Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm still hits like a punch because it doesn’t ask, “Which side was right?” It asks, “How did everyone get played?” We pick up Orwell’s short, deceptively simple fable and read it as a living warning about power, propaganda, and the quiet bargains people make when certainty feels safer than critical thought.

We walk through the core story beats, from Old Major’s ideal to Snowball’s vision of shared buy-in, then to Napoleon’s capture of the farm through intimidation, slogans, and a full-time spin machine. Along the way, we connect Orwell’s sharpest tools to modern life: scapegoats that absorb every failure, charts that “prove” you’re doing better while you feel worse, and the slow rewriting of rules until nobody remembers what the rules used to be. If you care about media literacy, civic literacy, and how totalitarian habits form inside ordinary communities, this conversation is for you.

The spoiler half goes deeper into the mechanics: the cult of personality around “Napoleon is always right,” the role of illiteracy in making slogans irresistible, and the danger of apathy when the people who can read the wall decide it’s not worth speaking up. We end with the novel’s bleak final mirror, then pull out practical takeaways for spotting manipulation before it becomes “normal.”

If this made you think of a workplace, a timeline, a political movement, or even yourself, you’re exactly who we hope listens. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend who loves smart book talk, and leave a review so more readers can find us.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back. Tonight we're opening George Orwell's Animal Farm. Now, if you haven't read it since high school, you probably remember what everyone told you it was about the Russian Revolution, Stalin, communism, and the dangers of totalitarianism. And yes, Orwell absolutely had those things in mind. But here's the question we want to wrestle with tonight. What if we've spent decades treating Animal Farm as a history lesson when it was really a warning label? Because the unsettling truth is that Orwell wasn't just writing about one government, one revolution, or one political system. He was writing about power, about propaganda, about the ease with which people surrender critical thought in exchange for certainty,

Animal Farm As Warning Label

SPEAKER_02 0:50

belonging, and simple answers? How many people have read Animal Farm, nodded knowingly at the pigs, laughed at the sheep chanting slogans, rolled their eyes at the rewriting of history, and then walked straight into the same behaviors in real life? How many times have we watched language manipulated to control perception? How often do we see dissent dismissed, inconvenient facts erased, loyalty rewarded over competence, or slogans replacing genuine thought? Orwell understood something terrifyingly universal. Revolutions don't fail because villains arrive from somewhere else. They fail because ordinary people convince themselves that this time the rules don't apply. This time the leaders are different. This time the lies are necessary. And perhaps the most chilling line in the entire novel isn't spoken at all. It's the moment when the animals can no longer tell the difference between the pigs and the humans. Because that isn't just a political observation. It's a warning about what happens when power becomes more important than principles. So tonight we're putting Animal Farm back on the farm where it belongs, not as a relic of the 20th century, but as a mirror. A mirror that reflects governments, corporations, media, institutions, movements, and maybe even ourselves. The question isn't whether Orwell was right about the Soviet Union. The question is whether we recognize the farm when we're standing in it. All right, Peter, we're gonna have a fun discussion tonight, and you've got to start us out with a bit of a synopsis.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Okay, well, George Orwell basically wrote an allegory here using animals as a representation of the working class, and then of course the farmers are the bourgeoisie, right? Right. So it starts out with one of the older pigs on the farm, named Major, gathering all the animals together to tell them about a dream that he has had. And in this dream, he saw a revolution among the animals happening sometime in the future. He doesn't know when, but he believes that at one point the animals will rise up and they will throw off the yoke of human oppression, and then they will form this sort of egalitarian utopian society where all animals are equal and they will follow certain principles. Right. Major dies, and

Plot Synopsis And Key Players

SPEAKER_00 3:24

then over the period of time, of course, the animals do reach their limit and they revolt against the humans and they run them off the farm. And for a while, under the leadership of the pigs, and one pig in particular, Snowball, who is a true believer in the revolution, they do form this society that Major dreamed of. However, another pig named Napoleon has his own plans and his own agenda, and through certain mechanations, he manages to run Snowball off the farm, and then slowly but surely their utopian society begins to fall. And that is essentially what the book is about.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

And it devolves into really a dystopia.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Let's start off with our characters, and all the characters in this, except for a couple characters, really are animals. So we have all these named animals that are in there, and then we have a small selection of humans that exist in the story as well. But we have in true allegorical fashion and in almost a fable type fashion, we have these characters that are talking animals. So we have pigs, we have sheep, we have a donkey, we have horses, we have a raven, cats, cat, ducks, yes, ducks, chickens, all these things that are talking, and they have very varying levels of intelligence depending on the animal and their level of, you know, quote unquote education and general smart, as far as that's concerned. The pigs are the smarter animals in this scenario. The donkey, Benjamin, is also quite smart. That's my husband's favorite character, is Benjamin the donkey. And the animals are very believable as characters. So Orwell does a really good job of creating these very believable personas of these animals as citizens in this society.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, and they kind of represent different attitudes.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

