i think it's funny how every pop culture icon appropriated by the alt-right was made by someone on the left who would hate them.
"Red-pill" from Matrix by two trans women
"SocJuc Newspeak"/1984 references by Orwell, a Democratic Socialist who mostly wrote about the evils of capitalism besides his more popular novels
Pepe the Frog of course infamously the creator going on a whole campaign abt how he hates how his cartoon has been appropriated.
@shel Not sure which Orwell you're talking about. George Orwell was an avid anti-communist.
@rotatingskull George Orwell: "Orwell, George (1968) [1958]. Bott, George, ed. Selected Writings. London: Heinemann. p. 103. ISBN 0-435-13675-5. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."
@shel You found a quote online. Now learn the context. By totalitarian he means communism and by democratic socialism he means capitalism. Yes really.
@rotatingskull @shel Orwell approved of the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, who were certainly anticapitalists. But in the end, he was a snitch, so fsck him.
George Orwell was a lifelong socialist who never shied away from criticizing fellow socialists, but he fought as an armed revolutionary in the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (that's where he was shot through the neck by a sniper). He wore the insignia of the hammer and sickle. You can read all about it in Homage to Catalonia.
The idea that he was anti-Communist comes from his anti-Stalinism, after he saw the Left split by authoritarian factions. 1984 represented his fears that Socialism in the West could be corrupted by personality cults and led into the same pit Stalin took the USSR.