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Why 1984 Is More Relevant Than Ever [1]

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Date: 2022-11-04

If you’re reading this diary, odds are you’re familiar with George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984. Even if you haven’t read it, concepts like omnipresent surveillance, “Big Brother,” “unpersons,” “dropping something down the memory hole,” all these things and more have seeped into pop culture from a scathing commentary and cautionary tale against the dangers of authoritarianism.

I’m not sure why I felt a need to revisit this book. I’d last read it in high school, over 30 years ago. In the bleak world of Orwell’s novel, the world has coalesced into three transcontinental super-states: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Only a swath of Equitorial Africa, the Middle East and India remain outside the control of the three powers and are constantly warred over, a perpetual war consisting of Oceania and one of the two states against the other, a balance that constantly shifts. When the novel opens Oceania is at war with Eurasia, and has always been at war with Eurasia. It is allied with Eastasia and has always been allied with Eastasia.

This leads in to what struck me about 1984 that didn’t when I read it in the 80’s. Everyone remembers the harsh dystopian authoritarianism of The Party and Big Brother, and how the book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, fools himself into thinking he can have freedom even in the confines of his own skull. What stood out to me, reading 1984 in 2022, was how thoroughly George Orwell grasped, nearly 80 years ago, just how malleable the past, even reality itself, could be. Winston Smith, in fact, works for the Ministry of Truth, the intentionally ironically named government body that controls all the news and entertainment for the citizens of Oceania. Winston’s job is to re-write articles in the Party newspaper to conform with current reality. Did Big Brother promise a ten gram increase in the chocolate ration last year that ended up being half that? Winston changes the article and no one can prove Big Brother wrong. Early on, Winston even creates a heroic soldier out of whole cloth

The part of the story that gave me goosebumps takes place at one of the regular rallies where the Party ritualistically whips up hate against enemies foreign and domestic. Even as a party agitator is giving a speech that will culminate in the execution of Eurasian prisoners of war, Oceania switches sides in the perpetual war. It is now at war with Eastasia. It was always been at war with Eastasia. What gave me goosebumps was that the speaker, looking at posters which describes reality as it had been an actual moment before, uses those anti-Eurasian posters as proof that saboteurs and anti-social elements were among them. Later on, Winston is confronted by how easily the past can be changed and how fragile our perception of reality is.

Ask yourself this: what has the right been fighting tooth and nail to do? Control school curriculum. Control how textbooks are written. Whose past is told and how that past is told. Orwell sums it up thus: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the future controls the present.” Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, even if it is the best case scenario, the battle isn’t over. If we lose our democracy, we will lose our collective memory and be ripe to be led by whoever takes control, wherever they want to lead us. We will be told: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.

And we won’t have the means to know any different.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/4/2133597/-Why-1984-Is-More-Relevant-Than-Ever

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