#anthony the anarchist

[treesters]

At the end of the day, it's you and the childhood version of your friend that haunts you

[wings-does-art]

"This reality was never yours, Errorphim... This reality..."

"Belongs to the Fortune City Four."

[nando161mando]

"Those that advocate for population reductions never mean themselves, it's always the ones that have huge economic and ecological impacts, that think some poor person who is starving with nothing on the other side of the world should take responsibility."

— Black Anarchist

[felicitywilds]

been seein a few popular posts about what could Happen in season 3 that i think are kind of missing the mark a bit when it comes to crowley and aziraphale’s characters and both of their approaches to their relationship? so heres my take

aziraphale is a fighter: all throughout the book and season 1, he’s done his best to fight for what he thinks is right. the fatal flaw in this position is that he only ever does it within the confines of his faith and position as an angel: protesting punishing job until God’s Orders are cited; excusing his eating habits to gabriel by saying it helps him ‘blend in’ on earth; even after an entire day of listing things he wouldn’t be able to enjoy on earth anymore, crowley was only able to convince aziraphale to help him raise the antichrist by framing it as ‘thwarting wiles’ (ie. doing his job). aziraphale has always had a lot of conflict with how his and heaven’s ideals align-- this is why aziraphale went to heaven, so he could make the rules he’s so hesitant to break work for him instead of against him.

crowley on the other hand, is a flier: at the slightest sign of trouble he can’t fix, he flees. no, he does not want to dismantle the systems of heaven and hell, he wants to run away forever and never think about them again! he’s canonically tried to do this at least four times! but the fatal flaw in this position is that it means he sees everything he’s built and collected in 6000 years as disposable, which is not unlike how heaven and hell also think about the earth. he’s built a fragile, peaceful existence for himself, but is willing to run away and dump it all the second its peace and fragility is threatened by something he can’t control.

understanding both of these attitudes makes the middle ground where they realize their mistakes and come together again painfully obvious (imo): its earth! literally the ground in the middle between heaven and hell. crowley and aziraphale both already know that the other is worth protecting-- aziraphale wants to go to heaven so being together won’t be against the rules, and crowley wants to run away so heaven and hell can’t destroy them for being together-- so the revelation that needs to be reached in season 3 is that their lives and their history and their home is worth protecting too. beelzebub and gabriel had ‘heaven/hell is wherever you are’, but that kind of attitude (even ‘to the world’/they are each others world) doesn’t work for crowley and aziraphale because they spent 6000 years building something that makes simply being together synonymous with being on earth.

after all, the Really Big One is going to be all of us vs. all of them-- heaven and hell against all of humanity. when crowley and aziraphale have this exchange in the book and season 1, i fully believe that both them assume that when they say “us”, it means heaven and hell-- even after everything that happened, they’re still aligning themselves against the earth and the history they have there. which is why, after all their wonderful and inevitable character development in season 3, they’re going to realize that “us” actually means humanity.

[saccharinecoffee]

Just remembered that last night I dreamt I met Anthony Fantano and we got it on, but he came in less than a minute and then didn't return the favour.

[tonyrossmcmahon]

America's Most Dangerous Women!

The Gilded Age produced some of the most dangerous women in American history - fierce rebels as TV historian Tony McMahon discovers

At the turn of the twentieth century, America was rocked by rebel movements led by women described by polite society and the powers-that-be as utterly dangerous. Women who advocated bombing, assassination, strikes, smashing of property, and generally breaking the law. In every area of protest, it was female voices that led the way. These were the dangerous women of the Gilded Age. Emma Goldman –…

[thetemplarknight]

America's Most Dangerous Women!

The Gilded Age produced some of the most dangerous women in American history - fierce rebels as TV historian Tony McMahon discovers

At the turn of the twentieth century, America was rocked by rebel movements led by women described by polite society and the powers-that-be as utterly dangerous. Women who advocated bombing, assassination, strikes, smashing of property, and generally breaking the law. In every area of protest, it was female voices that led the way. These were the dangerous women of the Gilded Age. Emma Goldman –…

[disabled-dragoon]

Information regarding the UK riots

If you're worried about the riots right now and are concerned for your safety, the safety of friends and loved ones or the safety of other members of your local community, here are a few posts, organisations and social medias that may help. Feel free to add any others that you know of in the notes.

