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Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not a prophecy — but much of it, this lecture from Academy of Ideas argues, has already happened. Umberto Eco judged three quarters of the novel to be recorded history, not fiction. The video follows its machinery piece by piece: manufactured fear, mass surveillance, falsified history, and the contradictory slogans of newspeak. It ends where Orwell ended: don’t let it happen — because it depends on you.
Full Video Transcript
In 1940 George Orwell wrote,
Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships,
an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless
abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.
George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 is a work of fiction, but much that is depicted in it
reflects the political realities of many nations past and present at least three quarters of what
orwell narrates is not negative utopia but history umberto echo wrote referring to his time spent in
belgrade under communist rule lawrence durell wrote that reading 1984 in a communist country
is really an experience because one can see it all around one in this video we are going to explore
some of the similarities between the totalitarian systems of the 20th century and Orwell’s
1984. And as will become evident, many of these totalitarian traits are re-emerging
in the modern world. This investigation will be conducted in the recognition that totalitarianism
relies on mass support. And so, contemporary societies desperately need more people to
withdraw their support of this brutal form of rule. Shortly after 1984 was published,
Orwell explained, The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple
one.
Don’t let it happen.
It depends on you.
Totalitarianism is a political system whereby a centralized state apparatus attempts to
control virtually all aspects of life.
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
The Italian dictator Mussolini succinctly put it.
While totalitarianism can emerge under the guise of various political ideologies, in
the 20th century it was communism and fascism that provided the ideological support for
this type of rule.
Communism and fascism are often viewed as being on opposite ends of the political spectrum,
but in the manner they were put into practice in the 20th century, both of these systems
displayed the characteristics of the totalized, all-controlling state.
Both used force and propaganda to attain power, crush economic and civil liberties, smother
culture, partake in mass surveillance, and terrorize the citizenry with psychological
warfare and eventually mass imprisonment and mass murder.
Speaking of Stalin’s communist Russia and Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Orwell explained,
“…the two regimes, having started from opposite ends, are rapidly evolving towards
the same system, a form of oligarchical collectivism.
In the communist and fascist political systems of the 20th century and in 1984, the totalitarian
regime maintained a tight grip of control on the populace through the use of manufactured
fear.
Totalitarian leaders, whether of the right or of the left, know better than anyone else
how to make use of fear.
They thrive on chaos and bewilderment.
The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics.
In 1984, continuous war between the three superstates perpetuated this state of fear.
It was not important who was at war with who, or who was allied with who, as this was changing
all the time, and the point of the war was not for one superstate to conquer another,
but for all three superstates to work behind the scenes to create the conditions of terror
that would enable them all to institute totalitarian controls within their own borders.
Surveillance of all of the citizens was an additional tool in the arsenal of the totalitarian
regime of 1984.
Surveillance not only allowed for more effective overt control of the citizenry, but it also
induced paranoia which made it less likely that any citizen would even dare step out
of line.
This surveillance was achieved, firstly, through the technology of the telescreen, which was
installed in everyone’s home and throughout the streets, and as Orwell explained,
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously.
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.
But at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.
You had to live, did live, from habit that became instinct, in the assumption that every
sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Secondly, mass surveillance of the citizenry was conducted by the citizens of 1984 themselves.
Each person watched everyone else, and each person was, in turn, watched by everyone else.
The most innocent of expressions, an innocuous statement, or a subtle look of disapproval
when Big Brother appeared on the telescreen, was reported to the thought police and treated
as a thought crime or a face crime, as evidence that one was disloyal and had something to
hide.
intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however
secret and powerless it may be.” Orwell has the character O’Brien explain,
In Stalinist Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted that one could never be sure whether one’s
neighbors, friends, co-workers, the postman, or even in some cases one’s own family,
would report to the secret police a slip of the tongue, a criticism of Stalin or of communism,
for if one was reported their fate was usually sealed. The police would knock at the door in
the middle of the night and soon after one would be given the standard sentence of a tenor,
that is, ten years in the slave labour gulag prison camps. This form of surveillance created
social conditions wherein most citizens adopted hypocrisy and lying as a way of life. Or as Solzhenitsyn
explains in the Gulag Archipelago, the permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence.
Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial expression observed by
someone. Therefore every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged
not to contradict the general, common lie. There exists a collection of ready-made phrases,
of labels, a selection of ready-made lies. In addition to a ubiquitous state of fear,
in totalitarianism there exists a widespread state of confusion and mental disorientation
amongst the citizenry. Many victims of totalitarianism have told me in interviews
that the most upsetting experience they faced was the feeling of loss of logic, the state of
confusion into which they had been brought, the state in which nothing had any validity,
they simply did not know what was what. In 1984, widespread mental disorientation was stimulated
via the falsification of history and the negation of the concept of objective truth.
The ministry of truth was the institution which falsified history.