They do.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

They're not highly fleshed out characters, but they're representative, and I think they're good representatives of the story that he's trying to tell.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah, there are certain characters that are more fleshed out than others, but definitely they're more symbolic than otherwise. For instance, the sheep, they're not developed individual characters, but the sheep represent exactly what you would suppose they represent human beings that are sheep, that are followers without really understanding what they're following. And so the sheep, you know, and they follow everything around and they just repeat what they hear. So you've got that type of representation going on. But it does not descend to the level of being boring. They aren't so symbolic that they are meaningless characters, they are very deliberately planned by Orwell.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

So then the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Well, uh, the atmosphere is a farm.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

I don't really know what to say about the atmosphere. This is more about the story and the meaning of the story and the things and the ideas that he's trying to get across. We are in a farm. He's not too flowery with the descriptions. It's more meaning and character-driven than it is, I think, atmosphere.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Correct. Yeah, we're not going into a whole bunch of deep setting descriptions at all. We have a very simplistic setting. Again, imagine a fable, not just an allegory, but a fable. If you're listening to Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox, this is similar. You've got a general setting, you know, a briar patch. In this case, we've got a farm.

Fable Style With Sharp Intent

SPEAKER_02 6:54

We recognize what a farm should be like. That is the atmosphere we have as a farm atmosphere. That is about as complicated as it gets.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah. And the writing as well is very simple. It is very straightforward. It almost feels like I was reading a children's story, a fairy tale, a fable. It's not overly flowery at all. It's not bad writing by any means, but this is just a very straightforward way of writing a story and telling you what happens.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Right. And I want to be very clear on that. Orwell, if you read 1984, can be a very complicated, ponderous writer. Animal Farm is very succinct and it could be read by a child. It is that simple. And I think the writing style in Animal Farm is very deliberate on Orwell's part because he wants people to very clearly understand it. He wants everyone to be able to read it because he wants it to serve as a warning. And we'll talk about that more, but I think it needs to be able to be understood by everyone because he's got some very clear messages he's trying to be burying the point at all. No, he wants the point to be right out there in your face. So his writing style has to be very there in your face so that there's not a lot of guesswork on the part of the reader.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Plot, I was blown away by the plot. Okay. At first I was like, okay, this is fairly simple. Okay, and then I started to see Napoleon do his thing and the mechanations and the gaslighting and the manipulation. I was just like, oh my God, this is one of the most, and this can get into logic as well. This is one of the most believable stories about elitist corrupt people that will do it literally anything to gain power, wealth, money, and authority. And all the plays in the book are I've so relevant that I've just the plot isn't it's not complicated, it's just so true, though. Yeah, it's just so spot on. It progressed exactly as it would progress, and it just felt like he was just writing the truth so clearly.

The Manipulation Feels Too Real

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Right. So the plot is scarily real.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Okay, and the intrigue is scarily real.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

And the logic is there because we've borne witness to these things.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

And I kept going, I kept waiting for the animals to realize to finally say, I'm being manipulated. That doesn't make any sense. I don't remember it that way. But the way that he gets around confusing them and diluting them is so interesting and so brilliant. I I get angry as I was reading the book because I was thinking about where we are as a society today and everything that has happened. And yet we had this book as a warning. And it's just like it blows my mind. I know I hadn't read it before, and I know other people haven't read it, but more people than not have read and studied this book, and yet here we are.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Well, more people than not have been exposed to this book. Whether they actually read it, I can tell you as a teacher, might be questionable. And whether they actually paid attention to the lessons on it might be questionable. But yes, it's available to us.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

And here's where we get back to the importance of literacy on so many levels.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

It's available to us, and there's a reason why it has been chosen to be taught. There's a very important reason why, whether we are absorbing the lessons or not, does go back to that question of literacy. So we've covered plot, intrigue, and logic kind of all in one swoop there. I'm not sure, again, if this is a book that you enjoy. Did you enjoy it?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

In the traditional sense, just as I didn't quite enjoy Fahrenheit 451. No, but did I enjoy its relevance, its importance, its meaningful statements, and the way it made me think about that? Yes, absolutely. I enjoyed the revelation of the story as it progressed.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Right. The epiphanies that take place as you're reading, and you kind of go, aha, that, that right there, that rings true.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

It was validating. Right. It was very validating to say, okay, I'm not crazy. These are the things that are being done. These are the lies that are being told.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

That have historically happened and continue to happen and will happen. These are human cycles. These are human acts.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

And some of that is discouraging that we have to go through those kinds of cycles. As long as at the end we grow instead of regress, it's, I guess, it's just part of the process. We will always fall to the same lies over and over again in different ways.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

That is that is discouraging, though, on some level. But we'll we'll talk about that more.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

And I think the book makes a good point at the end. It's also a generational thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

You know, at at what at the end of the book, everybody who kind of remembers the suffering, who remembers the old times, who remembers the reason for the revolution, they're all gone.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

So now the story can be told fresh any way that the people in charge want it to be told. Correct. Until they can all be manipulated again and sent back through the same cycle of oppression and overthrowing oppression and then especially if history is rewritten. And new oppressors rising up again.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Over and over.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Over and over.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

So on that, yeah, that really positive note. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

We're gonna move to the spoiler section of our podcast and we'll meet you on the flip side. Okay, quick pause. Because if you're still listening, you clearly have excellent taste or questionable judgment. Either way, we've got something for you.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

