Beyond Orwell

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The masterpiece of dystopian literature, George Orwell’s 1984, is the landmark text of the fantasy-political genre. Written in 1948, that novel foresaw many of the socio-political characteristics of advanced modernity, but how much of Orwell’s gloomy predictions have actually come true, and in what ways has power implemented its aims of control over citizens?

Orwell took his cue from the great dictatorships of the 20th century of which he was a keen observer. The ‘Big Brother’ regime can be likened to Nazi-fascism in its warmongering aspects, its militarisation of society and its pursuit of a public enemy: the figure of the ‘traitor’ Goldstein is deliberately modelled by Orwell on the Jewish stereotype as it was characterised in extreme right-wing propaganda.

However, it is undeniable that the system described in the novel is much closer to Soviet totalitarianism. The characteristics of social organisation described in 1984 are clearly communist: society is collectivist, there are no appreciable differences in social status, except between party members and ordinary citizens, individual personalities are weak and easily influenced. After all, the ruling party itself is called English Socialism.

But what is most striking is the increasingly obvious parallelism between globalised society and Orwellian dystopia. In fact, globalism is the logical development of communism, whose apparatus of espionage and censorship it has taken over: modern technological means offer politicians tools of control over the masses that would have delighted the STASI, the political police of communist Germany…

The heart of Marxist ideology is the suppression of individual freedoms, and it matters little whether this is achieved through a free market system. And if communism found a counterweight in the western bloc, today globalism finds no structured opposition!

The ‘thoughtcrime’ is an established reality, especially under the vague and all-encompassing heading of ‘discrimination’, a veritable passepartout for discrediting and attacking in law any worldview that does not match the wishes of the globalist oligarchies.

The ‘sexcrime’ is also a reality quite close to how Orwell imagined it. Except that the English writer in his narrative also counted homosexuality as deviant behaviour (as was the case in the Soviet Union). Things from this point of view turned out quite differently: it was indeed difficult even for a visionary like Orwell to imagine that the deification of homosexuality would become the main instrument for gaining political consensus!

In globalism, heterosexual relationships are considered as behaviour to be subjected to strict surveillance by institutions that perform the same function that in the novel is entrusted to the ‘Junior Anti-Sex League’, one of the most powerful political organisations of ‘Big Brother’. The activists of the Junior Anti-Sex League are the exact portrait of today’s feminists, inspired by a sexophobic and misandric morality that is propagated by ideologised women and the preened males who pander to them. These passages from 1984 seem written in the present day:

«It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy…»

«There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (ARTSEM, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful».

Reproduction in the 1984 regime was to take place by artificial means, with a gradual abandonment of the ‘natural’ way: this prediction is punctually being fulfilled…

At the same time, Socing granted the masses extensive use of pornography, i.e. it encouraged a sexuality experienced only in a virtual and depersonalised manner, just as it does today!

But perhaps the closest aspect to contemporary reality is the discipline of private property, officially abolished but with the party oligarchy controlling all resources. This is how Orwell describes the new social order:

«It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called ‘abolition of private property’ which took place in the middle years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before: but with this difference, that the new owners were a group instead of a mass of individuals».

Think of the model of society imposed by globalisation: a small circle of the very rich and an immense multitude of impoverished people who perhaps believe they have achieved equality because they participate in anti-racist demonstrations waving rainbow flags…

The practice of the ‘two minutes of hatred’ also comes close to the great witch-hunts that the system nowadays organises against dissidents, real or presumed: nationalists, racists, homophobes, male chauvinists or more simply conspiracists or followers of alternative cultures are pointed out as the elements that disturb the quiet life and well-being (?!?) of globalised society. And just like the Goldstein of the novel, these ‘enemies’ have all the air of being something that does not even exist, and which is artfully created by the media system to offer a convenient scapegoat for the frustrations of a mass brutalised in misery and ignorance!