Posts:

This post by @lovelysakuryay with information on what to do if you are the victim of an attack, as well some information on helplines, mental health services and some charities you can reach out to and/or donate to (which will be listed in the section below)

A list of fundraisers for people and communities impacted by the Southport attack and far-right riots. Post by @octarineblues

Post by @northern-punk-lad listing the times and locations of riots on Wednesday 7th August.

Organisations:

Exit Hate: Helping people and their family to walk away from extremism.

Stop Hate UK: 24 hour hate-crime reporting hotline

Migrant Voice: A charity that helps migrants advocate for themselves.

Refugee Action: Helps refugees to rebuild their lives.

North East Anarchist Group: Some information regarding locations of planned far-right riots on their social media, as well information regarding the location of counter protests in the north east of England.

Green and Black Cross: A "grassroots activist legal support group". They offer "know your rights" training courses, as well as information on your rights as a protester and interacting with the police and staying safe. Find them on instagram as well under @gbclegal.

Netpol: Or, the Network for Police Monitoring. A good organisation to look into regarding protest rights and legal resources.

Migrants Organise: Provides a platform for migrants to organise. Offers advice and support, as well as access to grassroots organising, research, advocacy and campaigning.

The Anthony Walker Foundation: Local anti-hate group in Merseyside.

Note from @octarineblues:

"This is a bit more useful for larger towns/cities, but: a local BLM group will also have up to date info! Antifacist or anti-raids group as well - they will often have access to good info and they are already used to reacting quickly."

Social Medias:

It's worth checking your town/local area's social media pages (if they exist) for information regarding possible planned riots and destruction. There may also be one or more pages regarding news in your county/constituency.

Additional social media pages:

@ukisnotinnocent on Instagram. A group "mobilising against fascism" across the UK, providing updates on the riots as well as information on the locations of planned violence and staying safe while counter protesting. CW: There are some shocking videos and images on here which depict some of the violent scenes seen lately.

@monitoringgroupne_n on Instagram. A group that shares updates, information and concerns regarding the policing and fascism in the North and North East of England. Including sharing information on the location of planned riots, some information on counter protests and staying safe while protesting.

@standuptoracismuk on Instagram. A good resource for riot times and locations, as well as counter protest times, locations, information and footage.

@ukfactcheckpolitics on Instagram. A page dedicated to "exposing government corruption". Great for quick news and updates regarding both riots and counter protests. Like @ukisnotinnocent, they do share videos and images as well, the contents of which can be shocking.

Also, I've noticed that a lot of groups protesting the ongoing genocide in gaza have been very vocally against the far-right riots and have been sharing some information alongside their usual stuff. If you know of a local encampment/group, it's worth searching for their social media.

It's worth checking the lists of people that the listed groups follow on social media as well for more information regarding riots across the country.

Please, please share any more that you know of/find, and I'll update this as and when I can.

Stay safe everyone <3

[halfway-house-in-hell]

angel dust redesign🕷️

(click for better quality)

and since theyre the first sinner ive posted, they get a human design!

rambling under the cut

(if my handwriting in the second image is unreadable you can check the id)

-angel dust was a sinner that died in 1948. they were a member of a large mafia family and led a secret life as a drag queen

-they were born into the family, and were unable to leave bc. you know. life of crime

-much of their family looked down on them and mocked them bc of their feminine mannerisms

-they had a particularly bad relationship with their father, who saw them as a failure of a son

-so they turned to drag and underground queer clubs instead (angel dust was their drag name that they adopted full time after dying, anthony was their "real" name)

-they also turned to cocaine, often stealing from their family's stash

-their death happened because they were lousy hiding the tracks of their theft- the family got a tip off that angel had been stealing and that they were currently in an aforementioned queer club

-mafia family storms the queer club, angel comes out off their head on cocaine, their father finds then and shoots them in the chest before slamming their head against the wall repeatedly, killing them

-their and all of their family's (except their sister) demon forms are spiders, symbolising the web of lies they spun😎 because angel died in drag they also have a much more feminine demon form

-they enjoyed life in hell for a while, but soon enough other members of their family started dying and began looking for them. this caused them to flee to the nearest hiding space they had, a place called Valentino's that promised a safe haven against any threats

-as we know this promise is absolute bullshit

-angel signed the contract that allowed them entry to valentino's. they were panicked and signed it hastily, not looking at the fine print.