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SPEAKER_02 12:50

We're talking bold designs, rebellious slogans, and just enough intellectual menace to make people nervous in public. Wait, Peter, have you made people nervous in public recently?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Oh, I don't know. I how how they feel about my make Fahrenheit 451 fiction again shirt or fire the patriarchy.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Or burn it all down.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Or burn it all down.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

We're gonna need to make something about Animal Farm too.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Working on it right now. Okay. Hoodies, teas, all of it. Perfect for reading banned books or starting arguments at brunch.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Go grab yours at Liton

Merch Break And Reading Chaos

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Fire Podcast-shop.forthwall dot com. Because if you're going to burn it all down, you might as well look good doing it. Lit on fire. All right, so we're entering our spoiler half, and I think we have to start by acknowledging something. This book is inherently political. It is political, probably more than any other book we have tackled, because as we said, Orwell is not hiding his point, and his point is directly political, social, on the nose, making some very distinct truths known, you know, ripping off the surface of things that were going on in society and things that he sees for the future as well. So we're going to be delving into some of that with honesty in the podcast tonight, as far as the cycles we see in society, in politics, in humanity,

Power Beats Labels And Ideologies

SPEAKER_02 14:27

with human control. So we want to be honest about that upfront as we delve into this book.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah, and I think we can't emphasize enough that this book is not about communism. This is not a critique of the Bolshevik revolution. He is using that to write a mirroring story to make a statement about human beings.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

More than communism. Because this is not communism.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Right. And we need to talk about labels in that way. We throw labels around a lot as a society. And communism is like the boogeyman. It has been for decades, it has been for centuries, really, but for decades in our society. We go back to the McCarthy era. We have the communist, the red scare, the communist scare. And Orwell is writing slightly before that when we look at Animal Farm. But communism is always the boogeyman. Socialism is the boogeyman, right? What happened in Russia with the Soviet Union, what has happened in places like North Korea and in China, this is not communism. It's not socialism because that is a philosophy, as envisioned by Karl Marx, as envisioned by philosophers that came up with the idea. Socialism is about the society. Communism is about the community. People take those ideas and they turn them into their own selfish agenda. It is no longer about that philosophy. So we throw those labels out like boogeyman. This is about power. This is about human agenda. So communism that you throw out as the boogeyman, that anyone throws out as the boogeyman, is not communism. That is not what communism was intended to be. This is about human manipulation and power. This is about control. This is about the corruption based on what human beings desire. And that is what Orwell is addressing. He's addressing the human nature. He's addressing the power.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

And when we look at history, that is also what we should be critiquing. Human nature, good and evil. Instead of getting caught up in labeling things as bad, we need to notice the behavior so that no matter what guise it takes, what label it takes, we will see the behavior itself for what it really is.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

And so these concepts, as they exist in a utopian ideal, as they exist in their perfect philosophical ideal, are corrupted by human beings. Yeah. And that's what we see. So Orwell is examining those kinds of ideas and how we take ideas and they become corrupted and they become used for personal agendas. So that is what happens at the beginning of Animal Farm. Old Major comes up with a philosophy called animalism that is supposed to have animals at the center of it, no longer controlled and slaughtered by human beings, no longer taken advantage of, no longer having their rights stripped away. Instead, the animals are going to have autonomy, they're going to have equality, they're going to rule over themselves, and we're going to create this animal-centered society. And when old Major dies, who is the heart of animalism, who has come up with this ideal, then we have the varying personalities step in and the potential for corruption. So in the book, we have two pigs in particular that step up as probably the most important pigs on the farm, and that is Snowball and Napoleon. And Snowball is a true disciple of Old Major. And you mentioned Snowball. Snowball wants to carry on old Major's ideals and bring them into reality by developing these programs for the animals, developing committees, bringing all the animals on board in order to advocate for themselves and kind of take ownership of the farm and be invested, like have some skin in the game. And Snowball attempts to get all that organization. Napoleon's philosophy is different. Napoleon wants to take leadership and the pigs are going to take control, and the pigs are going to be the primary initiators of the process. Snowball runs into some problems. His basic problem is twofold. He has Napoleon, who is counter to his philosophy, because Napoleon ultimately does want power. He also runs into problems with the animals because the animals simply aren't quite educated enough and knowledgeable enough to step up and do all the things that Snowball is hoping they will do.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Which automatically puts the pigs in a position of power.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Unavoidably.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Unavoidably.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Because they're the only ones that can actually comprehend the form of governance that they're trying to implement. And so yeah, they create the they have the seven pro uh mandates or whatever. Whoever goes upon two legs is the enemy. So we could kind of translate that as the millionaires and the billionaires and the rich are the enemy.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And then whoever goes upon four legs or has wings is a friend. The working class, the common man, is your friend. No animal shall wear clothes, no animal shall sleep in a bed. So these are talking about luxuries that put yourself above your fellow working class person. Yes. And no animal shall drink alcohol and these, you know, the the decadence, the things that cause moral decay and things like that. And then no animal shall kill any other animal. That's pretty straightforward. And all animals are equal. And this is where we start. But even in the very beginning, the animals can't, they don't know how to read, they can't quite remember all these maxims, and they and they so they have to boil it down to the simplest principle possible. They create this basically mantra that they teach to the sheep in particular, so that the sheep can go ahead and just kind of understand it simply as make America, I mean, I'm sorry, two legs bad, four legs good, two legs bad, four legs good. And they say that over and over again, and that's just their simplest way of being obedient and understanding the principles of the movement.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

