Some nerds were doing that thing where 40k fans are like "OH NO SEXZ IS HERESY!" when it's pretty definitively not and is basically one of the only things in 40k that isn't heretical (as long as you're not doing evil slannesh shit) and it got me thinking about repression of sex under "in bad country regimes".

And a whoooooooooooooooooooooooooole fucking thing in 1984 was how liberating and humanizing it was that the author's grungy middle aged self-insert was boning a 19 year old member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and, like... America has several thousand different Junior Anti-Sex League and I'm not sure if the USSR ever had any? Like, yeah, maybe they did, but under capitalism Americans have literally convinced themselves they'll go to hell if they see a tiddy and the English famously just hate joy. So what the fuck was Orwell trying to critique with his "Junior Anti-Sex League" in spoooooky Stalinist England?

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[–] Hewaoijsdb@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Orwell [...] had an admiration for Hitler

Source?

[–] heggs_bayer@hexbear.net 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power—till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter—I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett's edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can't win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.

-- Review of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"

[–] Hewaoijsdb@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I dunno, saying this is admiration is a mischaracterization. It is possible to find someone charismatic without admiring them. I mean, Orwell literally says he would kill Hitler if he had the chance - a sentiment I would not associate with an admirer.

[–] heggs_bayer@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You are correct. Orwell sucked and all, but saying he admired Hitler is at best stretching the meaning of his words and at worst outright slander; I see this take way too often in tankie spaces.

That said, I do find it kinda weird that he found Hitler having a persecution complex "deeply appealing". I think most well adjusted people would find Hitler to be a pissy little insufferable brat even if he didn't do the Holocaust.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago

It is deeply weird that Hitler was so effective as a politician, but then Trump is effective as a politician and that is also deeply weird. And Hitler was at least provably literate, at least enough to write a book.

[–] miz@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

you got your direct link but I highly recommend these as additional reading

[–] Hewaoijsdb@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago

Yeah Orwell was a bourgeois socialist