this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
183 points (95.1% liked)

Asklemmy

43968 readers
1009 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You can really tell that people who reference that thing have never read it. Honestly if you have a legitimate criticism of Western society to draw from a dystopian novel there's probably better choices. The totalitarianism in 1984 is in no way subtle or hidden from anyone, that's a big part of the point of it.

Of course, to reference something relevant you have to have read things other than rage clickbait.

[โ€“] MrFunnyMoustache@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it didn't need to be subtle for it to be realistic. You can see in certain communities just how unsubtle their hatred and stupidity is.

[โ€“] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, exactly. Orwell was trying to paint a picture of how willingly people would accept gross oppression. You can see him talk about it in some of his letters IIRC.

In the West way more than just your TV watches you, but it's done in a very invisible way and for now you won't even hear back unless you join ISIS or something. Cynical forces manipulate the political process, but it's out in the open except for being just boring and complicated enough to avoid too much publicity. None of this is very overtly oppressive.