Just ahead of Episode Eight of our current Tale for Our Time, a word from your humble host:
As I was saying a year ago, things are going to get real bad real fast on the free-speech front - in America, Britain, Canada, Europe, and everywhere else where a full-scale merger of Big State and Big Tech is well advanced. I would like to think we'll still be here in a year's time, but looking at the ever swelling ranks of the disappeared, who knows?
In such circumstances, I thank all of you who keep this l'il ol' website and its various activities part of your daily rounds. I miss the Internet of yore - before the woketalitarians imposed one-size-fits-all "social media" on the planet and wrecked the thing. Control of the message is, of course, a big part of George Orwell's Animal Farm. As Josh Passell, a Massachusetts member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes after last night's episode:
Very sporting of Mr. Whymper to 'report to the outside world that there was no food shortage on Animal Farm.' Was he perhaps rewarded with a pullet-zer prize for his service to the collective?
Very droll. But in today's episode of Orwell's too timely tale, Napoleon is moving on - to the show-trial phase of the new utopia:
Napoleon emerged from the farmhouse, wearing both his medals (for he had recently awarded himself 'Animal Hero, First Class', and 'Animal Hero, Second Class'), with his nine huge dogs frisking round him and uttering growls that sent shivers down all the animals' spines. They all cowered silently in their places, seeming to know in advance that some terrible thing was about to happen.
Napoleon stood sternly surveying his audience; then he uttered a high-pitched whimper. Immediately the dogs bounded forward, seized four of the pigs by the ear and dragged them, squealing with pain and terror, to Napoleon's feet. The pigs' ears were bleeding, the dogs had tasted blood, and for a few moments they appeared to go quite mad...
A taste for blood, once acquired, is not easily sated. Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Episode Eight by clicking here and logging-in.
Earlier instalments of Animal Farm can be found here - and my serialization of Nineteen Eighty-Four starts here.
Thank you again for all your comments, thumbs up or down, on this latest tale. Very much appreciated. If you'd like to know more about The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.
I'll see you back here tomorrow for Part Nine of Animal Farm - and throughout the coming week for more audio delights.
