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jorjorwel??!!!
Meesa JorJor, meesa JorJor Well
Some recommended reading about George “I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler” Orwell:
- Isaac Asimov’s 1980 review of Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Orwell’s 1940 review of Mein Kampf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell's_list
- https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/George_Orwell
one could say the widespread misperception of who he actually was and what he stood for is rather… orwellian 🙄
The guy fought Nazi supplied Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. This take is nuts, he almost died for the CNT-FAI. He’s not a Nazi sympathizer.
And went on to literally work for the British intelligence services and provide them lists of communists, you could read the provided sources.
Just a thought experiment: since you apply this logic that fighting the Nazi-supplied nationalists in the Spanish civil war makes one an antifascist, do you agree that the greatest antifascist force in Europe was the USSR as the only country supplying weapons, munitions, tanks and airplanes to the Republican and Anarchist during the civil war?
The USSR didn’t supply the anarchists.
TheyThe Communists actively refused to give them arms and worked against them. That was the cause of Orwell’s disdain towards them. source: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/noam-chomsky-on-anarchism#fn70Edit: Correcting sentencing after being corrected in a reply.
Circular sourcing, you’re quoting Orwell himself in that citation.
Regardless, “the communists” referred to in this link are not the USSR, they’re the Spanish communists, you’re conflating the two again and therefore pushing the fascist propaganda that the Jewish Bolsheviks were puppeteering everything in Spain. Also, are there any quantitative modern studies of the scale of this “embargo”? Because I’ve provided sources* proving that the extent of the “anarchist repression” by the USSR in Spain was about 20 individuals, and motivated by the revolts in Barcelona that the Fascists and Nazis were pushing for.
*I linked the sources in another comment, here is my research on the topic as a Spaniard myself. If you read through this, you’ll see that Stalin himself commended the anarchists in private meetings with the Republican diplomats and tried to get the Spanish Second Republic to collaborate with them
Edit: adding Stalin’s opinion on collaboration with anarchists:
Aludió ampliamente a los anarquistas y señaló que en las filas confederales había buenos elementos. Preguntó si podría haber una plataforma común entre socialistas y comunistas a propósito de la CNT. La respuesta de Pascua fue afirmativa, aunque con matices.
He extensivelty referred to the Anarchists and pointed out that there were good elements among the confederates [CNT, largest Spanish anarchist organization at the time]. He asked whether there could be a common platform between socialists and communist regarding the CNT. Pascua’s answer was affirmative, though with caveats.
(Translated by myself from one of the sources linked, feel free to browse through the books yourself as I did).
To be honest I don’t care if the communists are Soviet or Spain. The arms that the USSR was sending didn’t reach the anarchists. That was the only claim I was refuting.
Reiterating for the sake of clarity.
That the Communists withheld arms from the Aragon front seems established beyond question, and it can hardly be doubted that the motivation was political. See, for example, D.T. Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil War (1955; reprinted New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), p. 110.
The fact that the footnote ends with Orwell’s own quote is just a nice tie back to the discussion.
Regarding the rest of the comment I’m not interested in reenacting “anarchist vs ML: spanish civil war” online theater. I just wanted to push back on the claim that the USSR supplied anarchists.
To be honest I don’t care if the communists are Soviet or Spain.
I just wanted to push back on the claim that the USSR supplied anarchists
Least intellectually dishonest anticommunist.
I’ll go ahead and spend one fucking hour reading through the sources again just to prove you wrong because I’m 100% certain that the at least half of weapons that the anarchists used were of Soviet origin, and I know for certain you won’t provide such sourcing because if you actually did the reading you wouldn’t be saying that the USSR didn’t supply the anarchists too.
Otherwise prove me wrong: give me a modern source estimating the availability of weaponry of anarchists in the Spanish civil war and its origin.
Ok. You wanna dance? Let’s dance.
The USSR did supply (provide any weapons to) anarchists in Spain.
However the Communists¹ didn’t supply (provide as many weapons as they could have to) anarchists in Spain.¹: because as you pointed out the fault wasn’t just the USSR but Spanish as well.
I was hoping that the context made the distinction clear but clearly that is not the case.
The May Days is not some unknown event.
I can walk down the street here see the bullet holes.
What’s your point?
You don’t need Orwell to know that the anarchists and Stalinists fell into opposition.
Being anti communism is the same as being pro Nazi now?
Always has been, but not sure why you’re telling this in response to my comment
🙄 MLs are not the only leftists. Pretending they are is flatly dishonest.
Where did I claim this?
Everything we know about Orwell disagrees, from his review of Mein Kampf to his comments about Jews and Homosexuals. He opposed fighting the literal German Nazis until war actually broke out. The civil was was a few years and a single book, and hardly representative of his entire life.
ohh hell nah they made a tanky conservapedia 💀
Its a bit off topic, but its really amusing in that Isaac Asimov article how he talks about the Spain thing where Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists were at odds. Basically, the left righting amongst themselves.
The more things change…
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Was at the library a few weeks ago for the first time and got 1984. Didn’t touch it and had to return it. Now when someone asks I can show them that I borrowed it and claim that I reread it recently 👌
It’s a good read
Double plus good
You don’t need to read 1984 to understand the basic meaning people get out of it. The significant aspects can be summed up as a few bullet points or a few short paragraphs.
Unfortunately because its message is so broad, it is often used in support of all sorts of opposing arguments, small and large, Jacob Geller discussed this topic in detail.
The basic meaning is idealist, though, as in non-materialist. 1986 outlines an “authoritarian” society that has essentially no material reason to be authoritarian. The book explains in painstaking detail how the citizens have fake coffee substitutes with no flavor, but doesn’t explain at any given time why this happens. It reduces this idea of “authoritarianism” simply to “state bad”, without any further political analysis. It’s lazy and sloppy.
It does explain that, in Goldstein’s book. Without destruction of production and privation, you cannot maintain a hierarchical society is the argument it plainly makes.
Is he a zionist?
Literally 1984
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