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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 10:04:09 GMT
The inside cover was if anything even more iffy, featuring a well-known image from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Surely you won't be able to resist adding a prime exhibit like this to your collection. Just imagine the admiring murmurs when you show it off at your next Antifa Brigade meeting! Yours for only €8K! PS my own copy is also for sale but only as part of my 500-odd piece Factory Records collection. PM if interested. I'm surprised you were a fan, Danny. Surely not! You, a fan of a group celebrated by football hooligans and neo-Nazis! Here's the kicker: they weren't actually Nazis. Just as Tolkien wasn't a white supremacist. Neither Curtis nor Tolkien can be blamed for the misinterpretations of near-illiterate neo-Nazis. What you see above is a depiction of the 'crimes' Curtis mentions below (you may have seen this recently): All dressed in uniforms so fine They drank and killed to pass the time Wearing the shame of all their crimes
With measured steps, they walked in line (They Walked in Line - Joy Division)
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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 10:37:05 GMT
The inside cover was if anything even more iffy, featuring a well-known image from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Yours for only €8K!I'll trade you for a 8'' length of the actual clothesline Curtis used on his own day of the rope.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jan 4, 2024 13:41:18 GMT
Do we have your approval to return to the main topic or are you determined to continue your diversionary tactics in the obsessive pursuit of minutiae? I have not read the thread, but I was having a think about what is going on here. AI can figure out pretty accurately whether you are a fascist or not, and the state will have that information. They do have to define fascist in the first place so have a think about how that might be defined so a computer would understand it. Today we have AI tools that can translate from human language into machine code that the machine understands in the sense it can work with the input data as desired. Do you see the problem here? How would the state define a fascist so their AI model can go and look for them? The answer is in the same way, so the state would say to the computer a fascist is the sort of person who does the following, and that would include the types of books they read, and other habits they associate with it. In a sense the information they get back relies on the information the state has in its own minds regarding these issues. You get the garbage in = garbage out problem.
Anyway, even if they have this AI generated model of you which says 90% fascist. What could they possibly do with it? I guess their idea would be to use it to customise their brainwashing they feed you to reduce your fascism. As always this depends on whether you volunteer to be brainwashed. If you were the sort who did not drink the kool aid then the information is pretty useless. If their model were faulty by being built on a false set of premises then their model would really ultimately harm them, and they would lose power by employing it.
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 4, 2024 14:05:54 GMT
I'll trade you for a 8'' length of the actual clothesline Curtis used on his own day of the rope. Ooooooh edgy that!
But I think you're right. Joy Division the name and concept was more of an art-school affectation and attempt at an alienating edginess on the part of Bernard Dicken and Peter Hook than any sort of nod towards Nazism as an appealing ideology. I’d be willing to wager my entire Factory Records collection that Ian Curtis didn’t know his Buchenwald from his Belsen.
We can sure it all sailed serenely over the heads of the fans and public, except for the ever-twitching antennae of the antifa Brigade, always alert for far-right transgressions.
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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 15:07:04 GMT
I'll trade you for a 8'' length of the actual clothesline Curtis used on his own day of the rope. Ooooooh edgy that!
But I think you're right. Joy Division the name and concept was more of an art-school affectation and attempt at an alienating edginess on the part of Bernard Dicken and Peter Hook than any sort of nod towards Nazism as an appealing ideology. I’d be willing to wager my entire Factory Records collection that Ian Curtis didn’t know his Buchenwald from his Belsen.
We can sure it all sailed serenely over the heads of the fans and public, except for the ever-twitching antennae of the antifa Brigade, always alert for far-right transgressions.
The 'antifa' brigade aren't the problem. The problem lies in the far-right reading all sorts of self-serving white supremacist bullshit into works that just isn't there. If you're looking for intellectual respectability, don't you think you could do better than a post-punk band and a fantasy writer? By the way, what's the premise of this thread, Danny? Are you saying that the establishment classify Tolkien readers as 'fascists'? It's hard to tell, given the article relied upon is behind a paywall.