As for ‘newspeak’, just think of the cultural genocide that ‘political correctness’ is carrying out on the linguistic and historical heritage that humanity has elaborated over millennia. We are not far from the ‘versifying machinery’ that produces anodyne and insignificant literature so as not to ‘upset’ anyone!

This is how Orwell describes the lyrics of a song designed to entertain the masses:

«It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound».

As for the ‘control of the past’, we already have the laws that impose state truth on history! The perception one forms of past events is decisive for the interpretation of the present, so politics has intervened on the subject with the complicity of a large number of self-styled ‘intellectuals’ who willingly lend themselves to the suppression of freedom of research.

Incredibly topical is the description of the psychology of the ‘orthodox’, i.e. those who have internalised the ideology of power by conforming to its dictates without even realising it:

«A Party member is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him are never plainly stated, and could not be stated without laying bare the contradictions inherent in Ingsoc. If he is a person naturally orthodox (in Newspeak a GOODTHINKER), he will in all circumstances know, without taking thought, what is the true belief or the desirable emotion. But in any case an elaborate mental training, undergone in childhood and grouping itself round the Newspeak words CRIMESTOP, BLACKWHITE, and DOUBLETHINK, makes him unwilling and unable to think too deeply on any subject whatever».

All too evident in this description is the portrait of contemporary humanity, numbed by the globalist media system that indoctrinates it from cradle to coffin. The average man is now reduced to a psychic corpse, a kind of zombie who moves without his own will in the directions imposed on him by the system.

The practice of ‘doublethink’, then, is the one that more than any other brings the novel’s atmosphere closer to the hypocrisy of ‘political correctness’, a true phenomenon of personality dissociation that has now become the fundamental trait of mass psychology in the 21st century: a series of thoughts and behaviours that no one believes are adopted without batting an eyelid and are tacitly accepted without reservation. In neo-language, these human types are referred to as ‘goodthinkers’. Orwell speaks to us in these terms of a way of reasoning that stands outside any possibility of critical scrutiny:

«And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version IS the past, and no different past can ever have existed. This holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now.

It will be seen that the control of the past depends above all on the
training of memory. To make sure that all written records agree with
the orthodoxy of the moment is merely a mechanical act. But it is also
necessary to REMEMBER that events happened in the desired manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to FORGET that one has done so. The trick of doing this can be learned like any other mental technique. It is learned by the majority of Party members, and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox. In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, 'reality control'. In Newspeak it is called DOUBLETHINK, though DOUBLETHINK comprises much else as well.

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. DOUBLETHINK lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies--all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word DOUBLETHINK it is necessary to exercise DOUBLETHINK. For
by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a
fresh act of DOUBLETHINK one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of DOUBLETHINK that the Party has been able--and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years--to arrest the course of history».

This is exactly what has occurred with globalism: the impression that history has come to a standstill, that there is no longer any development, no change, no modification of human affairs: the image that the system paints of itself is that of a humanity that has arrived at the messianic ‘fullness of time’, a sort of paradise on earth in which all problems are solved, all difficulties are overcome, everything is within everyone’s reach…

For those who still have some relationship with reality, the impression is that there is nothing for anyone… but on the masses, the rhetoric of infinite progress still manages to have a hypnotic effect!

In the novel, even opposition to the system is… a creation of the regime itself to unearth and neutralise any opponents! Thus in globalism we see political parties that present themselves as alternatives being softened up and swallowed up by the system with impressive speed. As for the phantom subversive groups that pop up from time to time in the news, they really seem scarcely credible and have all the air of media inventions to frighten the lobotomised masses.

And to conclude, it should be noted that Orwell was merely describing what can be achieved by the power of ideology and propaganda, tools of considerable effectiveness, but which today appear to have been superseded by the latest methods of mind control, methods of which there is little official information, but which we can easily imagine

Perhaps in the 21st century there is no longer even a need for the ‘Ministry of Truth’!