Objection

1

The animals were necessary, because they allow Orwell to disguise his chauvanism and elitism.

In Animal Farm, the pigs are biologically more intelligent than the other animals. It's not simply a matter of lack of education, in fact, there is a literacy campaign, it just fails because the workers are stupid and lack the capacity to learn:

As for the pigs, they could already read and write perfectly. The dogs learned to read fairly well, but were not interested in reading anything except the Seven Commandments. Muriel, the goat, could read somewhat better than the dogs, and sometimes used to read to the others in the evenings from scraps of newspaper which she found on the rubbish heap. Benjamin could read as well as any pig, but never exercised his faculty. So far as he knew, he said, there was nothing worth reading. Clover learnt the whole alphabet, but could not put words together. Boxer could not get beyond the letter D. He would trace out A, B, C, D, in the dust with his great hoof, and then would stand staring at the letters with his ears back, sometimes shaking his forelock, trying with all his might to remember what came next and never succeeding.

This innate lack of intelligence means that the animals representing the working class can never (even theoretically) develop into a political entity, capable of asserting political positions. Far from being able to develop and propose solutions, the animals can barely comprehend political questions:

According to Napoleon, what the animals must do was to procure firearms and train themselves in the use of them. According to Snowball, they must send out more and more pigeons and stir up rebellions among the animals on the other farms. The one argued that if they could not defend themselves, they were bound to be conquered; the other argued that if rebellions happened everywhere they would have no need to defend themselves. The animals listened first to Napoleon, then to Snowball, and could not make up their minds which was right; indeed, they always found themselves in agreement with the one who was speaking at the moment.

This means that true liberation and self-governance of the animals is impossible and any attempt at such a goal will only lead to the establishment of a new ruling caste.

In this way, Animal Farm is not merely anti-Stalin or anti-authortarian (in fact, it presents authoritarianism as an unavoidable necessity), but rather anti-revolution and anti-liberation. Which is probably why it's taught so widely and treated like gospel in capitalist countries.

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 14h ago

It legit breaks my heart to hear stories of people like Jane Yang Wu (neuroscientist) and Wang Danhao (semiconductor researcher) killing themselves after facing racially motivated harassment from the government.

When I was young, I had this idealistic dream of getting into science for the benefit of all humanity. Racism has absolutely no place in science. Aside from having no place anywhere, it's such a perversion of the ideals so many people hold. Of course it's also stupid and self defeating because of brain drain.

The US seems to be fully committed to returning to mideval times.

1

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 14h ago

No, but we can certainly reduce the harm caused by the machine through veganism. As for dissolving it entirely, veganism is essentially a prerequisite, because you discredit any advocacy or any criticism you make by refusing to engage in an actionable step to reduce harm.

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OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 14h ago

I'm not interested in these extremely niche cases like tribes or deserted islands or dumpster diving. Something like 99% of the choices of 99% of people reading this are going to be what you buy at the grocery or order off a menu. Those are the cases that are actually relevant to our lives, in existing reality.

What you're trying to do is bring up this extremely niche case in an effort to discredit the people advocating the idea in order to dismiss the idea, which is textbook ad hominem and bad faith. Even if there are some colonialist vegans, that does not discredit veganism any more that a trans person doing a bad thing would discredit trans rights.

It's literally just a trick, and you spell out the trick rather plainly. You want me to concede that "not all animal exploitation is bad" so that you can make a rule from the exception an take that extremely rare case that's completely unrelated to your own situation, and use it to justify your position and behavior.

But in fact, I don't have to give you either concession. I simply recurse myself from the question, because I have no authority to weigh in on their affairs, as I have no experience with them. "No investigation, no right to speak." To say that animal exploitation is moral in that situation would mean that, if a member of such a tribe believed in veganism and advocated for the tribe to change their ways, I would have to tell them they're wrong and that the tribe should continue their old ways, which in my view, is just as colonialist. That's for them to work out.

Should I ever become shipwrecked or survive an airplane crash in their lands, then I'll have a reason to ponder the ethics of that particular situation. Until then, it's naval-gazing at best and a bad faith distraction/attempt at ad hominem at worst.

9

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 21h ago

Are we supposed to bring them up in every discussion about anything, even if it's almost completely irrelevant?

"I oppose militarism and the war in Iran, people should avoid joining the military," "Oh yeah? What about indigenous people who have traditional roles for warriors? Pretty chauvanistic of you to dictate what another culture should and shouldn't do."

It seems like just trying to sidetrack the conversation.

11

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 21h ago

Then I'm not really sure why it's relevant.

It kinda seems like you're just using them as a talking point.

13

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 1d ago

Are you one?

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 2d ago

It's not that "I consider it to be" nonsense. It is, objectively, nonsense.

It's a simple, objective fact that feeding animals to eat causes more harm to plants than just eating plants.

1

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 2d ago

Takes more dead plants to feed animals to eat than to just eat directly.

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OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 2d ago

Nothing is "because of this" because "this" is complete and utter nonsense. How can nonsense prove anything wrong?

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OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 2d ago

And I'm demonstrating that that's nonsense. The way to prevent harm to plants is by going vegan. "I won't go vegan because I don't want to harm plants" is always a bad faith (or at best uninformed argument).

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OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 2d ago

Plants are living things too that we raise, exploit, systematically molest and slaughter, do vegans not care about that?

Even from that perspective, do you not understand that we have to kill way more plants to feed to animals to then eat than we would eating the plants directly?

2

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 3d ago

The world according to other Lemmings:

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 3d ago

Nonviolence is properly seen as a tool or tactic, rather than some absolute principle. There are cases when a nonviolent approach is suitable for a particular situation. But the issue is when you assume that conclusion before you even begin evaluating the situation. And that goes both ways, you shouldn't automatically assume that violent tactics will be the most effective or suitable.

Fighting the powers that be is a huge undertaking so you gotta have your eye on the ball. Decisions should be based on tactical effectiveness rather than one's own proclivity or aversion towards violence.

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 3d ago

What about stuff like hair or dead skin cells? If I wear a crucifix, can I use a shotgun to shave and exfoliate my legs at the same time? Because holy moly, they shoulda led with that

OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml 4d ago

I’m really struggling with this reading. The rebels aren’t space communists trying to save their homeland from the encroaching Empire, they’re fighting to restore the republic that was the precursor to Palpatine’s totalitarian regime.

My reading is that it's not meant as a direct allegory to Vietnam but rather trying to stick Vietnam into a blender with stuff Americans like in order to link the Vietnamese struggle to other things. The rebels also draw some inspiration from the Revolutionary War, and obviously The Empire draws inspiration from Nazi Germany.

The way I believe Lucas saw it was that Americans ought to be inclined to support the Vietnamese (because of the Revolutionary War, WWII, and general "anti-authortarian" sentiment), but the specifics of the conflict were so loaded with propaganda, racism, and blind loyalty that people could not look at it objectively. So, the controversial communist aspect was cut out, the racial lens was removed by making the rebels white, and distance was created between The Empire and the US by giving them British accents, which let people evaluate the in-universe conflict in the abstract. Sort of a "Platonic form" of the Vietnam War, if you will.

If it was intended to change minds though, it's unclear how effective it actually was. The problem is that when people evaluate conflicts in the real world, the racial lens comes back, they get immersed in propaganda about the specific group and their actions and ideology, and there's a sense of patriotism and "rallying around the flag," all of which generally outweigh the aspect idea of sympathizing with "The Rebellion."