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Thread: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

  1. #1
    mongoose's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    http://www.george-orwell.org/Notes_o...onalism/0.html

    A few excerpts:

    INDIFFERENCE TO REALITY. All nationalists have the power of not seeing
    resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend
    self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of
    inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own
    merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of
    outrage--torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations,
    imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of
    civilians--which does not change its moral colour when it is committed
    by 'our' side.

    Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one
    part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to
    discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt
    about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to
    calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of
    deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly
    being reported--battles, massacres, famines, revolutions--tend to
    inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality.
    (v) PACIFISM. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure
    religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of
    life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there
    is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted
    motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of
    totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that
    one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings
    of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any
    means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely
    against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule
    condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western
    countries.

  2. #2

    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Yes, Orwell fought in an anti-fascst milita in Spain. He wrote about the experinces in Homage to Catalonia (slaughtered word)
    "I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt." -William Lloyd Garrison

    "The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end." -Leon Trotsky

  3. #3
    Bokks's Avatar Thinking outside Myself
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Slaughtered word? Is that the name of a work by Orwell, or do you think you spelled something wrong, because I don't think you did.
    'Course I'm a bad speller myself...

    Anyway, we talked about this in class... not Orwell specifically, but the whole nationalist and hypocracy thing. Like people being up in arms with Clinton, and yet Giuliani spanked more than he did. Well, maybe as much, I doubt Hugh Heffner or Howard Hughes was able to get more than Billy, but that's not the point, the fact is some people who condemned Clinton still back Rudy due to party lines.
    And Israel and Iraq, we condemn Hussein for not following UN protacol, yet we back Israel.
    That's actually the synaps we used in class, personally I see that as a whole different cup-o-tea, since Saddam was given multiple chances over years to comply with a simple peace force to check his goings-ons after he lost a war in the early 90's, and Israel was given no chance to comply with a back breaking cease-fire against an enemy that was actively bombing the Israeli border, after they've been nothing but faithful to an increasingly corrupt UN.

    That's my opinion, anyway. You can get the fire-squads if you want...
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    Bwaho's Avatar Puppeteer
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Yes, Orwell fought in an anti-fascst milita in Spain
    yeah, with a group that beat and killed unarmed priests and attacked churches.

  5. #5
    Yuiis's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Quote Originally Posted by Bwaho View Post
    yeah, with a group that beat and killed unarmed priests and attacked churches.

    A few uncontrolled minority, an infimous number compared to all the military and fascists that couped against a democratically elected republic, killing thousands of unarmed men, women and children (whatever their job was) that they knew/thought/suspected of not following their ideals. And these were not uncontrolled anarchists, that responded (excesively) to an attack they were an organized army that was responsible for the beggining of the conflict.

    It is a falacy to compare and make both sides equally guilty in this conflict, in fact it is what far-right neofascist groups try to lie about all the time nowdays.
    Last edited by Yuiis; October 22, 2007 at 11:48 AM.

    (...) and that unfortunate People were afterwards forced to undergo the utmost Miseries of a Siege, in their Capital City of Barcelona; during which, great Multitudes of them perished by Famine and the Sword, many of them have since been executed; and great Numbers of the Nobility of Catalonia, who, for their Constancy and Bravery in Defence of their Liberties, and for their Services in Conjunction with Her Majesty and Her Allies, had, in all Honour, Justice, and Conscience, the highest Claim to Her Majesty's Protection, are now dispersed in Dungeons throughout the Spanish Dominions.
    -Journal of the House of Lords: volume 20: 1714-1717, pp. 136-144.

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    Bwaho's Avatar Puppeteer
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    It is a falacy to compare and make both sides equally guilty in this conflict
    you see kids? it's ok to kill innocent defenseless people if it's done in the name of anti-fascism

  7. #7
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Quote Originally Posted by Bwaho View Post
    yeah, with a group that beat and killed unarmed priests and attacked churches.
    Just think what the fascists were doing if even the anti-fascists were guilty of such things.

    Quote Originally Posted by You again
    you see kids? it's ok to kill innocent defenseless people if it's done in the name of anti-fascism
    Who said that?
    Under the patronage of Rhah and brother of eventhorizen.

