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Manifesto
In the second half of last year my friends Peter McLoughlin @pmclauth and @tommyrobinson published a book called "Manifesto". It's a fantastic book that I really should write a proper book review for but haven't done so yet.
My part in helping with the book came from lots of chats mostly with Peter. I read the book in early draft and after reading it I started playing around with Grok to see what it would come up with in terms of illustration.
After not that much trying the following image popped out and it blew both myself and Peter away.
I did have to make one little edit from the version which Grok gave me: I added the words "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchal Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein" to the cover of the book which the Napoleon Pig is holding.
Animal Farm and 1984
Manifesto builds heavily on the ideas of George Orwells very short book Animal Farm, published in 1948. The basic thesis of Manifesto is that we are all mostly farm animals, being farmed by an Oligarchy who control much of our lives. We have limited scope within their plans and the only way to advance is to fall in line.
But the book also explores a lot of the ideas of 1984, also by Orwell which is a dark exploration of states we would call fascist. Manifesto explores a lot of aspects of fascism and how it is misunderstood today. Indeed this is the opening of the book.
This book is an anti-Fascist book. We spend most of this book exposing how the power of the Fascist state works. There is only one essential quality to Fascism: it is the belief that the State (and the powerful groups connected to it) can and should control the actions of the individual citizens (restrict or compel your speech acts, restrict or compel your commercial transactions, etc.) But Fascism disguises its tyranny by claiming to care for the welfare of the masses. The military uniforms of Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler are incidental to Fascism – the Fascists who run Britain need the public to think that military uniforms, silly gestures, and little moustaches are essential parts of Fascism. Fascism is a form of Collectivism, it creates an Us (the Collective) and Fascism directs hatred from the Collective towards a Them (the Other). In the case of Britain the hated group is the white working class (the indigenous people), whilst the Fascist state is an alliance of corporations and all the mascot groups to which the Fascist state gives privileged status. We are sure there are hundreds of items of information in the book which will be new to you, because the State and its employees have been deceiving the public for decades. We will show you how even before 1920 Britain was the inspiration for Mussolini’s Fascism. After reading this book the systemic lunacy seen in the West in the past 50 years will make sense.
What Is The Theory and Practice of Oligarchal Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein?
"The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" is a fictional book within the novel 1984 by George Orwell. In the context of 1984's story, it is written by Emmanuel Goldstein, who is depicted as the principal enemy of the state and the leader of the Brotherhood, an underground resistance movement against the totalitarian regime of Oceania.
Emmanuel Goldstein is the figure which everyone is forced to "hate" for two minutes per day. His book is banned, he is an outlaw. But his book is meant to describe the system by which the state is ruled and run.
Subtitle
When Peter was working on the book we discussed actually subtitling Manifesto as "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" but decided against it. So when I created the image of the pig (dressed as Napoleon which is the name of an important pig character from Animal Farm) it was with the intent of having him hold that book.
In case you haven't realised
Tommy Robinson is Emmanuel Goldstein and Manifesto is the book they probably want to ban. Amazon have stopped selling it (they use various technical means to make it hard) but in the 4 days it was on Amazon it became the number 1 best selling book in the UK (all categories) beating the memoir of Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister.
You can get a copy only here: Buy the Book trmanifesto.com
https://x.com/pmarca/status/1877586391971893632
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