So the problems that Snowball faces, though, with this lack of education and having to boil down to this slogan, really those conflicts do mirror real life. The idea that a society is vast with a variety of human

Slogans Replace Literacy And Thought

SPEAKER_02 21:09

beings who are working and just trying to survive. What's the voting percentage in our nation on average? Will we take a guess?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Um I'm sure it's about 50%, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Less, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

If yeah, if that.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

If that. Yeah. So on average, how many people are actively involved in their own citizenship on average?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

And then uh what percentage of that is literate enough to know what they're voting for. To know what they're voting for, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Correct. So when we start thinking along those principles, it's not difficult to draw parallels between the average populace and then what Snowball's experiencing with the animals, the average animal populace in the story. He wants cooperation and investment and skin in the game. He's having trouble hurting the cats, right? Or the sheep, or or whatever it is in this particular case that he's dealing with. Like, how do I get everyone on board understanding how important it is that they're involved in this? And he has trouble making that happen.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

And not to, you know, beat a dead horse, but I want to, again, emphasize that it all starts with illiteracy.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

It does. And they can't read, they don't understand. They don't understand. And so he's trying to make them understand. And he gets so frustrated trying to make them understand. And he's working in a system with the other pigs where the other pigs are going, you know, if we can't make them understand, we're just going to do it. And Snowball's the one who's going, No, we have to get them invested. If this is old major's dream, they have to be here with us. And he becomes this lone voice of we are following the principles of animalism. It's all of us. And the other pigs are going, Yeah, but those people are too stupid to do it. So, so we have to be the ones to do this. And when you boil that down and look at it, you go, Yeah, I mean, right? After a while, if the other people are too stupid, the smart people have to step up and take control.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Then you have the problem of you have to be a benevolent person who has the best interests of everyone at heart.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

And those snowball is one of those people, but the other people are not, specifically Napoleon.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

So their first approach to solving this problem is sort of like a okay, just trust me, bro, sort of solution. And then the second, of course, is that we may not be able to make the current population understand, but we may be able to re-educate the youth. So something very crucial happens. Some puppies are born to the dogs on the farm, and Napoleon basically seizes upon this as a chance to take them under his wing and raise them in private and re-educate them. And they kind of get forgotten. And that's very important later on. But right away, even in the very beginning, because this sort of default ruling class is created just because of the inequity of intelligence, we do see some early signs of corruption right away.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Because the cows need to be milked, and they milk the cows, and suddenly the milk disappears. Napoleon takes care of it, right? And then eventually they say, Well, we need the milk because we need it for our brains. We need it. We don't want to drink the milk. It's disgusting, but we know that it's healthy for us. And so we're the thinkers, so we need it for our brains. And the pigs do seize upon some early luxuries.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Right. And it's the milk and it's the apples, and the other animals are like, well, why do the pigs get the milk and apples? Well, because it's our brain food.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Right. And so Snowball's not infallible character in this either.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

Right. Because the justification is, well, you all are not smart enough to handle the strategy and all this, and we're having to take on that burden. So this is our payment for that.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Right. But he does want to make life better for all the animals. And so he comes up with this idea about a windmill. And Liz, you can take it from there.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Snowball wants to build this windmill. He wants to get the animals on board with building it. And he says this is going to make our lives easier on the farm. It's going to help with our production so that the animals can have more food, so that we can produce the food for us to survive on the farm so we can produce what we need. We're going to build this windmill. It represents technology, it represents innovation. It represents this movement forward and the self-sufficiency that the animals will have. And Napoleon kind of fight fights against him. Snowball is pushing, trying to get these plans done. And Napoleon comes in and urinates on his plans and basically says, you know, your plans are rubbish.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

They'll come to nothing.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

He says, basically, you're wasting all the animals' time. They don't

Windmill Politics And Scapegoats

SPEAKER_02 26:02

understand. We're against your windmill. You're just causing problems for all of us. And he at this point makes Snowball this irritating person who's trying to create extra work for people. And then he runs them off the farm.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yes. Using the puppies that he took under his wing to educate them privately about animalism. He b they basically become his Gestapo.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

And he suddenly the puppies come out of nowhere and they're vicious guard dogs now for Napoleon and they chase Snowball off the farm.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

And now he has to become the leader for the benefit of everybody.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

And this is a sacrifice that he's going to make. And I love Squealer always comes out as his propagandaman, and he's able to twist Napoleon's duplicitousness in such creative ways. And this is what he says. That evening, Squealer explained privately to the other animals that Napoleon had never in reality been opposed to the windmill. On the contrary, it was he who had advocated it in the beginning, and the plan which Snowball had drawn on the floor of the incubator shed had actually been stolen from among Napoleon's papers. The windmill was in fact Napoleon's own creation. Why then ask somebody had he spoken so strongly against it? And here Squealer looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon's cunning. He had seemed to oppose the windmill simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous character and a bad influence. Now that Snowball was out of the way, the plan could go forward without his interference. This said Squealer with something called tactics. He repeated a number of times Tactics, comrades, tactics, skipping round and whisking his tail with a merry laugh. The animals were not certain what the word meant, but Squealer spoke so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so threateningly that they accepted his explanation without further question.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

