Mario the lone bookwolf's review of 1984 (original) (raw)

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Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > 1984

1984 by George Orwell

1984
by

78485297

Newspeaking ones way towards manufacturing consent with optional mutilating death by torture after brainwashing, because these pesky citizens just don´t get to the core of the fact that Ingsocs War is peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is strength police is based on hard, serious humanities such as politics, economics, and sociology.

It´s just reality
The irony lies in the fact that it just seems like the nightmarish tale of a forever dictatorship for the privileged people living in Western, brave new world, pseudo democracies, while it´s painful reality for billions of people. The severity may vary, but there are so many regions and states out there in the world where the „I should be silent to avoid secret torture prisons and internment aka death camps“ thought is a part of daily life, an epigenetic standard nutrition kids are born with.

One character struggling makes it even more intense
Orwells´choice to just focus on one storyline and the backstory makes it so compelling, while the dismal and depressing atmosphere pulls the reader into big brothers surveillance state with its secret police and euphemistic ministries.

Checklisting how much has become real.
Even in democratic countries, there is
vast control of information, media, and the consensus of which economic and political doctrines are dogmas that mustn´t be criticized or doubted.
Permanent warmongering with, especially the US, invading or supporting war parties. This is combined with
Discrediting even not radical, just progressive, alternative political parties, NGOs, and citizen movements that are too defiant. Good old Divide and rule style. Just swallow it, democracy is dead, but at least progressive, critical voices are just ignored and not killed. Thanks to the

Military industrial complex public private partnershipping the last drop out of dysfunctional, intentionally destroyed distributional justice and eco social market economy.
A great problem that emerges from the corporations controlling all democratic European and the US governments, probably the Asian, South American ones, Australia, etc. too, is that they actively promote any kind of authoritarian leadership in countries they have economic interests in, thereby actively helping in spreading Big Brother. Exaggeration? Sadly a clear nope, read Chomsky, Klein, Colin Crouch, Ziegler, Shiva Vandana, etc., all the critical, unheard voices denouncing neoliberalism, neoconservatism, neocolonialism, and globalization. Or call me a leftist conspiracist and trust politicians and journalists, far more easygoing. I should really consider to stop committing thoughtcrimes.

As if any ethical, democratic Western government (or a conglomerate of all of them) would go full economic warfare mode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economi...
and unleash fictional entities like, let´s just for fun call them, world building mode activated, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organisation, who exploit all weak and poor members while brave new worlding its own population. Or let´s get even more ridiculous and call a fictional superpower United States of Eurasia who loves to step over the final border of actively promoting wars for just economic and geopolitical reasons to directly smash democracies to breed more big brothers since, let´s pick any number, 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...
I just love the uchronia and alternative history genre, it´s both so dark and ironic.

Similar stuff
This is added to my review of Brave new world too.
Besides the 2 behemoths, Karel Capeks´
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
dark, disturbing masterpiece is possibly one of the best dystopian terror pieces. It´s focusing on the role of big money and industry, of innocence turned into the same evil it suffers, was written in 1936 and satirizes Germans, Japanese, Russians, societies, ideologies, and economy in general and is a timeless memorial against political and economic terrorism and extremism of any kind.
Aldous Huxley was Orwells´ college professor and they definitively inspired and mentally inseminated another to form these brave new worlds.
Zamyatin Yevgenys´ We is another, historical extremely interesting piece, although just not as famous and fancy as the others, kind of the same problem as with the underappreciated Capek.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
An extremely difficult to read one is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
which comes very close to Huxleys´ ideas, but is much darker.
Some more dark and/ or satiric tones:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
A similar idea by the master of philosophical, satirical sci-fi, the great, unique Lem:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

Subjectively, I do find it much more attractive that we wealthy Westerners live in friendly Brave new worlds with fringe pseudo democracy and not in Orwellian or Capekian horror visions as many other poor people around the world do.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

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February 11, 2022 – Shelved

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