this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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Animal Farm is a fictional narrative based off George Orwell's interpretations of the events surrounding the Russian revolution, not an accurate piece of political history or theory.
History is much more accurately depicted through nonfiction texts, not fictional narratives. You should read actual political theory if you want to learn about the Russian revolution. It was a very interesting event with many complexities and it liberated so many people.
Although I do agree with some of your later points. Although I think horseshoe theory is unjustified as well, and you seem to agree. Politics is much more complex than a line or even a bent line.
Politics is a complex web of ideas that form as a result of certain conditions. The far left and far right do share some values, but usually for completely different reasons. For example both Nazi Germany and the USSR had very strong centralisation of power in the state, although that power in the USSR stemmed from the workers to oppress the bourgeoisie but in Nazi Germany the power stemmed from the Bourgeoisie to oppress the working class.
i just enjoy the use of animal farm/1984 as little heuristic environments to convey simple ways that collective efforts are derailed, with a great simple short set of events that show how a movement can be slowly converted into something antithetical to the original collective effort.
a problem that still hasn't been solved, despite any elaboration that could be had on the specific happenings in the USSR.
i care about the heuristics because they do map really well to other and current happenings, in ways that are useful for framing to people things such as the decades of neoliberal progressive rugpulling, or how the heritage foundation and types have been slowly reshaping the environment to benefit them, in a recursive corruption of existing systems.
it's definitely more complicated than shown in animal-farm, but people already react as if this is the deep-end, and trying to copy and paste a textbook on USSR specifics would also have me back explaining the difference between patterns and substrate, which honestly shouldn't be the case with animal farm, but it seems even (american?) leftists seem to have read it as 'commuism bad.'
I didn't interpret it as communism bad, although that's how we were taught it (because of course I studied it in school). I think Orwell's take is that power corrupts and no one should be able to hold power for a significant period of time.
I disagree with Orwell's opinion because he places too much emphasis on great man theory. It's not realistic for any individual to truly dictate an entire country like a farmer or pig might dictated over the farm.
Does it really map current events accurately? Animal Farm doesn't really consider the fundamental difference between different states with different class dynamics. Animal Farm can't explain how socialist states, modern and historical, always continue to improve living conditions for workers as much as possible despite having strong centralisation of power. Meanwhile, conditions are getting worse for workers in capitalist states despite having generally lower (albeit increasing) levels of government involvement.
Also I'm curious by what you mean by neoliberal progressive rugpulling.