I think Orwell would find this all very familiar.
There's a TV interview of her in the lead up to 2016 saying Trump would be better than Clinton. (Not that she liked Trump, that's different, just that she thought Clinton was worse). Still shares Demexit memes on FB, last I saw.
Actual, literal, communist. Was part of the Socialist Worker's Party in the UK just when that exploded.
Sooooo… who's the in-group?
Politics and life is about your actions and output than what you nominally say out loud. “literal communist” is a label. Labels in isolation are not meant for serious convos. The actions of many Trots is and was to collaborate with the right, collaborate with western hegemony, attack the left, and trash actual existing leftism in the world.
If your ex is a Nazi leftist (Strasserites etc) or a communist Zionist who loves apartheid you’d presumably understand how useless political labels can be and not wonder “Sooooo… who's the in-group?”
Originally it was literally just a seating plan. The left wing was the wing of the assembled politicians that were *physically on the left*.
But if that's your definition, it would make capitalists the "left wing" of Cuba.
> The actions of many Trots is and was to collaborate with the right, collaborate with western hegemony, attack the left, and trash actual existing leftism in the world.
That far left is a circular firing squad, IMO.
(I assume the same about the far right, except the bits of the far right that get in the news seem to have "circular firing squad" less metaphorically and more literally).
But her actions were, and continue to be, doing everything in her power against the right wing. I think she even managed to get arrested for some protest or other against, IIRC, a US defence sector company. She happens to find the left of the Overton Window to be too right wing. As do I, but then, I moved from the UK to Germany to get away from the politicians and politics I can't stand, while she works in a trade union (in the UK) to support the workers who need help and make a positive difference.
> If your ex is a Nazi leftist (Strasserites etc) or a communist Zionist who loves apartheid you’d presumably understand how useless political labels can be and not wonder “Sooooo… who's the in-group?”
The British SWP, not the American SWP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Workers_Party_(UK)#A...
The US one is reportedly pro-Israel, the UK one appears to be pro-Palestine: https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/swp-conference-2024-pales...
I was doing hypotheticals. Not specifically talking about your ex.
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You’re right about my definition. The other addition is being against unjustifiable hierarchies (yes some will say Cuban regime is unjustifiable but I disagree and it’s not the same as capitalists) and being critical of capitalism.
That aligns with the French Revolution and left wing being progressive tho obviously that was a different stage of societal development and times.
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“She happens to find the left of the Overton Window to be too right wing.”
Yes that’s what a lot of people say. Ultras, left coms, anarchists etc.
I feel similar to all of you except for me I find all these people to primarily be chauvinists masking that behind pretending to be too left for the left.
I have my own personal criteria for “true” left-wing which is how you are thinking of people not in your in-group. European fascists historically want to help the workers of the in-group people they care about.
It’s why I despise Europe. Always going on about social democracy being so left-wing and how Europe is so left wing compared to America as if European fascism doesn’t want to help their own too.
I will never put worth into someone helping their own in-group. To me it matters if you care about the global south if you’re a westerner or European. And most western leftists and European leftists don’t really care.
Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth.
By doublethink, internally you know there are two meanings although you can never actually do the crimethink of believing or saying any ungood connotations. Edit - added quote:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, [and remember it if necessary]. To deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.
Also I never said anything about a ministry of lies. I only spoke of a ministry of truth of course.
(That is, if the 2 h edit window would not have been already over now)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(Unite...
> "In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.[111] He supervised cultural broadcasts [sic] to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.[112] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...
There's quite a visible gap between his nominal role as a propagandist for Britain in India, and his private views expressed here. I mean: "quite truly the way the British Government is now behaving upsets me more than a military defeat"—wow! Or: "The best joke of all was that the Germans did their best to jam it, unfortunately [sic] without success".
(Meta: the part where Wikipedia's obviously very not-neutral editors inserted that exemplar of newspeak, "cultural broadcasts" for "propaganda", into the biography of Orwell himself is just... doubleplus).