-they become trapped at valentino's, forced to be a prostitute

-until valentino himself visits and likes the look of angel, deciding that he wants angel for himself

-he takes on angel as a prostitute/porn star/stripper/whatever valentino wants them to be today, with valentino abusing them behind the scenes

-valentino lovebombs them often, buying them expensive gifts they are required to wear and feeding their drug habit

-despite being famous, most of the money angel makes goes straight into valentinos pocket. this is what leads them to finding charlie's hotel, as they do not have enough money to pay rent and the happy hotel offers free accommodation.

-angel's best friend is cherry bomb, an anarchist who wants nothing more than to free them- but she has no money, no connections and is banned from most places on sight due to her habit of blowing stuff up. when angel dust gets sad and mopey, she gets angry for them

-angel uses they/them, but hell isnt the most progressive place, so few demons use it for them. they dont really care though, they have bigger things to worry about

-they actually physically cannot harm valentino, as part of their contract states that any harm valentino goes through also happens to them

-they like to keep up with the latest trends, and have a decent sinstagram following

-they are hypersexual due to trauma

-i think thats it. if i forgot smth im gonna be so mad

oki thanks for reading :33

[sevenofreds]

Angel revealing the exact wording of his contract with Valentino (and how he can take advantage of it) recontextualizes so much about his and Val's relationship, his friendship with Cherri (and why it's ultimately toxic for him despite them clearly caring a lot for each other), and his reasons for staying at the hotel.

(Buckle up bitches this is gonna be a long one and I spent way too much time thinking about it)

SO, according to Angel, he only has to do what Valentino says while at the studio. Pay attention to that wording. Not "while working". "While at the studio".

Val's rant to Vox implies that, before Angel moved into the Hazbin Hotel, he was basically LIVING in the studio, which means that, by the wording of their contract, Angel was Val's to control 24/7.

While it doesn't really recontextualize Val's whiny bitchbaby moment in episode 2 (because regardless of the contract's exact wording, he clearly wants to be in total control of Angel), it does give us more information about it; Val was upset that he couldn't physically MAKE Angel do any thing at any time anymore, and Angel KNEW that, too.

So why didn't he ever just leave before? That comes back to Val's treatment of him, and how he views himself (or at least DID view himself until his husband friend Husk came along). Val almost definitely got it into Angel's head that nobody would WANT to take him in or help him, which is (one of, at least) the reason why he didn't trust Charlie at first during the prequel comic.

He wasn't just staying at the hotel because it was rent-free; it was because, as long as he "played nice", he was free of Val outside of work.

It does seem like taking advantage of the wording like that goes both ways (Val can apparently extend his hours on a whim without breaking the contract), but if you wanted out of a situation like Angel's, you'd take anything you could get.

And then we move on to Cherri, and her relationship with partying compared to Angel's.

Cherri Bomb is an anarchist. A chaotic partygirl. She's not trying to escape from anything. She parties so hard because she ENJOYS it. It's her way of having fun, of recharging, and it seems like throughout most of episode 6, she thought that Angel was partying with her for those same reasons.

But as we learned in episode 4, that isn't the case. Angel gets drunk and high to escape, to forget how fucked up his situation is, to forget how much he hates and blames himself for being the way he is. And once he found a functioning support system, and people who cared about him beyond his persona, he didn't need that anymore. He learned to accept that yeah, his situation is fucked, and there's not much he can do...but that doesn't mean that there's NOTHING he can do. And he's not alone.

This leads us to view Cherri as a toxic friend towards Angel, at least until she sees that he's getting serious about the hotel; she's perfectly happy with what she does, and was only goading Angel into it because she thought he was, too (she would thrive in Beelzebub's scene if she were able to go there; Angel would fall into the same category as Blitzø). Once she saw for herself that wasn't the case, she said she was glad for him, and that she'd be there if he ever needs her.