And suddenly the twisting and the turning and the manipulating and the rewriting of what was going on begins. There's so much to say here about what we see going on in reality. Snowball becomes a scapegoat. And from this point forward, after Snowball is chased off and is no longer there to defend himself, when Napoleon has the platform with Squealer, suddenly everything becomes Snowball's fault. Snowball did that.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Right. It's this boogeyman that he uses basically. And how many times have we seen politicians, lately especially, blame every single burden you're facing and difficulty you're facing on some other politician before them? Or how many times have we seen a politician take credit for something that another person had already put in place before they even were put in charge? That doesn't happen ever, does it?

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

No. Thank God we're above all that.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

I know, right? We've gotten, we've moved so far.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

So Napoleon takes credit for the windmill idea and he brings it back up and he kind of uses it as this sort of nationalist rallying point, this way to be the perfect animalistic patriot. And we're going to do this thing and it's going to make our lives better. It's going to make our nation great again. But temporarily, we're going to suffer a bit. But if you're a good patriot, if you believe in animalism, then you will suffer. We will all suffer together equally, right? And they buy into this idea about the windmill going to make everybody's life greater.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

As long as we work hard enough.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

And then Boxer, the workhorse, becomes the perfect poster child for animalism. He's the perfect propaganda tool because he truly believes in the ideal.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

He is the patriotic working class. He believes in the farm. He believes in animal farm. He believes in animalism. He believes with his whole heart in the leadership of the pigs. He believes in their good intentions. He believes Comrade Napoleon.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I mean, he idolizes Napoleon. His two mantras are Napoleon is always right. And I will work harder.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Right. And so Boxer gives his soul, body and soul to animalism, body and soul to the farm, to his country. And he is determined to pull more weight than anyone else, to be up earlier than anyone else on the farm, to go to bed last, to be the one that bears the brunt of all the work for the windmill, because he is going to make sure that this dream comes to life and it's going to come to life on his back, literally, because he is going to do this work and he is going to lay down his life for the farm, for this belief in animalism that he has because he believes in the mission that much.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Right. And and Napoleon has to be right. Because if Napoleon is wrong, then his whole world is going to fall apart. So Napoleon is that kind of figure, you know, he can do no wrong. No matter how many times Boxer is troubled by things that Napoleon does, he just says to himself, Well, he knows best. He he has to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Napoleon's always right. I mean, that right?

SPEAKER_00 31:21

I must be wrong. I must be wrong.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

When Napoleon starts rewriting the animal commandments, for instance, when Napoleon decides to go into the farmhouse and sleep in a bed, and suddenly the commandment, instead of saying no animal will sleep in a bed, it's changed to say, no animal will sleep in a bed with sheets.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

And then Boxer says, Well, it must have always said that, right? I just must not have been smart enough to realize that it always said no one will sleep in a bed with sheets.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Because he's never read them for himself. It's always been read to him.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Right. Because he's only been able to learn his alphabet to a point because he's been so busy working and he only can understand so far. So he says Napoleon is always right. So if he's sleeping in a bed, there's a reason why he's sleeping in a bed, and he's always right. So it's my job to just keep working and everything's gonna work out.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

And I love this the the slow degradation of the ideals that that get enforced. For example, you know, you sorry said no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets, no animal shall drink alcohol in excess, no animal shall kill any other animal without a good reason. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. And just the different ways in which those ideals get compromised in order to pass off the ruling class's behavior as still true to animalism. It's like that relabeling, like like we said, this is this is actually animalism, even though it wasn't. It isn't.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Right. No, but this is this is animalism, this is what was intended. And there is one animal on the farm that is just as smart as, if not smarter, than the pigs, and that is Benjamin the donkey. And he represents all the people that know, and he has been reading the commandments as they've been changing, and he keeps saying, donkeys live a long time. And he's kind of that cynical individual who knows how people are. He doesn't believe that the pigs have good intentions.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

No, his mantra is nothing ever gets worse, nothing ever gets better, everything basically just stays the same. Right. No matter how hard you try. So he's really just the silent observer. He's not an activist, not an advocate, not a defender.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Right. And he's Foxer's friend, his best friend.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

But he cares too little too late, ultimately.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Yes. He sits by and he watches all this happen because he honestly doesn't believe anything can be done to change it, even though he knows he sees the pigs for who they are.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Another thing that I thought was really interesting is that the slow gaslighting of as bad as it is right now, you don't remember how bad it was under Biden. I mean Jones. You don't remember how bad it was under Jones? You don't remember how expensive things were before? Everything's cheaper. It's a we've we've lowered prices a hundred percent, two hundred percent, a thousand percent. Right. I have this chart to show you. I'm I'm actually quoting from the book here, guys. If this sounds familiar, it's only because it sounds romantic. Yeah, no, it is. They keep showing them charts of how everything's gotten cheaper. They're all being fed more. Rations have actually gone up, and they're like, I feel like I'm eating less. I feel like things are more expensive.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