  8. #8
    Yuiis's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Quote Originally Posted by Bwaho View Post
    you see kids? it's ok to kill innocent defenseless people if it's done in the name of anti-fascism
    That is your own conclusion, driven from your own biased opinion of my explanation.

    It is not what I said or concluded in my post, so any attempt you make with your post to link it with mines is a lie. A pure lie.

    So you understand it (if you really want do so) maybe I have to explain to you what really formed the "republican" faction in the spanish civil war.

    Communists, Marxists, Anarchists, Separatists (some of these catholics and even some priests), Republicans and many other groups some more extremist than others formed this anti-fascist side in the conflict. As you can see their ideals were very different and this difference sometimes caused them to even kill each other in some occasions. This factor is one of the main ones that actually made the anti-fascist side lose the war.

    What you can't go ahead and do is mix pigs with velocity. George Orwell fought with the international brigades, having nothing to do with assassinations of priests or burning of churches. These acts were mainly done by small groups of uncontrolled people, and only during the first months after the fascist coup.

    The one and only error of the spanish "republican" side in the civil war was not comdemning/stoping these small groups. Nevertheless it would have been a difficult task of course, due to the fact that it was enough for that gov't to fight against a professional, and internationally helped army.

    You have fallen into the huge error of generalizing, in a conflict whose variables are many and fairly complicated to analize.

    Ps: Ever read about Basque priests being assassinated by fascist forces¿?
    Last edited by Yuiis; October 24, 2007 at 03:07 PM.

    (...) and that unfortunate People were afterwards forced to undergo the utmost Miseries of a Siege, in their Capital City of Barcelona; during which, great Multitudes of them perished by Famine and the Sword, many of them have since been executed; and great Numbers of the Nobility of Catalonia, who, for their Constancy and Bravery in Defence of their Liberties, and for their Services in Conjunction with Her Majesty and Her Allies, had, in all Honour, Justice, and Conscience, the highest Claim to Her Majesty's Protection, are now dispersed in Dungeons throughout the Spanish Dominions.
    -Journal of the House of Lords: volume 20: 1714-1717, pp. 136-144.

  9. #9

    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Let's not hate on Welly, he predicted the direction of contemporary geopolitics a long time ago. It's just too bad the proles in America are just as clueless as those in 1984 as we are moving towards a more despotic form of government every day.

  10. #10
    Bokks's Avatar Thinking outside Myself
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    Default Re: George Orwell: Notes on Nationalism

    Quote Originally Posted by Thutmose View Post
    Let's not hate on Welly, he predicted the direction of contemporary geopolitics a long time ago. It's just too bad the proles in America are just as clueless as those in 1984 as we are moving towards a more despotic form of government every day.
    Actually I love George Orwell. Eric Blair (his real name, "George Orwell" was to Blair what "Mark Twain" was to Samuel Clemens) was an excellent writer and stupendous political philosopher/satirist.

    And if you think we "proles" are as clueless as that, than you really need to rethink world dynamics. We are in no way moving towards a tri-hegemonic system, the US will never become "Oceania", nor would there ever be an East-Asia or Eurasia. If you think Americans are so mindless that they would walk into a bombing and merely push the limbs away, or participate in a mindless mass orgy and support whoever the heck government deemed "evil", then you need to look outside. Only 27% of the population supports Bush, and everyone wants us out of everywhere. The only mindless collective that is beginning is the frightening support that Al Gore and Hillary Clinton have, and even that isn't going to lead to a Big Brother Watches you.
    Some rights are trounced on. that is a problem, but it has not gotten out of control, nor will it. We do not have tracking devices in our shoes, we don't have cameras in our TVs, and I don't see anyone arrested for having sex with a consenting adult.
    the only people that the people fear are the people who have shown time and time again that they would love to kill us and our children. Religious Fanatics are not EastAsia, nor or they the world.
    Is it possible for the ant hill to become a mountain? Maybe, if we lay in a coma for 200 years, but until there actually is someting to complain about it's just an ant hill.

    Plus, Orwell never wrote it as something that the world is doomed to; when he wrote 1984 he called it that because he was writing in 1948 and flipped the last two numbers around. It was meant as a political satire piece, as well as what to look out for should the signs morph together and present the fact that we live in a totalitarian state. Claiming that Bush is Hitler or Stalin, however, and writing that Americans are mindless proletariot degrades and demeans the American system and history.
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