Everything faded into mist.
The past was erased.
The eraser was forgotten.
The lie became truth.
One of the reasons totalitarian regimes attempt to alter history is because it rids the society
of any past reference points, or standards of comparison, which might remind the citizens
that life in the past was so much better than it is in the sterile and oppressive present.
Within 20 years at the most, the huge and simple question, was life better before the revolution
than it is now, would have ceased once and for all to be answerable, wrote Orwell. But another
reason history is falsified by totalitarians is to ensure there are no historical roots to which
the citizen can anchor and find truth, sustenance, and strength. In totalitarianism, there can be no
historical information which contradicts or puts into question the reigning political ideology,
nor any institution, such as religion, which offers the individual a refuge from the influence
of the state. And so as Orwell wrote in 1984, Every record has been destroyed or falsified,
every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street
and building has been renamed, every date has been altered, and that process is continuing
day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless
present in which the party is always right. Along with destroying or falsifying the past,
widespread mental disorientation is further cultivated by destroying the belief in objective
truth. This is done through a program of psychological warfare, incessant and intentionally confusing
propaganda, conflicting reports and blatant lies, are pumped out in official reports and
through the mass media at all hours of the day. What is said today has no bearing on
what may be said tomorrow, for as Orwell explained, the totalitarian state sets up unquestionable
dogmas and it alters them from day to day. It needs the dogmas because it needs absolute
obedience from its subjects, but it cannot avoid the changes which are dictated by the
needs of power politics. In 1984, for example, the Ministry of Plenty put out a bulletin that they
were increasing the chocolate ration to 20 grams a week. Orwell writes, And only yesterday, Winston
reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to 20 grams a week. Was it
possible that the citizens could swallow that? After only 24 hours? Yes, they swallowed it.
Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory? In addition, contradictions,
hypocrisies, and lies form the foundation of the totalitarian ideology. The totalitarian system
presents the enslavement of the individual as his or her liberation. Censoring information is called
protecting the truth. The destruction of culture or the economy is called its development.
The military occupation of other countries is labeled as the furtherance of freedom and peace.
In 1984, the Ministry of Peace instigated wars, the Ministry of Truth manufactured propaganda,
and the Ministry of Plenty created shortages. On the enormous pyramidal structure of the Ministry
of Truth hung the words, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. The official
ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them,
Orwell explained in 1984, these contradictions are not accidental. The purpose of this all
encompassing program of psychological warfare is to bewilder the mind of the average citizen.
For when the citizen is bombarded with contradictions and lies and lives in what
Orwell called, that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow
and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree, he or she eventually ceases to know what to think
or even how to think, the distinction between up and down, fact and fiction, truth and falsity,
is not only blurred but loses significance, the belief in objective truth disappears,
and the average citizen becomes completely dependent on authority figures to feed him ideas
and, thus, is ready to assent to lies and to believe the most absurd things,
so long as those in the political class deem it to be true.
The Soviet official, Georgy Pyatikov, explained that the true Bolshevik
would be ready to believe that black was white, and white was black, if the party required it.
There was no particle left inside him which was not at one with the party, did not belong to it.
In an essay titled Totalitarianism and the Lie, Leszek Kolakowski, a philosopher who was exiled
from Poland for his criticisms of communism and Marxism, wrote, This is what totalitarian
regimes keep unceasingly trying to achieve. People whose memory, personal or collective,
has been nationalized, has become state-owned and perfectly malleable, totally controllable,
are entirely at the mercy of their rulers. They have been deprived of their identity.
They are helpless and incapable of questioning anything they are told to believe.
They will never revolt, never think, never create. They have been transformed into dead objects.
In 1984, the main character Winston manages for most of the book to stand psychologically
outside the grasp of the party and its leader Big Brother, despite the widespread fear and
mental disorientation which swirls around him. Down with Big Brother, he writes in his diary,
early in the book. However, after being arrested by the thought police and subjected to
re-education, Winston abdicates his reason and conscience and begins to accept the lies.
He joins the totalitarian cult and becomes another brick in the wall of the all-powerful state.
Referring to Winston, Orwell writes, He could not fight against the party any longer.
Besides, the party was in the right. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.
The pencil felt thick and awkward in Winston’s fingers. He began to write down the thoughts that
came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals, freedom is slavery. Then almost without
a pause he wrote beneath it, two and two make five. The struggle was finished. He had won the
victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. Some have taken this ending as a sign of Orwell’s
pessimism, as an indication that humanity is doomed to a totalitarian future. Yet Orwell’s
motive for writing this book was not to depress nor promote a fatalistic apathy, but to warn
and rouse to action as many people as possible. For Orwell understood as well as anyone that
in the battle between totalitarianism and freedom, no one can afford to stand aside.
The fate of each and every one of us hangs in the balance.
Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.
Source: Academy of Ideas