Althouse: Was North Korea modeled on "1984"?

December 19, 2011

Was North Korea modeled on "1984"?

Christopher Hitchens speculates:

(Via Jaltcoh.)

16 comments:

Kirby Olson said...: Orwell didn't foresee the incredible NK mass dances. He didn't have enough of a sense of the bizarre and the marvelous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q18pYNyVtW4; 12/19/11, 9:26 AM
Scott M said...: North Korea is "1984" sans the wimsy.; 12/19/11, 9:46 AM
Wince said...: So, if Kim Jong-il died after a stroke, technically was this his "happy ending"?; 12/19/11, 9:51 AM
traditionalguy said...: Before the Marines and Navy finished Remembering Pearl harbor, the Emperor of Japan was actually worshiped as a sun god, and still is by many. The entire goal of the Japanese society and Military was to die for him in the wars of conquest that he started.

Only after March 1945 when the B-29s switched to fire bombing cities and killing 100,000 Japanese at a time, were there doubts about the Dear Emperor's status.

Then the two nuclear fission devices blew, that weapon could obviously kill the Dear sun god himself, so he called off the war a week later.; 12/19/11, 9:55 AM
MnMark said...: So according to Hitchens, the atheistic, Communist North Korean state is not a sort of implicit condemnation of atheism - no, it's a condemnation of religion, because the North Korean state has worked to install a religious-like worship of the leadership.

Funny how people will twist things around to try support their worldview.

Here's a famous leftist atheist talking about a hardcore leftist atheist government's atrocities and the way it makes human life pointless...and does this lead him to question atheism and leftism? Nope. To him, apparently, North Korea's attempt to make "1984" into reality is a condemnation of Christianity.; 12/19/11, 10:02 AM
Steve M. Galbraith said...: Mr. Hitchens spent a good three decades of his life in fulsome defense of Marxist regimes not much unlike that in North Korea.

To be sure, it was a Trotskyite version of Marxism that, according to Hitchens, would have a kinder face.

Baloney.

In his last interview, Hitchens said his ultimate enemy was totalitarianism (whose origins, he found, in religion).

Well, why pray tell (ahem), did you spend so much of your life and so much of your skills defending it?

I'm sad to see him go and I'm glad that late in his life he ultimately rejected that which he, if not embraced, defended.

But he never was held accountable for those early years of his indefensible acts.; 12/19/11, 10:13 AM
edutcher said...: IIRC, the Nork state predates "1984" by a year or two, but all modern totalitarian states require those levels of cult of the personality and paranoia.

I think Orwell wrote what the world had just undergone with a nod to what emerging technology (what Churchill called "the lights of perverted science" in the Finest Hour speech) could do.; 12/19/11, 10:21 AM
dbp said...: The problem with satire is that the truly deranged see it as a guide rather than a warning.; 12/19/11, 10:30 AM
Joe said...: (The Uncredentialed, Crypto Jew)

You realize that North Korean has almost 100% literacy, and that Health Care is FREE, there, right? Alt-House smurf-tard, WiccanSatanists…..And don’t get me started on the almost total lack of trans-fats in their diets!; 12/19/11, 10:42 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: MnMark,

So according to Hitchens, the atheistic, Communist North Korean state is not a sort of implicit condemnation of atheism - no, it's a condemnation of religion, because the North Korean state has worked to install a religious-like worship of the leadership.

There is nothing atheistic about worshipping anything, you moron. Look, I know you believer types want to wiggle out of the noose any way you can, but - if you're serious - the least you can do is figure out the hang man's knot first.

Geez,...; 12/19/11, 11:04 AM
Anonymous said...: The only thing that stopped them from modeling North Korea on 1984 was having to call Kim "Big Brothel".; 12/19/11, 11:41 AM
Carnifex said...: Enough with Hitchens and his atheism. The guy died like 2 days ago (sarc),

Guy was decent reporter, wrote some books that did okay. Did he save a life? Did he free a people?
He was guy, just like all of us, trying to make his way in this effed up place. I don't expect the world to stop when I die, hell its the one thing we have in common.

This overweening use of someones death to hammer some idealogical point is offensive, it belittles the man, turning him into a talking point, not a person.

I can't abide that. Respect the person, not his works.

Mr. Hitchens, you wrote and said things I agree, and disagree with. I'm sorry for your families loss. I know you won't approve but I hope you're in a better place now. I salute you, sir.; 12/19/11, 12:15 PM
Amartel said...: Wisconsin has a Government Accountability Board that refuses, proudly and righteously refuses, without any fear of political retribution, to account.

(George Orwell called and he'd like to congratulate Wisconsin for blocking and copying.); 12/19/11, 12:35 PM
Methadras said...: 1984 actually had a moral to it, one which the DPRK is completely devoid of.; 12/19/11, 3:20 PM
Simon said...: After the eulogies are given, the knives will come out for Hitchens (they already did at the Nation). This clip is another reminder of how good he was.; 12/19/11, 8:09 PM
Quaestor said...: Pau Zrimsek wrote:
The only thing that stopped them from modeling North Korea on 1984 was having to call Kim "Big Brothel".

So that's what's going on inside the Colossus of Pyongyang. I image that thing must really vibrate after dark.; 12/19/11, 10:01 PM