Stephanie Gutmann
Posted on 03/04/2009 5:43:39 AM PST by Schnucki
"The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor...All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies, perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured in some hiding place in Oceania itself."
1984 by George Orwell
In the passage above, and throughout 1984 and Animal Farm, George Orwell illustrates how regimes with tentative hold over beleaguered populations deflect anger away from their own corruptions and mistakes with the deployment of a greatly embellished, even invented, external enemy.
There are many things that bug me about Barack Obama -- the insane laundry list speeches, the silly rhetoric, the hostility to the free market -- but these are all talked about. He has another habit that hasn't been talked about so much and, of all the things he does, it makes me the most queasy.
It's pretty subtle, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on because, if it were to become full-blown, it has the potential to be the most socially damaging element of his presidency.
I'm talking about what I'm going to call his Goldstein-ism, his tendency to make veiled, dark allusions to a recently vanquished "other", an evil being (he is never specific) who is, he always implies, the real cause of all our problems.
I've seen it in every speech -- the peevishness, veiled gibes, and rhetoric that distorts the historical record. I commented about Obama's tendency to make vague references to an evil strawman in a 29 Jan. post following Obama's interview on
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Great article. The writer really nails Obama's strawman of the evil demon (Bush) beaten back by the voters, a beast who may just return if you don't do as Obama says.
Very good article, the same thing being said in a variety of ways,,deflecting with a paranoid allusion to some evil force opposing him.
The man’s tactics, unmasked one by one, will cease to have power.
A rather valid observation on the author’s part, I think. My own perception is that Obama, having been steeped in the bitter tea of university radicalism, first learned to anticipate dark enemies lurking behind every corner, and only then discovered the political usefulness of such paranoia in advancing his ambitions.
An evil Vanquished? by electing his idiotic a$$?
Is he refering to the previous Admin?.. Yes I think he is.
All of my extended family members suffer from BDS so strongly, it was all I could do to convince them that Obama would be far worse than McCain. I convincd a few in my inner circle that I’m not retarded. I’m done, I’m finished, and I DID try hard. (not about the retarded thing, about the Obama thing mind you)
But it was not all Cacti, not all bad on Nov 4, I felt super. because I know for a fact that my Mom, brother and youngest sister did not vote for the latest Sensation. And there were other perks as well.
I wish that any Obama supporter would ask him about the “Evil Vanquished”, or the “Lowering Tides”, or the “Cooler Earth”, or the “Unicorn.....”, Because you can’t ask his a$$ about the unborn - then again they do not vote.
Call me smarter than the 52%tards? Obama will be the ruin of our nation
...da Man. Be it Bush, Rush or any other target of opportunity to divert blame.
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!
Four legs good! Two legs baaaad!...
God help us! What have our countryman and women done?
Yes, or any Republican congressman who don’t vote for Democratic proposals.
later
Exactly. And remember....the Left didn’t really started on Bush until his second term - once they realized they could use the “selected not elected” saw anymore. All that to say that Obie-the-wan knows that he can count on BDS to last long enough to get re-elected. He may very well be the last American president.
Good article! The question is...ta da...who is the enemy?
On another thread, there was some discussion of the fact that, like any good dictator, Obama needs an “enemy of the people” to use as a focus to distract people from his own performance and to keep them solidly behind him by uniting them against this enemy.
I just can’t figure out who it will be, though. “Wall Street” and “the rich” are too impersonal, and while he can vent about them from time to time, just to keep the class envy up, I don’t think they offer an identifiable enough target to serve the purpose.
I think Barry gets a lot of this stuff from his formation in radical black politics, where there is one obvious enemy, whites. This enemy is blamed for everything bad that happens, is dehumanized to the point where blacks actually cheer for the murderers of whites and it is permissible to spew any kind of hate against whites, and conveniently keeps the focus off the leaders of the group.
I think there are too many whites in the country for Barry to be able to make whites the enemy of the people, so I’m not sure what group he’s going to turn to. But he will find one, and it’s not going to be pretty for that group.
Spot on.
Back in the ‘80s I gave up on reading Sci-Fi as all the fanciful things written were starting to come true - no good other-worldly stories could beat what was starting to happen.
Now, other books I have read are going through the same process - they have become manuals for this administration:
1984
Animal Farm
Atlas Shrugged
I wonder how long before Mein Kampf kicks in?
Hitler used the ‘jews’. Obama is using Bush and Republicans to stir up a fury of hatred. Simple as that.
Interesting- thanks for posting it.
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