It's evident by that point that they care deeply about each other. But Cherri lives a lifestyle that wasn't ever good for Angel Dust; for Anthony. And that's okay.

Whether he was truly aware of it or not, Angel needed friends. He needed a support system. He wanted to be better than he was. And even if he doesn't quite realize it yet...he's well on his way.

[treesters]

Okay, well, surely you've heard of him. Right?

[curiouspupsicle]

Good Omens Fan Fiction Friday (1/31/25) - Resistance!!

Being a well informed American living under an administration determined to dismantle our democracy (already stressed) and cause as much damage as possible has even my comfort moments turning to resistance. After all, evil people have always existed. And good people have always resisted. So is there anything my Good Omens fixation has to say about resistance? Given Terry Pratchett's moral universe, we could argue that all of Good Omens is steeped in resistance. But I'm going to limit myself to a few specific favorite fics that highlight different forms of resistance.

Let's start with the series that got me thinking in this direction: Demon and Angel Professors (G) by Ghostinthehouse (@ineffableghost). This is 200 ficlets, each exactly 666 words, hanging on a silly premise. Everyone loves literature Professor Fell who goes on regular tangents about his sweet husband Anthony. Everyone fears grumpy botany Professor Crowley who treats his students like he treats his plants. And anytime Crowley goes near Fell, the first-year students go into protective mode. Because surely Crowley must be up to no good and a potential harm to dear Prof Fell and his precious Anthony. But beyond that bit of fun repeated every year with a new group of incoming students are amazing stories of resistance against those who would cause mental harm or physical violence to disabled people, folks with a variety of gender identities and presentations, queer individuals, people dealing with trauma--basically anyone who might be vulnerable in a thoughtless and even wicked society.

Sometimes resistance is persuading someone to do better. Other times it's offering a hint that makes someone think. It may involve a hands-on approach to someone who only knows violence. Or it may be getting someone to a safe place as quickly as possible.

I read it over a weekend. But I think there's a better approach to reading this long series--bookmark it in your phone when you are doing a hurry-up-and-wait activity (jury duty, medical treatments, picking up kids at school, etc.). The short length of each fic makes it easy to pick up and put down. The variety of "ducklings" tales (what the ineffable pair call the students they help) will keep you interested. And the sense of joy and hope will make it a good way to spend time on a challenging day. Resistance fics aren't all human AUs. Check out The Last Angel (E) by @bellisima-writes. For millennia, Crowley has been Hell's Grand Inquisitor. He never served on earth. After Hell won their war against Heaven, they finally track down the last remaining Angel, Aziraphale. Crowley's given the job of torturing him for information. I don't want to give too much away. But Crowley's form of resistance involves being true to himself no matter what Hell demands. And Aziraphale has a more direct form of resistance planned. It's an exciting read as well as thought-provoking.

@snae-b writes the kind of fics you don't want to start reading before bed--at least not if you plan on getting up early the next day. Echo (E) is no exception. Each day, barista Aziraphale wakes up and goes into work. He serves a chauffeur, Crowley, who seems strangely familiar. Asking questions like "what makes one human" and "how do you fight against an evil activity that no one knows about," Echo is also just a plain old compelling story. And a resistance tale that, despite its futuristic setting, would not feel out of place beside a tale of the French underground resisting Nazis.

Mutual Aid (T) by malicegeres predates the Good Omens tv show. So presumably that makes it part of the Book!Omens universe. In it, radical bookseller Ezra Fell ends up hiding anarchist Crowley from the police after he's injured by skinheads. As the title indicates, they find a common cause and start working together. Loved the depiction of Adam as a leader. And the fic includes a listing of leftist political resources at the end.

Many consider The False and the Fair (E) by @princip1914 to be one of the best human AUs in the Good Omens universe. I certainly do. Aziraphale Wright's family runs a coal mine. Anthony Crowley, his former best friend, is the son of a mine worker. I don't want to spoil the story if you haven't read it. But what appears to be a story of regrets and making amends has a strong thread of accountability that results in wrongs being made right after a powerful act of resistance (with some help from the press). If you haven't read it, check it out. And if you have, read it again--with an eye towards resistance.

