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   goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Saturday, 08-Apr-2023 22:11:51 JST goatsarah
   A big issue with people citing Orwell's 1984 is that most people doing who have never read it, and therefore don't really have a good idea of what the book is actually about. They pick up on a few concepts: censorship, newspeak, restricting the press, and think that's the point of the book.
   
   But for me, the real point of 1984 is the way it provides a window into a totalitarian state in so far as its effects on the people living under it. It's a character study of a man who lives in a state so obsessed with power and control that it cannot accept that he can even be free in his own mind.
   
   The point of totalitarianism, as depicted in 1984, is just that: it's total.
   
   It depicts a state that is systematically reshaping society in such a way that it isn't even possible to conceptualise any form of opposition to the state's mindset and control. From cradle to grave, your life is the subject of aggressive intervention to turn your mind into a perfect ideological prison guard for the state, doing its work for it.
   
   There can be no opposition, because there can be no concept of opposition. The necessary education, upbringing, and mental tools required to conceptualise such a worldview are absent.
   
   This is what North Korea does. This is what the USSR did.
   
   And this is what the Republican Party, spearheaded by the likes of DeSantis, is doing. They have realised that their grip on power is threatened by generational change, and are trying to reshape American society in such a way that their power base is never threatened.
   
   And that means that the very idea that you can live in ways that aren't in thrall to their particular brand of anti intellectual, white supremacist, lowest common denominator, ultra heteronormative christofascism, must be eradicated.
   
   No LGBT people. No women in positions of authority. Rule by a select band of ideologically pure* white male elites, and only them.
   
   And everyone else must conform, be made to conform, or be eliminated.
   
   This is what they're doing.
   
   * - and this is why it ultimately never works, other than for a little while, because these people are never ideologically pure. Totalitarian states rot from the head down because their ruling elite becomes decadent. It happened in the Soviet Union, it was happening in Nazi Germany before the process was interrupted by bombing them until the rubble bounced, it will eventually happen in North Korea, and it was in the process of happening in 1984.
   
   And if the DeSantises of this world succeed in creating their white supremacist totalitarian hellscape (for some, paradise for those already slavishly devoted to their hate-fuelled worldview, the only people genuinely free in such a society because they already think the "right" way), then that too will eventually rot from the head down.
   
   But they will kill a lot of people first, and make countless more live lives of filth, squalor and despair which they will be made to believe is heaven, Or Else.
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     Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊 (theogrin@chaosfem.tw)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 01:39:38 JST Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊

     in reply to

     @goatsarah
     In one of the appendices to 1984, regarding the construction of the now-defunct Newspeak, the meta-narrator refers to Ingsoc, and indeed the State, in the historical sense. The implication is absolutely that Oceania collapsed as a whole, likely not long after Winston Smith's suicide. Except nobody seems to read that part, or for that matter the 'extra' chapter in A Clockwork Orange...

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     Alienated53 (alienated53@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 01:40:37 JST Alienated53

     in reply to

     @goatsarah I am afraid you do not take your criticism sufficiently far. While the #Christofascists are as you describe, we already live in an #InvertedTotalitarianState where mind control is practiced by a neoliberal #CorporateOligarchy that owns a brainwashing mechanism in the 24/7 MSM & entertainment industry. Proof is in the lack of a France like uprising over things like Biden's Willow Project approval, etc.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 01:40:37 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Alienated53
     @Alienated53 PARKLIFE
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 01:44:56 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊
     @theogrin Yeah. You’re right that so many people miss that.
     
     And the signs are there when Winston sees how O’Brien lives. They do not have the stomach to eradicate everything of the old because they themselves are utter raging hypocrites.
     
     I’m pretty sure Orwell intended Winston to be absolutely completely wrong when he decided the only hope lay with the Proles. The Proles don’t give a shit, and were never going to give a shit.
     
     But you have to recruit the Inner Party from somewhere, and the very nature of these states is that your politburo and your military are in on it, and full of people who would, if given the chance, seize power for themselves.
     
     The leadership of totalitarian states are going to inevitably degenerate into fighting like rats in a sack. It’s unavoidable.
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     Baz Scott (bazscott@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 12:03:06 JST Baz Scott

     in reply to

     • Nick Lockwood

     @goatsarah @nicklockwood "and this is why it ultimately never works" is spot on, and also the point of 1984. If you read the appendix at the end of the book it refers to Newspeak in the past tense - it didn't persist. 1984 is a history of a regime that failed. So the book tricks most readers in to thinking the opposite of what actually happened - it's genius!

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     Óscar Morales Vivó (mylittlemetroid@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 12:03:28 JST Óscar Morales Vivó

     in reply to

     @goatsarah As another great example of "rotting from the top" I'd suggest Iran as another current, obvious case.

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     Hans (sherlockhans@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 21:34:48 JST Hans

     in reply to

     @goatsarah How do we prevent them from still claiming that the acceptance of minorities as equal and visible parts of society is the same sort of reshaping of society?

     From their perspective the government seems like an authoritarian dictatorship trying to change their views.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 21:34:48 JST goatsarah

     in reply to
     The two are qualitatively different. When I, as a trans woman, seek acceptance, I am not asking that anyone transition and live their life the way I do. I merely ask to be left alone to live my life.
     
     I run a business. I am not asking to discriminate against people who don’t live the way I do when I provide my services. I am not demanding the ability to do so from the government. I don’t like transphobes, and other forms of intolerant people, but I am not demanding the right to remove them from any sphere where I might happen to encounter them.
     
     They, on the other hand, have decided that their values require that I pretend to be just like them, or be removed from society. They demand to be able to reshape society so as to make it all but impossible for people like me to exist, and, if they were to succeed, to erase us from history and the future.
     
     I think they’re arseholes, but I don’t seek the right to deny them the option of being arseholes.
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 22:21:13 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Hans
     @SherlockHans I'd also note, upon reflection, that this question ignores my central point, and indeed what is pretty central to 1984 as well: those who would enact totalitarianism, the DeSantises of this world if you will, are NOT seeking to make everyone behave like them.
     
     They are, in fact, hypocrites. They use the desire of people who do want to force people to behave in a certain way to obtain and hold power, but they themselves do not behave in that certain way.
     
     And that is why these systems inevitably collapse. They're a bit like churches engaging in reigns of terror over a populace, led by people who do not exhibit the behavioural standards which they demand from everyone.
     
     Those fail too. The institution may remain (the Catholic Church has endured for over a thousand years behaving like this), but their bouts of totalitarian terror are transient, because they lack, and always will lack, the strength and focus to practice what they preach.
     
     And so they fight like rats in a sack, and that fighting brings about the end of their bullshit, for several generations, at least.
     
     I think Orwell recognised this. I think he saw the cycle renewing, and despaired, but he knew it was a cycle and that the desire to build "thousand year reichs" was a fool's errand.
     
     These things die in decades, or less, not centuries.
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     florida_ted (florida_ted@friendica.myportal.social)'s status on Monday, 10-Apr-2023 06:27:59 JST florida_ted

     in reply to
     @goatsarah Thanks for sharing your observations and thoughts on this. Living in the state of Florida, I have a front row seat to the current s#!tshow and appreciate your point that totalitarians do not practice what they preach.
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