

Sour indeed. There are some decent observations in there. He correctly notes that the book is dissing Stalinism specifically. Newspeak never became a real problem and superficially similar phenomena don’t mean language is losing its expressive power. And yes, those depictions of working class people have more than a whiff of classism to them.
Then there’s a lot of complaining about leftist infighting. It’s pretty appropriate for this to be hosted on that site. It’s only anti-revisionism if it comes from the Vanguard Party region of Marxism-Leninism, otherwise it’s just sparkling sectarianism.
The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain, for he was convinced that if he did not, he would be killed
Better organized than the POUM, I’ll give it that. “Won out” is an interesting choice of words to describe any republican faction in the Spanish civil war.
And then there’s the cringe. No robots and computer? My stories have robots and computer because it’s impossible for someone to always pay attention to spying a bunch of people. The panopticon doesn’t work, actually, because even if at anytime someone could be watching you, they couldn’t possibly be watching you all the time unless they have robots and computer. Also why isn’t this dystopian society more feminist?










I told my friends I invited Taylor Swift, Zohran Mamdani and the pope to my birthday party