George Orwell foresaw the current Republicans when he wrote "1984"

[Vietnameravet]

this is the party that practices Doublethink..a form of mind control as outlined in the book "1984"

Doublethink defined;

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them,

to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it,

to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy,

to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again,

and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink

George Orwell "1984'

TELL ME THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO THOSE RAMPAGING ELEPHANTS..

[tama]

1. Be carefull

of trying to use George Orwell to support Democrat doublethink either... the guy was anarchist who fought in Spain against fascists, wrote Animal Farm against stalinists, and would stand in solidarity with Occupy anarchists etc. against Democratic admins state terror.

[coldwaterintheface]

3. So what Orwell did was bad?

or are you just pointing out that he stood up and fought for what he believed in.

[tama]

6. I very much like Orwell nt

[TeamPooka]

2. more likey the GOP learned it from him Dad! They learned it from him....sob...sob... nt

[coldwaterintheface]

4. 1984 came out in 1949

and seeing that he had first-hand experience with today's GOP's ideological European counterparts I would say your comparison is spot on.

[davidn3600]

5. Orwell would likely not like the Democrats today either

I think he would hate both parties if he was alive today and lived in this country. Like another poster said, he'd be a bit of an anarchist. He would LOVE WikiLeaks and trash Obama for going after Assange.

[coldwaterintheface]

7. I agree

[Igel]

8. True, but in many ways he considered heresy among the ranks of his own far worse.

To be a Socialist you had to work to overthrow tyranny. Left-wing tyranny was no worse than right-wing tyranny in practice, but in principle it undermined the struggle for democracy and socialism because it replaced socialism with "liberal fascism" while keeping the name. That, of course, is a classic fallacy, and the repeated application of the fallacy has led to "socialism" being pretty much a meaningless word unless you take the effort to define it ahead of time in your conversation, get agreement on the definition, and then stick to that definition.

(Yes, "liberal fascism" is his coinage for those liberals would would just as gleefully push their ideology down the throats of unwilling citizens as the fascists would push their own ideology down the throats of those who didn't support them. He had problems with anything like a a "fascist knows best" mentality.&quot

The anarchism he liked wasn't Bakunin's or the Black Bloc's but that of Catalonia in the '20s. That kind of anarchy as a form of government is really tough to implement and maintain.