about Orwell's politics.

In a sense, people make the same mistake
with "1984" that they make with Heinlein's
"Puppetmasters." In the case of the
latter, people often take a simplistic
approach holding that Heinlein was merely
commenting on communism. The reality
is that he was likely commenting -- if we want
to take his terrifying story as anything beyond
sheer entertainment -- on a pernicious tendency
in human nature, a tendency which became
overt not only in communism, but also
in Nazism, and, I suspect, Heinlein would
agree, in the terrorist groups of today. When
people start making suicide attacks on
innocent people, then something just as
pernicious as Heinlein's Puppetmasters
(a novel which should be required reading for
anyonce seeking a better understanding
of Al Quaida) .has gotten hold of their nervous
systems... But getting back to 1984,
technology being what it is today, any sort
of totalitarian government could institute a
surveillance system far more through than
what Orwell depicted. That is very basic
knowledge to likely all "1984" readers,
which is one good reason why the novel
remains scary stuff..

[Memo from the upstairs office.]
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