ADOLF HITLER AS THE EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN OF THE LIBERAL WEST

by Colin Liddell

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler. In his lifetime he was a remarkable and misunderstood man – Machiavellian in his seizure of power, yet surprisingly un-Machiavellian in his use of it. But it was only in death that he became something altogether more unique than just another scrambler and fumbler after the orb of power.

Posthumously he underwent the opposite of an apotheosis, and became a symbol of ultimate evil, a necessary hate figure and fetish of taboo for the post-war Liberal West. You realize this when you travel or live beyond the flubbery boundary of the Western Liberal bubble. Partly in reaction to his exaggerated status as the icon of evil in the hegemonic West, but also because of a more objective view of the man, Hitler is viewed in a much more ambivalent and tolerant way by the rest of the World.

WE HATE BIG BROTHER

by Andy Nowicki

At the end of George Orwell’s 1984, hero and would-be revolutionary Winston Smith is tortured brutally by ghoulish government goons at the Ministry of Love. Following this ordeal, his will is utterly broken; he betrays his closest allies as well as himself; moreover, he learns to “love” Big Brother, the awful totalitarian entity who has made his life unbearably miserable. Winston himself gets absolutely nothing out of this bargain except a certain warped peace of mind and a perverse sense that he has in some way “done the right thing”:

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn self-willed exile from the loving breast!... It was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”