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 4, 2024 15:18:35 GMT
Besides the article in the Times, from which I presented a reasonably-sized extract, I also provided other sources, one with a direct link.
I know you want to be spoon-fed with easy-to-click-on links for everything, but in this case you'll just have to do a bit of light googling for yourself. What did your last servant die of?
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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 15:22:55 GMT
What did your last servant die of? Anal warts.
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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 15:25:55 GMT
Besides the article in the Times, from which I presented a reasonably-sized extract, I also provided other sources, one with a direct link. I know you want to be spoon-fed with easy-to-click-on links for everything, but in this case you'll just have to do a bit of light googling for yourself. What did your last servant die of? According to your thread title, those who read Tolkien are fascists. According to whom? Nothing you have linked provides the answer.
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 4, 2024 15:29:59 GMT
Besides the article in the Times, from which I presented a reasonably-sized extract, I also provided other sources, one with a direct link. I know you want to be spoon-fed with easy-to-click-on links for everything, but in this case you'll just have to do a bit of light googling for yourself. What did your last servant die of? According to your thread title, those who read Tolkien are fascists. According to whom? Nothing you have linked provides the answer. You're obviously unschooled in the art of headline writing. It's not something the überliberal-minded or the terminally pedantic are really well-equipped for.
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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 15:31:38 GMT
According to your thread title, those who read Tolkien are fascists. According to whom? Nothing you have linked provides the answer. You're obviously unschooled in the art of headline writing. It's not something the überliberal-minded or the terminally pedantic are really well-equipped for. So, nobody but you is claiming that Tolkien readers are fascists, then?
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 4, 2024 15:42:13 GMT
OK you win. What now? Shall we do something new?
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Post by Einhorn on Jan 4, 2024 15:46:35 GMT
OK you win. What now? Shall we do something new? You could try answering the question. The subtext of your thread title appears to be: ‘Look what things have come to. You can’t even read a Tolkien novel without being accused of fascism now’. So, my question is: who considers Tolkien readers to be fascists? Surely, even you can handle that, Danny. It's your thread title, after all.
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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Jan 4, 2024 17:23:21 GMT
It's now wonder that George Orwell and Aldous Huxley - they literally outed the totalitarian (fascist) left.
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Post by Tinculin on Jan 4, 2024 18:37:47 GMT
The existence of a government-compiled list of ‘key texts’ that is, ‘mainstream content shared in online spaces that are known to be frequented by terrorist and extremist influencers and susceptible audiences’ was revealed in the media several months ago.
That list was reported to include the works of authors such as C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad as well as television programmes including the Kenneth Clark TV series Civilisation, The Thick of It, Yes Minister and Great British Railway Journeys.
Now comes news that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy has been added to the list of ‘key texts’ for incipient white supremacists. According to a report in the Sunday Times:
“…The far right tends to view The Lord of the Rings through the lens of race, in which elves — described in the books as tall and “fair of skin” — are pitted against lesser peoples like the orcs, who are portrayed as black-skinned with features including “wide mouths” and “slant eyes”. They identify with the heroism of a ragtag group of outsiders — not unlike today’s alt-right — standing up to a tyrannical power hellbent on obliterating their traditional way of life...
The neo-Nazi organisation Patriotic Alternative has devoted part of its website to the discussion of Tolkien’s work. On its blog one member discusses how the Shire, the idyllic rural homeland of the hobbits, can be seen as an allegory of white British nationalism untouched by “cosmopolitan delights” — what the member describes as “Afro-Caribbean knife crime” and terrorism.
One of the UK’s best-known fascist bloggers uses the pseudonym Morgoth, the name given to Sauron’s villainous predecessor. On his YouTube and Substack channel, Morgoth’s Review, the blogger touches on themes including anti-environmentalism and “Covid-19 fearmongering”.
The only fascists involved in any of Tolkien's work are those responsible for butchering Tolkein in the adaption of the Rings of Power on Amazon Prime....
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Post by Dan Dare on Jan 4, 2024 18:47:40 GMT
Überliteral-minded.
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