Finally, I'll end with a WIP, Good Works (E) by @majnoonathelibrarian. Set in 1987, Aziraphale is an assistant parliamentary secretary in the Thatcher government who finds something strange in the documents he's handling. Crowley is a mysterious "fixer" for a consulting firm who finds himself drawn into queer activism. Both of them have to navigate their day jobs along with increasing activism in a couple of different streams. The characterization is fascinating and the writer strings out the mysteries through the tale. This WIP is regularly updated and nearly complete. Remember, the fan fic community is a COMMUNITY. So don't forget to encourage writers of works underway by leaving kudos and comments. Writers are a gift to fans and we need to show them our appreciation. Finally, I'll give my pitch as someone who has been around much longer than most of you reading this. The yucky things happening in the world can be overwhelming. But it's a backlash. Because we've already made so much progress (both The False and the Fair and Good Works are good reminders of just how deadly the 1980s were for queer people). So resist. By making art and telling stories. By protesting. By contacting the people in power making decisions you disagree with. By caring for the vulnerable. By speaking out at local political meetings. By amplifying the voices of marginalized people. By using any of your unearned benefits to advocate for others. And by just existing as the beautiful and unique individual you are.

I'll be back next Friday with more great Good Omens fan fics on a new theme. In the meantime, check out my other favorite fics on this pinned post of weekly Good Omens fan fiction recommendations.

[nando161mando]

watch Ursula K Le Guin's speech

Via @aspiringwarriorlibrarian

https://youtu.be/s2v7RDyo7os

[thedreadvampy]

I do not understand subcultural politics discourse and at this point I don't know how much is differences in the national scenes and how much is that we just have very different ideas of what these scenes are.

cause like. Punk I get. Punk is not always left wing (there has always been a Nazi punk problem) but punk IS always inherently and actively political as a definitional factor. Punk is foundationally anarchist, counter-hierarchical, and centred on anger and community cohesion. If you approach punk as apolitical or centrist you are Doing It Wrong. Nazis and right libertarians have always made up a small but vocal chunk of the community, and that's a problem punk has to address in its own ways (ideally with steel toecaps). Punk is definitionally political and has a couple of extremely foundational sets of political beliefs.

Or like, hip-hop. More complicated case cause there's even more corporate cooption involved in shaping the modern genre but hip-hop has a foundational political position. Hip-hop is focused on Black pride and power, and on addressing African-American trauma and injustice, and so it's historically working-class, anti-racist and anti-cop. It means something politically as a genre.

But some stuff people say just Does Not Jam with my experience of subculture. Like people KEEP saying 'you can't be a right-wing goth, goth is radically left wing' and all I'm saying is a) we have spoken to some VERY different elder goths bc as much as I was lucky enough to grow up in the scene, going to the goth weekends, etc, my god did some of those 60 year olds vote Tory or BNP with their whole chest. and b) as far as I'm aware the main thing that goth stands for politically is countercultural provocation and a kind of nihilistic disengagement. like Siouxie Sioux habitually used swastikas and Nazi paraphernalia to demonstrate distance from her parent's generation. a lot of the foundational Goth musicians are either right-wing or prefer to keep their politics private because they consider them separate.

like most of the goths I know are left-leaning, because there are foundational philosophical beliefs attached to goth culture and a lot of those, like fluidity of expression, resistance to established power, and celebrating marginalisation, appeal to a lot of lefties. But frankly I've known a lot of goths who are reactionary right-wingers or full on Nazis because, well, other precepts of goth culture can include stuff like nihilistic individualism and glorification of death. Plus the Nazi iconography thing, plus the widespread racism in the community. and those weren't like 'i found goth on TikTok' goths, these are like 'committed to the lifestyle since 1979' goths.

Like goth is not particularly a RIGHT-WING movement, but I have never experienced it as an explicitly political musical/subcultural movement at all? Certainly not the way that punk or reggae or outlaw country or something is.

