Why not Linux?

Christopher Browne cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Sat Sep 2 16:54:20 UTC 2006


On 9/2/06, Zbigniew Koziol <softquake-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 02 September 2006 10:57, Rick Tomaschuk wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 14:05 -0400, Colin McGregor wrote:
> > > I have not read Animal Farm I'm afraid, but I do know
> >
> > Animal Farm is a satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Major
> > events in the book are based on ones from the Soviet Union during the
> > Stalin era. (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_farm ...sorry I
> > don't have Encarta)
>
> Well, wikipedia is certainly either not a fully trustfull source of
> information.
>
> Was 1984 based on Soviet Union? I doubt that. I doubt also that the Animal
> Farm was.

Animal Farm is commonly compared to how the Soviet Union came to be...
http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/ukrainian-af-pref.htm
http://www.novelguide.com/animalfarm/characterprofiles.html
http://www.turnerlearning.com/tntlearning/animalfarm/afsymbol.html

> Orwell wrote rather about the possible evolution of the western civilization.
> Was he so wrong? In some sense no: 911 is an example.

Orwell was definitely a "leftist," but his experiences in the Spanish
Civil War apparently left him a strong  opponent of Stalin.  _Animal
Farm_'s character, Napoleon, is generally compared to Stalin, much as
Snowball is compared to Trotsky.

It would be an oversimplification of Orwell to assume that everything
he wrote was about the West's evils.

Of course, all of the above is quite susceptible to reinterpretation.
It would be best to go to Orwell's own words as to what Animal Farm
was intended to be about:

<http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/ukrainian-af-pref.htm>

It is, in contrast, fair to say that 1984 (once planned to be called
"The Last Man in Europe") has, as its locale, something resembling a
"western" power.
- Winston lives in the ruins of London
- Oceania is a naval power, reminiscent of when the sun never set on
the British Empire
- They use dollars, and the empire includes the territory of the USA

But viewing it as a pure "future history of the West" is also
oversimplistic, as Oceania adopts things directly from a whole
assortment of sources, including the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

There's a LOT that is ambiguous in 1984, and the way that Al Qaeda
has, in effect, re-emerged as an expression of the Ottoman Empire, is
quite a change of topic that 1984 did NOT anticipate.  It viewed there
being three powers: the West, Soviet East, and Asian East.  The notion
that a radical Islam would rise up to be of interest wasn't in his
mind; it's an unexpected result that oil money has brought that back
up.

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