Comment by mc32 a day ago
I'm not sure if this quote takes into account mob rule. Take ethnic strife in Myanmar or in Africa or rural Mexico, etc. It's not governments doing it --it's mostly grass roots after a grievance is unaddressed and explodes.
That’s your interpretation from high school. The reality is it’s about information control, and an all powerful state was the most understandable model for Orwell.
Today, carefully crafted messages lead people to self-select propaganda. The stereotype of the MAGA uncle is the result of an appeal to fear, resentment and nostalgia.
Everyone must have a MAGA uncle. I myself have two, my kids have one, perhaps two. They are the ones we always had questions about, and would often introduce strange ideas at the table, like a return to the gold standard, or joining Amway, or something. It's scary how easily they bought into it, and how easily manipulated they are. I would imagine they would be easily hypnotized or something. They seem to be the ones that want someone else to tell them what to think, or what to do. My sons call them 'NPCs', and I think perhaps they are somewhat correct. What do we do about the NPCs?
I worry that both sides of the political spectrum are doing the same thing: de-humanizing people with different points of view.
I'm sure everyone knows what Voltaire said about this: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Is there any chance we can return to the idea that people can disagree with us without being dead to us afterward?
Society goes through these 50 year cycles where the collective memory is erased with generational churn.
We've forgotten about the impact of the big life changing technology of 100 years ago -- the radio. Radio demonstrated that mass media with extended reach can only be tamed by the leash of state authority. I'm in my 40s and remember boring radio of the 1980s and earlier. You might ask yourself... why was radio so boring? Why did it turn into a wild west in the 90s, then into weird right wing blah?
The reason is simple -- and it happened before. If you look back to the 1920s and 1930s, you had figures like Huey Long and Father Coughlin developing massive reach and exterting problematic influence. Cults of personality like Ron Paul and ultimately President Trump are really the same model. Getting out of it and saving the naive uncles depends and further media consolidation and regulation.
My guess is that's one of the reasons why the web plutocrats are moving so blatantly to establish dominance -- the free money era will get shut down by the kickback of MAGA's eventual demise.
>grievance is unaddressed and explodes
The grievance is also often created by the govt.
I think one can, if one were to look at recent and current conflicts there: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2022/11...
African fears and ethnic strife were invented out of whole cloth by colonial powers to divide and conquer the local populace. Myanmar I am less familiar with, but I believe that region has been under military junta rule for decades, and I believe religious tensions have been stoked by both the military rulers and armed insurgent revolutionary groups to rally support for their side.
The scale of the colonial horrors inflicted on various regions of Africa is poorly told, and was the pregame for the horrors of WW2 in many ways. The British and Germans “innovated” with the concentration camp in the early 20th century, for example.
The most obvious depravity was Leopold’s depredations of the Congo, but many many examples exist. The generational trauma on society is hard to fathom. And of course the arming and covert intervention of Soviet & western proxies during the Cold War fueled unrest and hostility.
Is that not the history of just about every country of consequence? They were conquered and vanquished multiple times with wealth extracted by foreign powers throughout history? Africa, Asia, Europe, Asia Minor, etc? No continent was free from this history. Have you read the history of Asia before the age of exploration or the history of Europe before the age of exploration or the history of the middle east of the Caucasus before the age of exploration? Every one of them experienced things similar to what you mention. Subjugation, atrocities, imposition of culture, etc. and lest you think Europe is free of this behavior I would reference our modern day Balkan region.
Sure, but the specific conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis and many others were orchestrated by colonial powers and that is a fact of the matter. I’m not sure what you are referring to, but it doesn’t contradict my statement.
Yeah, 1984 and its source material tend to reduce everything to monolithic dystopias, which indeed was relevant and happens when top down power bends truth. But maybe enough pent-up bottom up emotion can also override reason and decay truth the same way. It feels like the latter is also closer to a lot of the world today, we're seeing more chaotic competition for attention than some centrally planned dictation of truth.