(and speaking of reggae. I was watching Anthony Fantano and FD Signifier talking about this whole idea and FD said something as a 'isn't this a silly example' about a white nationalist looking for white nationalist reggae. and they were both laughing about what a silly idea that was

and I'm sitting there like...But that's literally exactly what happened with ska in the UK? like ska is obviously an afrocaribbean genre made by and for Black communities and uhhhh by the late 60s in Britain ska was the white nationalist sound. like skinheads love ska and in particular there are a bunch of neonazi/white nationalist ska acts. not all skinheads are far right but if skinheads have a dominant political identity it is probably more far right than far left.

and that did raise the question of differences in national scenes. like I know that behind the Iron Curtain a lot of punks were using UK and American flags the way Western punks were using Soviet iconography, and Caribbean music has a very different cultural association in the UK than in the US, and British rap has a different political outlook than American rap.

and so maybe American goth is a lot more political than British goth? but I kind of think of goth as a European subculture tbh like I think goth I think England and Germany, and the European goth music and goth scenes I've been in are......not explicitly political?)

[justforbooks]

Nothing but the truth: the legacy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Every generation turns to it in times of political turmoil, and this extract from a new book about the novel examines its relevance in the age of fake news and Trump

December 1948. A man sits at a typewriter, in bed, on a remote island, fighting to complete the book that means more to him than any other. He is terribly ill. The book will be finished and, a year or so later, so will the man.

January 2017. Another man stands before a crowd, which is not as large as he would like, in Washington DC, taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States of America. His press secretary says that it was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe”. Asked to justify such a preposterous lie, the president’s adviser describes the statement as “alternative facts”. Over the next four days, US sales of the dead man’s book will rocket by almost 10,000%, making it a No 1 bestseller.

When George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in the United Kingdom on 8 June 1949, in the heart of the 20th century, one critic wondered how such a timely book could possibly exert the same power over generations to come. Thirty-five years later, when the present caught up with Orwell’s future and the world was not the nightmare he had described, commentators again predicted that its popularity would wane. Another 35 years have elapsed since then, and Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the book we turn to when truth is mutilated, when language is distorted, when power is abused, when we want to know how bad things can get. It is still, in the words of Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, “an apocalyptical codex of our worst fears”.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has not just sold tens of millions of copies – it has infiltrated the consciousness of countless people who have never read it. The phrases and concepts that Orwell minted have become essential fixtures of political language, still potent after decades of use and misuse: newspeak, Big Brother, the thought police, Room 101, the two minutes’ hate, doublethink, unperson, memory hole, telescreen, 2+2=5 and the ministry of truth. Its title came to define a calendar year, while the word Orwellian has turned the author’s own name into a capacious synonym for everything he hated and feared.

It has been adapted for cinema, television, radio, theatre, opera and ballet and has influenced novels, films, plays, television shows, comic books, albums, advertisements, speeches, election campaigns and uprisings. People have spent years in jail just for reading it. No work of literary fiction from the past century approaches its cultural ubiquity while retaining its weight. Dissenting voices such as Milan Kundera and Harold Bloom have argued that Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually a bad novel, with thin characters, humdrum prose and an implausible plot, but even they couldn’t gainsay its importance.

A novel that has been claimed by socialists, conservatives, anarchists, liberals, Catholics and libertarians of every description cannot be, as Kundera alleged, merely “political thought disguised as a novel”. Orwell’s famously translucent prose conceals a world of complexity. Normally thought of as a dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four is also, to varying and debatable degrees, a satire, a prophecy, a warning, a political thesis, a work of science fiction, a spy thriller, a psychological horror, a gothic nightmare, a postmodern text and a love story. Most people read it when they’re young and feel bruised by it – it offers more suffering and less reassurance than any other standard high-school text – but don’t feel compelled to rediscover it in adulthood. That’s a shame. It is far richer and stranger than you remember.

Orwell felt that he lived in cursed times. He fantasised about another life in which he could have spent his days gardening and writing fiction instead of being “forced into becoming a pamphleteer”, but that would have been a waste. His real talent was for analysing and explaining a tumultuous period in human history. Written down, his core values might seem too vague to carry much weight – honesty, decency, liberty, justice – but no one else wrestled so tirelessly, in private and in public, with what those ideas meant during the darkest days of the 20th century. He always tried to tell the truth and admired anyone who did likewise. Nothing built on a lie, however seductively convenient, could have value. Central to his honesty was his commitment to constantly working out what he thought and why he thought it and never ceasing to reassess those opinions. To quote Christopher Hitchens, one of Orwell’s most eloquent admirers: “It matters not what you think, but how you think.”

