La Prétexte

This is all about me and my favourite "drugs"

[lamignonette]

[lamignonette]

[sugaryhoneymoon]

[phantom-threaded]

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 2003, dir. Peter Jackson

[turkishfaramir]

E mor henion i dhu: Ely siriar, el sila. Ai! Aniron Undomiel.

[lamignonette]

[lamignonette]

[dearsolipsist]

“Yet her walk is lascivious and a saint would sell his soul to the devil merely to watch her dance.”

— Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome, Simone de Beauvoir 

[anxietyproblem]

[xylophonetangerine]

[thundercrackfic]

Since most of these devices deployed in the United States, are actually manufactured in China, I kind of assume that the second one has a slightly more secret Chinese flag on it, giving us two big brothers for the price of one.

[zingmin]

[kosmogrl]

[anxietyproblem]

[lamignonette]

[lamignonette]

[psychotrenny]

It's so funny how many people talk about George Orwell as though he's an expert on Soviet Communism. Like he never lived in the USSR, was never particularly close to anyone who did and never even studied it in an academically creditable way. Sure, he had some run-ins with "Soviet-Aligned" communists in Britain and Spain. But it's not as though they were especially deep or revealing interactions, neither Britain nor Spain are part of the USSR and frankly the whole "the Soviets are friends to my personal enemies" should make Orwell an even less reliable source on the Soviet Union. Like he's just some fucking colonist's son and Old Etonian who spent most of his life working for the British government, both openly and secretly, that happened to write some well known and (ironically) state supported pieces of anti-communist propaganda. You'd probably learn more about Soviet history and society from Rambo and Red Dawn than from Animal Farm and 1984

And the funniest part is that many ideas in 1984 aren't just random nonsense he made up. The book was heavily influenced by Orwell's actual experiences working in and around state information control: for the British government. He was basically sitting at his desk and telling lies for broadcast while thinking "Damn this place sucks. I bet the fucking Stalinists are doing something just like this but even worse". Like 1984's depiction of "Totalitarianism" isn't just bullshit; it's blatant projection

[psychotrenny]

One particular quote from the cited sources especially stood out to me, written in the diary Orwell kept during WW2. He justifies his work as a self-consciously dishonest propagandist for the BBC by saying:

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don't think this matters so long as one knows what they are doing, and why

Which is really funny considering the widespread idea of "George Orwell" as this anti-authoritarian free speech warrior. Without any other context beyond "Orwell Quote", most people would assume it came from the mouth of O'Brien or some other authoritarian antagonist as a biting criticism of state deception. It's the sort of thing Liberals would love to throw around, putting it in articles they title like "What Orwell can teach us about Putin's misinformation campaign".

But it was written by Orwell speaking as himself, talking about his own attitudes and behavior. And given his later collaboration with the British Information Research Department, the infamous "St George's List" of communists and all those he considered sufficiently adjacent (Jews, homosexuals, anti-racist/"anti-white" activists), it seems unlikely that he ever changed in this regard. The controlling tactics used by IngSoc are far more "English" than they are "Socialist" and the intended horror of the book has less to do with what's being done and more to do with who's doing it. Basically, the scariest thing about O'Brien is his name

[lilkakow]

Soviet poster “In order to work peacefully and live happily, we will learn to be close friends from childhood!”, 1961