No! This Is Not Just Like 1984!
ThIS iS jUSt liKe 1984! wAkE uP SHeEplE! OrWELl wAS rIGht!
I’m getting to the point where I’m just done fighting every single time someone conflates Covid Restrictions, Cancel Culture, and anything progressive with the Holocaust, or White Genocide, or, recently, the plot to “1984", the Sci-Fi Dystopian English novel written by George Orwell.
Trace-and-Track Apps are being revered to as Big Brother. People thinking they’re super genius satirists are finishing the phrases “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” with such gems as “Covid is a Pandemic” or “Lockdowns are Necessary” (I can’t tell if I’m more annoyed with how stupid it is or the fact it doesn’t follow the sentence structure of the original motto). Covid cases and deaths are questioned and mocked as being examples of “2 + 2 = 5”. People who tweet, post, vlog openly, saying they’re being silenced for “thoughtcrimes”.
1984 is slowly entering the same realm as the Bible or Ulysses; a book more often talked about than it is read. With so many people comparing the world as it is now to a book written back in 1948, it’s amazing how many people genuinely don’t know what it’s really about.
So here’s my book report.
Summary
Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth (propaganda arm) of a superpowered dictatorship known as Oceania, where his job is to re-write historical events so whatever is said in the present is retroactively correct (for example, which country, Eastasia or Eurasia, Oceania is at war with). Winston uses a notebook to write down his thoughts in secret, which is a crime. He begins a love affair with a woman named Julia in secret, also a crime. He begins to have anti-establishment feelings, and is given a book written by Goldstein, a traitor to Oceania and it’s government. Winston and Julia are captured by authorities and interrogated separately, revealing that not only have they’ve known about his “thoughtcrimes” but that they’ve allowed himself and Julia to incriminate themselves, with even Goldstein’s book being a forgery just for this aim. Winston is threatened to have his face eaten by rats if he doesn’t renounce Julia. Time goes by and Winston, his spirit broken, is effectively allowed to live his life in quasi-retirement, knowing one day he will be killed when it suits the government. Winston, whether brainwashed or delusional, says he loves big brother.
Themes
It’s easy to see the surveillance and oppressive government and come to the conclusion that Orwell was warning people against government overreach, especially from communists. But that’s easy and incorrect. On the government in 1984, Orwell said;
[It] rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism.
To fully understand what Orwell was touching on, we need to bare in mind Noam Chomsky’s critique of modern political discourse.
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.
This Limited Spectrum, or, in modern termonology, Overton Window, is everywhere in 1984.
Winston’s very job is to correct previous statements and facts recorded in books and newspapers when newer information would contradict it or prove it wrong.
Syme, a co-worker of Winston’s, works on revisions to the dictionary for the language spoken, Newspeak; a dumbed-down version of English. The goal of Newspeak is to combine and remove as many words from common knowledge as possible, thus limiting the range of expression. “Ingsoc”, for example, is the shortened version of English Socialism, the form of government Oceania claims to represent. If you can’t say the full name, you can’t fully criticise it with nuance.
The Two Minutes Hate is a daily break taken by workers where for two whole minutes they scream, swear, and speak in tongues towards an image of Goldstein. Afterwards, the workers return to normal. This serves the purpose of acting as a cathartic release for pent up aggression that would otherwise be aimed at the government.
“Doublethink”, or, as we call it Cognitive Dissidence, is the act of simultaneously holding two conflicting ideas, accepting both as true, but also switching between the two when needed. We have always been at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Big Brother and Goldstein act as figures for the opposing good-and-evil philosophies in 1984. Big Brother is shown as the leader of the party, this fatherly figure, strong and determined. Goldstein is this underhanded traitor, working behind the scenes to ruin your life. Even in the novel, it’s hinted that there may very well be no Big Brother or Goldstein.
Real World
Cut pass all the edgy Covid1984 posts and the Plandemic takes, and you’ll find an irony to these literary enthusiasts who don’t realise the book they’re praising as prophetic is trying to talk directly to them.
Can you not imagine a real life Winston Smith going back over Facebook posts and correcting statements so overreactions seem more plausible and accurate? Could terms like “plandemic” not fit right at home in the latest copy of the Newspeak Dictionary? Does the Two Minute Hate not seem eerily similar to people who scream insults, slurs, and vitriol at each other online all day? Is it not Doublethink to believe there’s a conspiracy to silence you, yet simultaneously you’re able to uncover these conspiracies simply through Google? Doesn’t the idea of strongmen and strawmen, idealised and villified, in the form of Big Brother and Goldstein mirror how people see opposing values or abstract concepts like viruses or millions or deaths? Doesn’t believing Goldstein is some shadowy red under the bed echo how people would spell certain names with three brackets on either end?
Goldstein. (((Goldstein))).
For God’s sake, there’s literally a scene where Asians are executed for allegedly conspiring against Oceania! How is that not sounding familiar these days!
Hell, the people who think like this are in the book! As Winston walks home from work he passes a bar filled with “proles”; the uneducated working class who are permitted by the government to live outside of their restrictive control. They may drink as much as they want, they may voice opinions, they may even have as many children as they want. Winston remarks that due to their numbers, they are his only hope of overthrowing the government, but they won’t and can’t due to their lack of political interest and impoverishment.
Orwell is speaking directly to these people, an anti-fascist Anarcho-Socialist himself, saying “you could really change things if you actually took a second to collectivize, coordinate, cooperate, and try to better others.
Orwell worked for the BBC. He was a war-time reporter. He reported on the poverty afflicting his own country, interviewing people face-to-face. He even fought in the Spanish Civil War against fascists. I’m not being hyperbolic; he was a real life anti-fascist. He knew how people can get misdirected and how not only the upper-class but also oligarchs use the working class to act against their own interests.
This is not a book about how you’re getting screwed. This is a book about how you’re doing it to yourself.