And they are eating less, and things are more expensive. But Napoleon keeps saying, no, look, look here. This is how much we were eating under Farmer Jones. We're eating so much more

Gaslighting Charts And Rewritten History

SPEAKER_02 34:51

now. They aren't, but that's what they're being told.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

They just establish a new standard. And that that happens all the time. Let me go, okay, let's say before COVID. We all remember how much things cost before COVID, or how many people were employed and what the hours were at a Walmart and things like that. Then COVID and the menus at certain restaurants, right? COVID comes along, everything gets more expensive, employees are cut, hours are cut, things are taken off of the menu. COVID goes away. We now know how to live like that. The companies know how to make money like that. We have all accepted it as the new normal. None of it ever came back. The menu items are gone, Walmart is still now open 12 hours or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

That's not because the companies could not go back to the way it was pre-COVID, but it's because now they realize they can make more money the way it is post-COVID.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Exactly. When prices go up, they never go down again. When rations go down, they never go up again because they get you used to it and then they make you grateful for incremental changes. When when gap gasoline is over $4 an hour, you will be grateful when it goes down to $350. When it spikes to $5 an hour, I mean $5 a gallon, you will be grateful when you see it at $425. When it goes up to six, you'll be grateful when it's back down to five. And you will think, oh, thank God for the politicians and their policies that got us back down to five dollars. And we will learn to live like that and they will laugh all the way to the bank. And that's the truth of it. And we see this happening over the decades that Animal Farm exists throughout the book until no one can remember how it was before as history gets erased and rewritten.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Because that's the tool of manipulative leadership as well. Erase history, don't teach it in the history books, don't let those original commandments exist, don't allow the original song to exist for animalism, don't allow the original text of what old Major wrote to exist. Let's not talk about it the way it originally was. Let's talk about it the way we want it to be.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Right. And I love the fact that he, yeah, he he eventually outlaws singing of the basically the anthem because it might remind the populace of the original ideals. And so they come out and they say, you don't have to sing that anymore. We've already achieved all the ideals. We're already great.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

So now we're going to sing the song of greatness to Comrade Napoleon because he's the one that got us here. So let's sing our anthem to Comrade Napoleon, because we don't need to sing an anthem to animalism anymore, because he's got us there already.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

So a person becomes the living embodiment of the original ideal. So you don't have to worry about your freedoms, you don't have to worry about the constitution, you don't have to worry about democracy, because I can reinterpret those things and stand in for them, and I can tell you what's important and what isn't, and what the constitution means and what it doesn't, and all of those concepts become the embodiment of this cult of personality. And then, of course, this they get the windmill almost built, and then this storm happens, and in the middle of the night it gets knocked down, and they all come out to see the destruction of the windmill, and Napoleon comes out and he sniffs and he thinks for a while, and then he goes, Snowball did this. This is snowball. He came in the middle of the night and he pulled down your hard work.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Because nothing could have just happened under his watch.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Right. And so then that's when the boogeyman thing happens. You know, Snowball is the boogeyman, he is the scapegoat for every single thing that Napoleon does wrong and every misfortune that the animal farm has.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

It has to be blamed on someone outside, on his enemy.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Right. And at one point, Snowball was their hero. Because it's at a certain time, Jones tries to rally. Jones is the farmer. He comes in with some men trying to take the farm back. And Snowball, through his incredible planning and intelligence and tactician, he manages this route of the farmers and runs them off again. And he even takes a bullet, a Gray's bullet to his back. And he's the first person to charge Jones and ram him in his legs and knock the gun out of his hands and all that stuff. And he is touted as a hero. But then over the course of time, even that narrative is slowly degraded to the point where Snowball was actually working with Jones, and it was Napoleon that actually took, was injured, and actually was the one that stopped Jones.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

And then Napoleon gets awarded a medal for being a hero.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

He awards himself. So ridiculous. Can you imagine a politician giving themselves their own honor, their own putting their names on things? Yeah, giving themselves their own medal.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Asking for awards?

SPEAKER_00 39:39

Asking for some can you imagine if we asked for the Nobel Peace Prize? If you actually asked for that without it being given to you?

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Without it actually being earned in any way, right? And put your name on things that you really had no business putting your name on.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

Or made a golden statue of yourself. I mean, everybody would see that and recognize that as truly problematic narcissistic behavior.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

You would think. Yeah. I mean, certainly the animals would have realized this with Napoleon that awarding himself a medal would have been absolutely selfish narcissistic behavior that made no sense.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Let's not forget how much he does for them, though. Right. How much easier he makes their life.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Incredibly.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

So they they decide to go ahead and in opposition to the and I mean snowball to rebuild the windmill twice as better, work twice as hard, especially boxer, boxer double downs, and and they go back to this rallying point again as a farm. Right. And life goes on for Napoleon and the pigs. And then they start doing something strange. They start trading with the humans. And the humans now, so they're the rich, right? In this sort of scenario.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

This is the working class going back to trading with the rich, which is one of the principles they're not supposed to do, right?

