{"id":9273,"date":"2015-06-20T07:32:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T12:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9273"},"modified":"2015-06-20T07:32:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-20T12:32:29","slug":"orwell-huxley-and-americas-plunge-into-authoritarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9273","title":{"rendered":"Orwell, Huxley and America\u2019s Plunge into Authoritarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"subheadlinestyle\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/06\/19\/orwell-huxley-and-americas-plunge-into-authoritarianism\/\" target=\"_blank\">Orwell, Huxley and America\u2019s Plunge into Authoritarianism<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"subheadlinestyle\"><strong>Legitimizing State Violence<\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"mainauthorstyle\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"mainauthorstyle\">In spite of their differing perceptions of the architecture of the totalitarian superstate and how it exercised power and control over its residents, George Orwell and Aldus Huxley shared a fundamental conviction. \u00a0They both argued that the established democracies of the West were moving quickly toward an historical moment when they would willingly relinquish the noble promises and ideals of liberal democracy and enter that menacing space where totalitarianism perverts the modern ideals of justice, freedom, and political emancipation. Both believed that Western democracies were devolving into pathological states in which politics was recognized in the interest of death over life and justice. Both were unequivocal in the shared understanding that the future of civilization was on the verge of total domination or what Hannah Arendt called \u201cdark times.\u201d<\/div>\n<div class=\"main-text\">\n<p>While Neil Postman and other critical descendants have pitted Orwell and Huxley against each other because of their distinctively separate notions of a future dystopian society,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/06\/19\/orwell-huxley-and-americas-plunge-into-authoritarianism\/#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a>\u00a0I believe that the dark shadow of authoritarianism that shrouds American society like a thick veil can be lifted by re-examining Orwell\u2019s prescient dystopian fable\u00a0<em>1984<\/em>\u00a0as well as Huxley\u2019s\u00a0<em>Brave New World<\/em>\u00a0in light of contemporary neoliberal ascendancy. Rather than pit their dystopian visions against each other, it might be more productive to see them as complementing each other, especially at a time when to quote Antonio Gramsci \u201cThe old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/06\/19\/orwell-huxley-and-americas-plunge-into-authoritarianism\/#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Orwell, Huxley and America\u2019s Plunge into Authoritarianism Legitimizing State Violence In spite of their differing perceptions of the architecture of the totalitarian superstate and how it exercised power and control over its residents, George Orwell and Aldus Huxley shared a fundamental conviction. \u00a0They both argued that the established democracies of the West were moving quickly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6557,6556,204,1211,6555,1235,6554],"class_list":["post-9273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-aldus-huxley","tag-authoritariansim","tag-democracy","tag-george-orwell","tag-huxley","tag-orwell","tag-state-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9274,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9273\/revisions\/9274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}