Almost 70 years after he wrote it in 1950, I finally got around to reading George Orwell’s acclaimed 1984. I’ve read about how the story mirrors what we have seen happen in totalitarian regimes throughout history, including today, enabled as it is by enhanced forms of technology and social media.
The story presents the specter of a totalitarian state being able to control the recording of history and individual thought and, from this, gain control.
It introduces the concept of double-think, described as the “power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them.” It equates to truth becoming what you choose to make it.
All past oligarchies have fallen from power, Orwell writes, “either because they ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances, they were overthrown or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force and, once again, were overthrown. If one is to rule, and continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality, for the secret of ruler-ship is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes.”
“The mutability of the past is the central tenet” of the state. Why? For one thing, it is vital that everyone be cut off from the past so there is no risk of comparing current-day conditions to those that have come before.
Orwell describes a world made up of three opposing regions, one seemingly liberal (but not really), another called Neo-Bolshevism (clearly mirroring Orwell’s disaffection which grew over time for Communism) and a region comprised mainly of China, which Orwell describes as best “rendered as Obliteration of the Self.” In their essence, they are the same.
It’s eerie to recognize that today, through technology, everyone is being watched in a way that Orwell in 1950 previewed. It’s also eerie to see from all reports that China is doing with the Muslims exactly what the state was doing in this book: indoctrinating people to the point where they no longer feel under pressure but rather willingly accept the tenets of the state.
There are other elements of the book which eerily pre-date what has happened in history. It describes each state through a combination of “fighting, bargaining and well-timed strokes of treachery, acquiring a ring of bases completely encircling one or another of the rival states.” Doesn’t that sound like what Russia feels may feel with the expansion of NATO to its borders? Or as we see China doing now in Asia and Africa, not through military war but through expanding economic influence.
Orwell describes a long-standing tendency to build up the military, using the threat of war as a way to generate patriotism. “The search for new weapons continues unceasingly and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet.” That, happily, does not describe fully the far broader focus on innovation today. But the search for new weapons certainly continues, citing the threat of an other country as the rationale.
It was in this book that the catch-phrase “Big Brother is watching you” was spawned. Technology has certainly enabled that reality today in a way not possible 70 years ago.
The end of the book offers no hope. Winston, the protagonist, eventually succumbs to the indoctrination of the Party, under excruciating torture, to finally say, without a hint of dissemblance, that he loves Big Brother. The book carries a stark warning. We must resist like the plague anything that prevents individual thought and that denies the foundational importance of the search for the truth and the recognition that there is indeed a truth.
The book reminds us that, throughout history, there have been totalitarian rulers (though few would have described themselves as such) who felt it vital that there be uniformity of thought among its people and were prepared to wreak great harm on those that didn’t fall in line. It further reminds us that there are human instincts, above all the search for security and belongingness, that can lead a people to accept this control. To a degree that I would not want to suggest is equivalent to what is described in 1984, that is going on in China today.
At the same time, I take hope and heart from the giant protests occurring in Hong Kong as I write this to thwart the government from changing its policy to prevent extradition to Mainland China for trial. I also take heart from the brave protests also underway in Sudan to remove military rule. People are dying as I write this.
The flame of freedom lives on, as challenged as it is, thanks to heroic individual effort.
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