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

And slowly but surely we see Napoleon and the pigs start to change their way of living a little bit. It gets a little bit better.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

It gets a little bit, you know, more bougie, just a little bit more cushy. You know, suddenly they're seen having drinks with those really rich farmers, really rich merchants.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

And I love the thing that he does. He takes the field that was set aside to retire the animals in comfort as they age, and he plants barley in it so that the pigs can make their own beer.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

The commandment was that they shouldn't drink alcohol. Now it's not to excess. Although it's funny that Napoleon gets violently ill after more than one party with the humans, violently ill to the point that he thinks he's dying. And, you know, and then he recovers somehow. But yeah, they're gonna grow their own barley and make their own alcohol. But suddenly he's rubbing, you know, hooves with the humans there.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

And he sells this pile of cedar that the humans really, really want and supposedly gets this amassed amount of money. And then the very next day, it turns out all that money was fake money.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

That's strange.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

And it was supposed to go towards a bad business deal. Yeah, it was supposed to go towards the windmill. We gotta get these machine parts in the windmill to make their own thresher, their automatic milking machine, and all these things that are gonna make the working class's life better. But suddenly that money disappears.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

Right. It's gone.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

And do you think it was fake money?

SPEAKER_02 42:09

I don't know. Or did he spend it on something else?

SPEAKER_00 42:11

That is left up to interpretation, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:14

Yeah, it really is. But he touts himself as a really good businessman, though. He's excellent at coming up with trade deals, and he really says that he can make a good deal with these rich people, these other countries, if you will, these other farm neighboring farms with these humans. He can make really good deals and he can get what the animals need. And somehow, though, they never get what they need.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

But I don't know. I mean, there is so much evidence of success. I mean, Napoleon has all the food and luxury that he needs to throw big banquets and all that. It's clearly that the farm is very, very wealthy. So all the animals must be have a better life, must be living a better life. Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

Because all the pigs are so they're enjoying the farmhouse and they have all the luxuries and comforts.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

It appears to me that the Dow is over 50,000 on this animal farm. So how on earth could the animals' lives not be any better? How could their rations be so low and they must they must be prospering along with the pigs? Right? Because in the end, animal farm is a huge success. I mean, they they they partner with the other humans and they all join forces to make each other's lives better, and they're all living in this animal and human equanimity in the end, and everybody is equal, right? Is that how it ends?

SPEAKER_02 43:30

No.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

How does it end, Liz? Go ahead and describe what happens.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

So at the end of the book, first of all, we have to go back to this no animal shall kill another animal without cause. When Farmer Jones had been in charge of the farm, one of the things that Old Major had cited as a grievous offense was that the hens were that were forced to lay eggs. And then their eggs, their young, their eggs were taken away by farmer. Jones and he sold their eggs. Just like pigs were slaughtered and you know animals were used as food. Old Major had said that in an animal farm and animalism, the chickens, the hens would never give up their eggs, that those would be their young. And then when we get to trading with the humans, which we were never supposed to do, because this is about the animals. This

Executions Boxer Betrayal Final Mirror

SPEAKER_02 44:24

is about an egalitarian society for animals. When we start trading with humans, when Napoleon makes these amazing deals, because he knows the art of the deal, he says he needs eggs. He needs the hens to lay eggs so that he can trade eggs with the humans. And the hens know that they weren't supposed to have to give up their babies. And so they decide that they're not going to. And they get up on the rafters of the barn and they refuse to give up their eggs.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Right. And so he basically refuses to feed them. Those who shall not work shall not eat.

SPEAKER_02 45:03

And then he decides to make examples of the animals that are refusing to capitulate.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

And he begins to execute all of his supposed enemies and troublemakers, and they all seem to confess that they were in league with Snowball, that they were secret agents of Snowball.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Forced confessions.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Yes. And all the other animals believe it.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Yes. These forced confessions from these other animals that they're in league with Snowball. All the animals believe it, and they watch these other animals be executed.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

And it reinforces the narrative that Napoleon is their great father, the great protector.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

And he's going to keep them safe from all of these enemies, domestic and abroad.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

And so animals begin to die.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

And this is where we sort of see Napoleon start to lose his grip on reality. He becomes very paranoid of everybody that's around him. He sort of retreats within himself, and you don't see him as much. He sends out his propagandists, but he doesn't make a lot of appearances, but he does send out threatening things to the other farms around and kind of picks fights with them to the point where he draws this attack from the other farms back to Animal Farm. And the men come and they blow up the second attempt to build the windmill. And although the animals do drive the men off again and they try to paint it like this massive victory, it's really him declaring victory over a fight that he started in the first place. And again, blaming it on Snowball, blaming it on other people, but again, trying to spin this mistake that he has essentially made from his paranoia and his aggressive behavior as something that is this massive win for him and the farm. And I thought that was really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Yeah, it's manufactured conflict. And it feels like manufactured conflict to maintain power.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Right. Exactly. Because again, the more enemies you have, the more you need the person in charge.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Right. We've never seen that either.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

