JK Rowling threatening legal action

[TheLashKingOfScotland]

A TRA and Canadian Green Party rep has made libellous comments about JK regarding her position on trans rights and her suitability to be trusted around children.
JK asked her to retract them or they would hear from JK's lawyers. Currently they are digging in. Seemingly unaware that JK has pursued legal cases based on Twitter comments before and that it isn't acceptable to make unfounded statements about people.
It will be interesting to see how it unfolds.
It could have wider reaching consequences if certain sectors see they can't just make unfounded accusations any more.

Oh I so agree. 1984 is the zeitgeist book, for sure, but Animal Farm is something that has been seared into my brain for some reason, possibly because I read it first, and at an impressionable age.

Animal Farm resonates with children and adolescents on a really basic level because of the inherent unfairness of a set up where those doing all the hard work are exploited and do not benefit. Children have a strong sense of natural justice.

TehBewilderness ta for the rec. Haven't come across it before (been out of fandom for a while). I was appreciating the decent spag and strong narrative voice, and then the fairy godfather line happened and I cracked up. That's my evening sorted!

There's no single scene in 1984 that has the same punch to the stomach emotional impact as them taking away Boxer in Animal Farm, for example.

Really good point.

And YY boatyard I agree.

@TheProdigalKittensReturn

Not to knock 1984, but in a lot of ways Animal Farm is the better book in that it does hit you on that allegorical level. I was very young when I read it and it made a lasting impression.

I read it when i was 9 and became a vegetarian

The point swooshed right over my head

‘He loved big brother’. Last sentence of 1984.

Sinister.

Agree about Boxer. The scene is heartbreaking.

I read it when i was 9 and became a vegetarian
The point swooshed right over my head

RufustheLanglovingreindeer if it helps, it made me happy to eat bacon. I really didn’t like the pigs by the end!

Hahaha at ItsLateHumpty's very pragmatic approach.

humpty

😀 thank you

My friend is a vegetarian except for chicken

(I know thats not a vegetarian by the way)

She eats chicken because, in her words ‘ they are evil looking fuckers with beady eyes’

I was thinking about this - 1984 is a useful book because it shows the mechanisms of totalitarian thought control. Animal Farm does too, to a much smaller extent, but the power of Animal Farm is that it shows in such a visceral way how greed, selfishness and a lust for power can corrupt even really good ideas. That's such a salutary lesson for a 'enlightened' period in history, when I think it's all too easy to think we have embraced liberal ideas, and equality and freedom.

Debbie Hayton in The Times

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e83cf2ea-a50c-11ea-a585-dcb14d2bcd47?shareToken=eafc66b4f31b2536a5202ea3d0555a9c

Yep. He totally “got it” on that level and it’s now just about giving him the technical vocabulary ie. class, propaganda, totalitarianism, etc.

1984 will come later along with A Handmaid’s Tale. He’s only 13.

Thinking lord of the flies next.

1984 tells you how it's done. Animal Farm tells you that but also provides an emotional journey, and takes the reader through the betrayal of those who have suffered and sacrificed.

1984 is more of a speculative warning about the future while Animal Farm is a telling of what can happen during revolutions.

They're complementary and reinforce each other's message.

Yes. 1984 is more about the larger systems of totalitarian control, Animal Farm is more focused on where it all goes wrong with individuals, though of course both books touch on both issues. I think the reason Animal Farm hurts more is that taking advantage of decent people who think they're doing the right thing feels like far more of a personal betrayal. So in a way it's just as applicable to what we see going on now, decent people being manipulated into supporting things that will hurt both them and others.

I wonder if there's anyone on the right who's broken down exactly how things can go terribly wrong when they're in control in the way Orwell did for the left. I suppose you could say Bertolluci did it with The Conformist, but I don't think he was really coming from the same side the way Orwell was.

I think there’s something about the left that gives it more propensity for totalitarianism. For all the rights faults they don’t want to eg ban home education or insist everyone think the same.

I’m far more wary of the left now. It hasn’t made me a Tory but I see the benefits and pitfalls on both sides and realise that some of my values are don’t fit with the leftist ideology.

I have some views that are totally blasphemous to the current hive mind on the left. My views on transgenderism being one example.

As a teenager the point of 1984 was somewhat lost on me. But Animal Farm sucker punched me.

For all the rights faults they don’t want to eg ban home education or insist everyone think the same.

I think a look at the history books might be helpful here.

I think both sides have their totalitarians, which is why I'm wondering if anyone on the right has done what Orwell did from a left perspective.

#GoJoRo!

I think the rights tactics seem to be more about divide and rule rather than trying to induce societal level group think. That’s what I meant. I’m more focused on relatively recent history. Going further than that gets tricky because our ideas of what is left, right or centre have changed dramatically over time.

The danger is always moral superiority. When you believe that your cause is so just, it justifies unjust means.

Left, right, TRA, MRA, hell, even feminists - we are all susceptible to this, which is the essence of purges and purity spirals ad infinitum.

The minute you lose sight of the fact that your opinion could be wrong and that you are no more inherently righteous than anyone else, when you base your life on ideologies rather than material, provable reality, you become a mark for the next totalitarian wave.

In this context, humility and a strong commitment to scrutinizing your conclusions is vital if you want to avoid that. It's one of the reasons there are a number of threads here where women ask 'Do you ever think you got this wrong?' and why I welcome that - because we're asking ourselves hard questions, revisiting the foundations to see if they still hold. Once we stop doing that and begin parroting slogans without connection to the factual realities that underpin them, we've lost our footing.

Maybe the left just produces more people who're prone to admitting that our side has done wrong things and trying to figure out how to avoid them happening again. I don't know the right well enough to have any real understanding of its internal dynamics.

One of the scarier things is the seeming invulnerability of key figures.

After, what by any definition has to be a complete balls up at Stonewall, Ruth Hunt is whisked off into the House of Lords. Adrian Harrop similarly appears to be teflon coated as far as the GMC are concerned. (In complete contrast to a medic we know who was victim to some unfounded and relatively minor allegations by a very odd person about something they said in outside work, and who was cleared eventually but only after a lot of stress and considerable legal costs.) And others. What does Edward Lord have that allows him to float around all sorts of senior sports and City of London positions. And how can, essentially nobodies like, Jess Bradley and Lily Madigan access top London law firms such as Carter Ruck and Leigh Day.

In terms of the last question, someone is paying for that, we just don't know who.