Stalin had Trotsky murdered in Mexico, so he can't come back to the farm, but some of the surviving Trotskyists became pro-capitalists, the neo-cons with whom we are familiar. Snowball who returns may be thought of as a composite figure of neo-cons, former East European dissidents come pro-capitalists, the Chinese Communist Party after the market reform, former social democrats & Labourists come Third-Way promoters, Dems, etc., who together uphold the Empire.
At 6:03 AM -0500 11/26/02, Todd Archer wrote:
>>The woodland creatures, led by the beavers - read Islamic
>>fundamentalists - incensed at the destruction of their environment,
>>attack the twin windmills,
>
>As if this were the cause of 9-11.
The destruction of the natural environment was not a conscious motive of Islamic fundamentalists (at least they have yet to make it the center of their grievances), but if you think of the environment in a broader sense of the word, including social, political, economic, and cultural, the analogy makes sense.
What's most interesting to me in the parable is the responses of farm animals to the beavers: "The book ends with the farm animals crying out for revenge against the fundamentalists: `Kill the beavers! Kill the beavers! Kill! Kill!'..." (@ <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/books/25ANIM.html>). Cries for revenge were not the only responses in the USA, but certainly they were the dominant strain in public discourse.
At 7:53 AM -0600 11/26/02, Peter K. wrote:
>>He decided, he said, that the world had a new form of evil to deal
>>with, and it was not communism. It was the evil, he said, within
>>American corporate capitalism itself, and American arrogance in
>>protecting its interests in the Middle East oil fields. To Mr. Reed,
>>"Animal Farm" was the ultimate expression of pro-capitalist ideology.
>>"It has inoculated generations of schoolchildren against the evils of
>>communism," Mr. Reed said.
>--------
>New form of evil? What's so new about it?
New to those who think like Mr. Reed (a libertarian?): "Despite the brutal ending of 'Snowball's Chance,' Mr. Reed said, he still thinks 'capitalism has a better chance of working than communism,' but 'it would be a true capitalist system rather than a conglomerate system'" (@ <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/books/25ANIM.html>). -- Yoshie
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