I first encountered Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager in suburban south London. As Orwell said, the books you read when you’re young stay with you for ever. I found it shocking and compelling, but this was circa 1990, when communism and apartheid were on the way out, optimism reigned and the world didn’t feel particularly Orwellian. Even after 9/11, the book’s relevance was fragmentary: it was applied to political language, or the media, or surveillance, but not the whole picture. Democracy was on the rise and the internet was largely considered a force for good.

In 2016, the world changed. As Trump took the White House, Britain voted for Brexit and populism swept across Europe, people took to talking anxiously about the upheavals of the 1970s and, worse, the 1930s. Bookshop shelves began filling up with titles such as How Democracy Ends, The Road to Unfreedom and The Death of Truth, many of which quoted Orwell. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism merited a new edition, pitched as “a nonfiction bookend to Nineteen Eighty-Four”. So did Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel about American fascism, It Can’t Happen Here. Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was as alarming as a documentary. “I was asleep before,” said Elisabeth Moss’s character, Offred. “That’s how we let it happen.” Well, we weren’t asleep any more. I was reminded of something Orwell wrote about fascism in 1936: “If you pretend that it is merely an aberration which will presently pass off of its own accord, you are dreaming a dream from which you will awake when somebody coshes you with a rubber truncheon.” Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book designed to wake you up.

It was the first dystopian novel to be written in the knowledge that dystopia was real. In Germany and the Soviet bloc, men had built it and forced other men and women to live and die within its iron borders. Those regimes are gone but Orwell’s book continues to define our nightmares, even as they shift and change. “For me, it’s like a Greek myth, to take and do with it what you will – to examine yourself,” Michael Radford, the director of the 1984 movie adaptation, said. “It’s a mirror,” says a character in the 2013 stage version. “Every age sees itself reflected.” For singer-songwriter Billy Bragg: “Every time I read it, it seems to be about something else.”

After President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway first used the phrase “alternative facts” on 22 January 2017, The Hollywood Reporter called Nineteen Eighty-Four “the hottest literary property in town”. Scores of cinemas across the US announced that they would be screening Michael Radford’s 1984 on 4 April, because “the clock is already striking 13”. And theatre producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Rudin asked British playwrights Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan to transfer their hit play 1984 to Broadway as soon as possible. “It went from zero to a hundred in the space of five days,” Icke said. “They said, ‘We think it’s important this play is on Broadway now.’”

When the play was in the West End, each of its three runs inhabited a different political context – the third opened during the Brexit referendum, just before the murder of Jo Cox MP by a far-right terrorist. During the run at New York’s Hudson theatre, which began on 18 May 2017, the directors noticed that the audience’s reaction each night was affected by whatever Donald Trump had done that day. The night after Trump tweeted the nonsense word covfefe, there was such a desire for humour that one actor was distraught: “I’ve been in comedies that have had less laughter than this.” On another night, the news was so bad that people passed out. At a third performance, when Winston Smith’s chief antagonist O’Brien asked: “What year is it?”, a woman shouted: “It’s 2017 and this is fucked up!”

It must be said that Trump is no Big Brother. Nor, despite his revival of such toxic phrases as “America First” and “enemy of the people”, is he simply a throwback to the 1930s. He has the cruelty and power hunger of a dictator but not the discipline, intellect or ideology. His closest fictional precursor is probably Buzz Windrip, the oafish populist from It Can’t Happen Here. In the real world, Trump’s forefather is Joseph McCarthy, who displayed comparable levels of narcissism, dishonesty, resentment and crude ambition and an uncanny ability to make journalists dance to his tune even as they loathed him. Still, Orwell would have recognised the type. “I think Dad would’ve been amused by Donald Trump in an ironic sort of way,” said Orwell’s son, Richard Blair, in 2017. “He may have thought, ‘There goes the sort of man I wrote about all those years ago.’”

There are precedents in Orwell’s writing. During Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, it was hard to watch the candidate whipping supporters into a cry of “Lock her up!” without being reminded of the two minutes’ hate. The president also meets most of the criteria of Orwell’s 1944 definition of fascism: “Something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘fascist’.” Orwell contended that such men can only rise to the top when the status quo has failed to satisfy citizens’ need for justice, liberty and self-worth, but Trump’s victory required one more crucial ingredient.

