this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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El Chisme
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The work is a near trotskyite ode to Lenin and Marx and a condemnation of the Soviet Union. That's just true regardless of your feelings about Orwell. The claim is not that the farm animals are too dumb for communism, but that the communist leadership is corrupt and gradually reforms itself away from communism to something indistinguishable from capitalism. It's not subtle, it's not a deep work. That's why it's used as a polemic for children.
Beyond that I won't argue Orwell with you.
Alright, we'll stop there. But here's some reading on Orwell that is worth considering. https://redsails.org/on-orwell/
I'm fully aware he stinks on a personal and political level. We can agree he's a (Really, that word is blocked?) "Someone who commits sexual assault" who ended up condemning the one cool thing he ever did. I just don't find that helpful to the discussion.
Oh whoops, that was the wrong article, sorry! https://redsails.org/jones-on-animal-farm/
I think about this article every time Orwell comes up. There is a reason the CIA would air drop this book into communist nations.
It's such a mindfuck how western "leftists" will often think Orwell, the man who has done more for anti-communism than probably any other single individual is a "true communist" but people like Stalin or Mao are "fake communist" because they didn't do a hypothetical perfect communism. All one needs to be a "socialist" is to just say you are, no matter what your actions end up actually supporting.
It's so surreal it would make for an actually good dystopian fiction/"child-friendly" fable metaphor type of novel.