Fariha’s Reviews > Essays > Status Update
Fariha
is on page 230 of 1369
English fiction on its higher levels is for the most part written by literary gents about literary gents for literary gents; on its lower levels it is generally the most putrid "escape" stuff—old maids' fantasies about Ian Hay male virgins, or little fat men's visions of themselves as Chicago gangsters.
— Dec 29, 2025 08:04AM
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Fariha’s Previous Updates
Fariha
is on page 283 of 1369
The other is the fact that all known methods of defence against the aeroplane are more or less useless and that the German bombers could probably reduce England to chaos and starvation in a few weeks. It is doubtful whether this has much value as an argument against war ; though true, it amounts to scaremongering and, coupled with the consciousness of German rearmament,
— 5 hours, 31 min ago
Fariha
is on page 278 of 1369
It is evident that people can be deceived by the anti-Fascist stuff exactly as they were deceived by the gallant little Belgium stuff, and when war comes they will walk straight into it. I don't, however, agree with the pacifist attitude, as I believe you do. I still think one must fight for Socialism and against Fascism, I mean fight physically with weapons, only it is as well to discover which is which.
— 5 hours, 38 min ago
Fariha
is on page 277 of 1369
In the difference between those two periods, especially the difference in the social atmosphere, the essential history of the Spanish revolution is contained. In August the Government was almost powerless, local soviets were functioning everywhere and the Anarchists were the main revolutionary force ; as a result everything was in terrible chaos,
— 5 hours, 39 min ago
Fariha
is on page 273 of 1369
Broadly speaking, Communist propaganda depends upon terrifying people with the (quite real) horrors of Fascism. It also involves pretending—not in so many words, but by implication—that Fascism has nothing to do with capitalism. Fascism is just a kind of meaningless wickedness, an aberration, "mass sadism", the sort of thing that would happen if you suddenly let loose an asylumful of homicidal maniacs.
— Jan 02, 2026 10:23AM
Fariha
is on page 273 of 1369
In the first half of this article I suggested that the real struggle in.Spain, on the Government side, has been between revolution and counter-revolution; that the Government, though anxious enough to avoid being beaten by Franco, has been even more anxious to undo the revolutionary changes with which the outbreak of war was accompanied.
— Jan 02, 2026 10:22AM
Fariha
is on page 272 of 1369
The peasant and the worker hate feudalism and clericalism ; but so does the "liberal" bourgeois, who is not in the least opposed to a more modem version of Fascism, at least so long as it isn't called Fascism. The "liberal" bourgeois is genuinely liberal up to the point where his own interests stop. He stands for the degree of progress implied in the phrase "la carriere ouverte aux talents".
— Jan 02, 2026 06:17AM
Fariha
is on page 271 of 1369
It is unfortunate that so few people in England have yet caught up with the fact that Communism is now a counter-revolutionary force ; that Communists everywhere are in alliance with bourgeois reformism and using the whole of their powerful machinery to crush or discredit any party that shows signs of revolutionary tendencies.
— Jan 02, 2026 06:14AM
Fariha
is on page 258 of 1369
The basic trouble with all orthodox Marxists is that, possessing a system which appears to explain everything, they never bother to discover what is going on inside other people's heads. That is why in every western country, during the last dozen years, they have played straight into the hands of their adversaries.
— Jan 01, 2026 07:02AM
Fariha
is on page 257 of 1369
Hence the frightful intellectual dishonesty which can be observed in nearly all propagandist critics. They are employing a double set of values and dodging from one to the other according as it suits them. They praise or dispraise a book because its tendency is Communist, Catholic, Fascist or what-not ; but at the same time, they pretend to be judging it on purely aesthetic grounds.
— Dec 31, 2025 08:31AM
Fariha
is on page 257 of 1369
At that time, even more than now, art for art's sake was going strong, though the phrase itself had been discarded as ninety-ish ; "art has nothing to do with morality" was the favourite slogan. The artist was conceived as leaping to and fro in a moral, political and economic void, usually in pursuit of something called "Beauty", which was always one jump ahead.
— Dec 31, 2025 08:29AM
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Dec 29, 2025 08:04AM
Books about ordinary people behaving in an ordinary manner are extremely rare, because they can only be written by someone who is capable of standing both inside and outside the ordinary man, as Joyce for instance stands inside and outside Bloom; but this involves admitting that you yourself are an ordinary person for ninetenths of the time, which is exactly what no intellectual ever wants to do.
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