Orwell’s masterpiece, Animal Farm, was inspired by the power struggle in post-revolution Russia, where a one-party authoritarian rule slowly began to take shape under the guise of Communism. The book outlines the playbook of many dictators, past and present, from the way they use propaganda and false nationalism to sway mass opinion to the way they accuse dissidents and critics of treason to silence them. In Part II on Animal Farm, my cohost Su, a Burmese teacher in Chiang Mai, and I discuss which historical figures the main characters are supposed to represent, and how the plot foreshadows the rise of tyrants in Burma and other parts of the world. Tune in to hear about how the pigs and dogs hijacked a well-meaning revolution and turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ပီပြင်တယ် to be vivid
ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda 
အားကောင်းမောင်းသန် full of strength 
ရုပ်လုံးကြွတယ် to be three dimensional
သာတူညီမျှ to be equal 
မူဝါဒ policy
မျက်မှောက်ခေတ် contemporary era, the present era
အာဏာရတယ် to gain power
အရင်းရှင်နိုင်ငံ Capitalist country
အဓိဋ္ဌာန် pledge
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
စည်းစိမ်ယစ်မူးတယ် to be addicted to privilege 
သရော်တယ် to mock, to satirize 
မျက်ဝါးထင်ထင် to be able to visualize, to see clearly
နိုင်ငံပိုင်ရုပ်သံလှိုင်း national airwave, government broadcast 
အာဇာနည် martyr 
မဏ္ဍပ်ထိုးတယ် to pitch a pavilion or tent 
မကွဲပြားဘူး to be indistinguishable 
ဖြည့်ဆွက်တယ် to fill a gap, to add, to augment 

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