He did not seize power through a revolution or coup. He was not potentiated by a recession or a terrorist atrocity, let alone a nuclear war or a fertility crisis. His route to the White House passed through America’s own “Versionland”, which is Russia expert Luke Harding’s name for the post-truth politics of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In Versionland, flagrant lies become “alternative facts”. Trump creates his own reality and measures his power by the number of people who subscribe to it: the cruder the lie, the more power its success demonstrates. It is truly Orwellian that the phrase “fake news” has been turned on its head by Trump and his fellow authoritarians to describe real news that is not to their liking. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani accidentally provided a crude motto for Versionland USA when he snapped at an interviewer: “Truth isn’t truth!” In the words of O’Brien, reality is inside the skull.

How did this happen? On the eve of 1984, the science-fiction writer Marta Randall argued that one thing Orwell didn’t predict was the spread of cynicism: “It would be very hard for ‘Big Brother’ to convince anyone of anything post-Watergate and post-Vietnam.” In the 1980s, she suggested, Orwell’s target would have been the trivialisation of the news media. “We may quit relying on ‘authoritative’ news stories entirely.” Over time, this distrust of establishment narratives led many people to seek the truth but many others to choose their own “truths”. Combining cynicism with credulity, people who were proudly sceptical of CNN or the New York Times were perfectly happy to take unsourced Facebook posts and quack science at face value. Social media made this process all too easy. Facebook’s former chief of security, Alex Stamos, pointed out that using the blunt instrument to eliminate fake news could turn the platform into “the ministry of truth with ML [machine-learning] systems”, but by failing to act in time, Facebook was already allowing “bad actors” such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency to spread disinformation unchecked.

The problem is likely to get worse. The growth of “deep fake” image synthesis, which combines computer graphics and artificial intelligence to manufacture images whose artificiality can only be identified by expert analysis, has the potential to create a paranoid labyrinth in which, according to the viewer’s bias, fake images will pass as real, while real ones are dismissed as fake.

During a speech in July 2018, Trump said: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” A line from Nineteen Eighty-Four went viral: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

One might feel wistful for the days when Big Brother was a joke and Orwell had “won”, as many commentators thought after the fall of the Berlin Wall. An era plagued by far-right populism, authoritarian nationalism, rampant disinformation and waning faith in liberal democracy is not one in which Nineteen Eighty-Four can be easily dismissed.

Orwell was both too pessimistic and not pessimistic enough. On the one hand, the west did not succumb to totalitarianism. Consumerism, not endless war, became the engine of the global economy. But he did not appreciate the tenacity of racism and religious extremism. Nor did he foresee that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is about many things and its readers’ concerns dictate which one is paramount at any point in history. During the cold war, it was a book about totalitarianism. In the 1980s, it became a warning about technology. Today, it is most of all a defence of truth.

Orwell’s fear, incubated during the months he spent fighting in the Spanish civil war, that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world” is the dark heart of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It gripped him long before he came up with Big Brother, Oceania, newspeak or the telescreen, and it’s more important than any of them. In its original 1949 review, Life correctly identified the essence of Orwell’s message: “If men continue to believe in such facts as can be tested and to reverence the spirit of truth in seeking greater knowledge, they can never be fully enslaved.” Seventy years later, that feels like a very large if.

Incredible things are happening already❗ 👀 🤔

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[kappamelone]

[Freeing them from the oc prison]

Sooo first OCs I want to introduce are Jeremiah (left), Jerry for his friends (nobody call him with his full name he feels like he's been lectured or is in trouble) and Anthony (right) !

They're my vtm campaign pc and npc, both vampires from the gangrel clan, they're two anarchist who fled from new york to new orleans when they sensed the danger from the camarilla side in nwc.

Anthony turned Jerry in the late 80s/early 90s, their relationship is a bit complicated they act like a proud and loud father and his angsty rebellious son but there's a story of abandonment and avoidance rooted deep inside both of them.

They're very dear to me, also the rat is called Alexander The III.