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submitted 4 days ago by ZeffSyde@lemmy.world to c/books@lemmy.ml

A life time ago I lost a friend to Objectivist philosophy. Not wanting to lose said friend, I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to try and figure out why he was acting like an asshole all of a sudden.

I took a couple points of psychic damage in the process, but at least I can stand my own when offering counter arguments against their edgy philosophies.

What are some other works that it would be handy to be knowledgeable of the next time a philosophical edge lord tries to quote me into a corner?

I'm looking to be more well informed in conversation.

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[-] ZeffSyde@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Hell yeah, thanks!

To the library!

[-] folaht@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

And if you didn't know, the debate has been by commies and commie-symphathizers like me that

  • Orwell was a Trotsky-fanboy
  • Orwell was not warning about totalitarianism, he simply did not like Stalin because Stalinists attacked Trotskyists during the Spanish civil war that Orwell was fighting in and he got targeted.
  • Orwell's books have been used by the CIA as propaganda. The CIA somehow turned these books into bestsellers!?
  • Trotsky is bad
    • because he was in favor of permanent revolution, whatever that is.
    • and because he was against 'socialism in one country' (which cannot be called national socialism as some fascist already took that name) that Stalinists were in favor of.

And to be honest. For the last point I do as well, just for the fact that I like seeing alternative cultures taking routes that might work better or have qualities that the other one doesn't, especially when the "we-all-living-in-the-one-culture" turns predictably fascist dictatorial.

And I've seen comments saying that Orwell was a racist and some other things, but I'll have to look that up again.

I think the more important pressing question is why Trotsky and Trotskyists have been so much vilified by Stalinists and why Orwell thought Trotsky was the man of freedom and liberation and not Stalin despite both being socialists.

Is there more than just Orwell hating Stalin on a personal level?

Is there more to it than just Trotsky wanting to fasttrack the road to communism that is argued by other communists that "socialism goes first and then communism will naturally happen somewhere in the far future as Marx intended and is not a goal to persue whereas socialism is" to paraphrase the leader of MAGA communism, to which I don't know if this shared by other communists. MAGA communists are a bit of a weird bunch, considered similar to Trotskyists by lemmygrad.
Also, not sure if MAGA communists still call themselves that considering what's been happening the past six months.

this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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