No.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

And then Boxer gets injured. And Boxer is working harder again than any other animal. And essentially he has one of those devastating injuries to a horse that a horse cannot recover from. Napoleon says, Squealer says, they say that Boxer's going to be able to retire, that they're going to send Boxer first to hospital to be healed, and then Boxer will be able to retire because he deserves to retire. He's been such a friend to animalism. And instead they sell sell him to the glue factory.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Yeah. And Benjamin, who's able to read and is a good friend, he reads that on the van and he tries to get all the animals to to stop the van, but they're unable to. And Boxer is taken away. And at first they're all outraged. But then of course Squealer comes in and goes, goes, Oh, that was a van that was recently sold to the hospital. And they just hadn't changed the writing on it. Rest assured he's getting the best care possible. And then of course, three days later, Boxer died during his treatment. He wasn't able to recover. And they're going to have this funeral for him. And then there's going to be this great feast in Boxer's honor, which happens in the house with the pigs.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

With the pigs. Yeah, and you know, maybe with the money that they got for Boxer.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 48:21

Right?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Yeah, because it is mentioned that suddenly how they have all this money to buy all this beer and other food.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

And so the pigs celebrate with all the other animals outside.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

So fast forward into the future, several years after Boxer has died, and most of those that could remember the revolution and the reasons why it happened have now passed on. There's only a few left, including the pigs, unfortunately. This turning point happens where Squiller decides to take all the sheep that have always said four legs good, two legs bad, out into the pasture for several days. And he says he's teaching them a new slogan to say. And so they come back from the pasture after several days and they're saying, Four legs good, two legs better. And lo and behold, what do we see? But all the pigs come out of the farmhouse walking on two legs. And they kind of parade before the animals, and the sheep are saying, Four legs good, two legs better, four legs good, two legs better. And they're just drowning out any other reaction to it with this mantra. And then the pigs go back inside and then they start wearing clothing. And at this point, they've dropped all pretense about the seven principles. They're not written on the barn at all any longer. All that's up there is four legs good, two legs better, and all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. And we end the story with them having this big, big party with all the other farmers, and uh the pigs are there, and the animals are peering in from the outside to see what's going on. And the pigs are saying, Oh, it was never about being against humans. It was always about humans and animals living alongside each other equally, and you know, we're all equal and we all want the success of each other, right? And so they start laughing and uh together, and the animals are looking in and they realize with shock that they cannot tell the difference between the pigs' faces and the humans' faces any longer. They have become one and the same, and that's how we end our story. So let's play a game of what we got as takeaways from Animal Farm. I'll start. Come up with an idea that people want to believe in. Make a bunch of promises, get them really excited about it. It helps if you have a good slogan. And if you get them riled up enough behind this idea and this slogan, then with enough distractions, you can break every single promise you made as long as you do it over a period of time. What about you?

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Fair. That's a fair assessment of that. I'm gonna say enemies, enemies, enemies everywhere. Because if you create enough enemies and enough fear of enemies out there, then there's always a boogeyman worse than you are. So even if you have a lot of negatives to you, you're still

A Master Class In Manipulation

SPEAKER_02 51:14

the lesser of many other evils that are out there waiting to get them. So create a bunch of boogeyman, create a bunch of potential enemies and evils that could be out there to get people. Make a long list, and those things are worse, they are morally worse, they are more threatening, they are somehow a greater possible disaster for the good of their country, and then you can get away with murder.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Enemies make for a great distraction.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

Create the problems that you can then solve and reward yourself for accomplishments that you could that you manufactured.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

Lack of literacy is your greatest ally, right?

SPEAKER_00 51:55

There's a direct connection between illiteracy and power, illiteracy and power.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

Like get as many ignorant people on your side as humanly possible and you will be more successful. Also, besides illiteracy being your greatest ally, apathy is your second greatest ally. Because if you can get the ignorant behind you and then the intelligent as apathetic as possible because they are disinterested in all of it, you've got the perfect combination for success.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

Manipulate people's short memory.

SPEAKER_02 52:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

And pass the blame, pass the blame, pass the blame. Never admit that you've ever done anything wrong.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

And when necessary, rewrite history, rewrite it. And when absolutely necessary, which is probably more often than not, lie. Lie over and over and over and over again until even you believe that it's true. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

If you can convince enough people that we all have the same opportunities and we can all have the same success, then they will fight for their lives to defend your right to have things that they never ever will.

SPEAKER_02 53:09

Always rely on the boiling frog principle. Take things away from people slowly, give them a little bit back, and then take a little bit more away until they don't realize that they've been boiled alive. Anyway, I think we've had a master class in manipulation and in totalitarianism and in, I don't know, you know, corruptive human agenda by reading a very small book. And I think we see it play out in real time, and it's terrifying to me. Me too. All right, Peter, what lighter fare are we reading next time?

SPEAKER_00 53:46

So next time we are going to read Gollum Master by TJ Lombardi. And if you may remember, he was very kind to create a special lit on fire edition of Golem Master 4, which we gave out to some of our followers.

SPEAKER_03 54:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

And now we get to read and discuss Golem Master 1, which is a series that is a lot deeper than it seems to be on the surface, and I can't wait to discuss it.

SPEAKER_02 54:11

Yeah, I'm really enjoying it, and I'm reading it with my 11 year old son, so he's enjoying it too, and it is really, really good. So I'm looking forward to talking about that. So until next time, keep reading.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Keep thinking.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

And we'll look forward to talking to you again. Bye.