{"id":4894,"date":"2006-06-02T08:40:19","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T12:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4894"},"modified":"2015-05-22T07:00:51","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T11:00:51","slug":"totalitarian-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4894","title":{"rendered":"Totalitarian Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend I finished two books:<\/p>\n

Why Orwell Matters<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Christopher Hitchens (READ IT) and Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by Viktor Klemperer (I could say READ IT – but you would seriously have to be as obsessed with totalitarian systems as I am – it is an exhaustive obsessive book about the language utilized by the Nazis – the calcification and distortion of the language – and it is AWESOME – but only true obsessives could make it through it.)<\/p>\n

And now – appropriately – I am reading Robert Conquest’s (one of my idols) new book The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. I am TEARING through it. He’s so damn unbelievable – talk about breath of fresh air. He is just amazing. He and Hitchens are kindred spirits in many ways. Hitchens actually dedicated Why Orwell Matters<\/i> to Robert Conquest (“with his permission”). Conquest is one of those big-picture guys. He always was. Big picture guys are usually hated. They are not listened to. Conquest’s experience was not unique. It’s those people not attached to any one ideology – it’s those people who distrust fanaticism of ANY kind, be it left-wing or right-wing – Kaplan is in that group, Naipaul is in that group, Rebecca West is the QUEEN of such a group … These people who can rise up and actually see things clearly – even with their own belief systems and prejudices – Orwell is in that camp as well, of course – and look at HIS reputation in certain circles. To this day he is despised by many – and also consistently misunderstood and misappropriated. Hitchens’ book addresses why that is, and why conservatives don’t understand Orwell when they think he is on their “side” and why liberals don’t understand Orwell when they think of him as an enemy to their “side” – People want to simplify Orwell in order to make him more palatable and everyone is kind of missing the boat on that score. Hitchens goes into this in his typical awesome contemptuous way. Hitchens hates rigid ideologues just like I do! heh heh Hitchens also opens his book with a poem written by Conquest about Orwell – it’s all just so … incredible. If I want to have a guide through the totalitarian, fascist, and communist nightmares of the 20th century – I want it to be Hitchens. Or Orwell. Or Conquest. Or Rebecca West. These are the people I trust.<\/p>\n

I HIGHLY recommend Hitchens’ book, by the way. In case you didn’t get that from my ranting and raving.<\/p>\n

And I am DEVOURING Conquest’s latest. One of the great things he says in the book is that so many current day problems come from people who have politics as a “mania”. Like politics is EVERYTHING to these people. This echoes something Robert Kaplan has said on numerous occasions. That “apathy” is often a GOOD sign for a society. Kaplan doesn’t find low voter turnout distressing – he finds it encouraging. It’s the fanatics, the ones who politicize everything, the ones who insist that their “side” has to be right – and COMPLETELY RIGHT – who have the potential to run everything into the ground, and insist on the centralization of the fringe mentality. Conquest put it much better than I just did – he has a whole section on this whole political-mania crowd … which really resonated for me.<\/p>\n

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