Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. Set in London
of AD 2540 (632 A.F. – "After Ford" – in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive
technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and operant conditioning that combine to profoundly
change society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited
(1958) and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962).
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language
novels of the 20th century.[1] In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer listed Brave New World
number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time",[2] and the novel was listed at number 87 on
the BBC's survey The Big Read.[3]
Brave New World's title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V,
Scene I:[4]
O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206[5]
This line itself is ironic; Miranda was raised for most of her life on an isolated island, and the
only people she ever knew were her father and his servants, an enslaved savage, and spirits, notably
Ariel. When she sees other people for the first time, she is understandably overcome with excitement,
and utters, among other praise, the famous line above. However, what she is actually observing is not
men acting in a refined or civilized manner, but rather drunken sailors staggering off the wreckage
of their ship. Huxley employs the same irony when the "savage" John refers to what he sees as a "brave
new world".
Translations of the title often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature
in an attempt to capture the same irony: the French edition of the work is entitled Le Meilleur des
mondes ("The Best of All Worlds"), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz[6]
and satirized in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759).
Background
Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 while he was living in Italy. By this time, Huxley had already
established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines,
had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four successful satirical novels:
Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave
New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.
Huxley said that Brave New World was inspired by the utopian novels of H.G. Wells, including A Modern
Utopia (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923).[7] Wells' hopeful vision of the future's possibilities gave
Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. He wrote in a
letter to Mrs. Arthur Goldsmith, an American acquaintance, that he had "been having a little fun pulling
the leg of H. G. Wells," but then he "got caught up in the excitement of my own ideas."[8] Unlike the
most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the
future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia" (see dystopia), somewhat influenced
by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes (dealing with subjects like corporate tyranny and behavioral conditioning)
and the works of D. H. Lawrence.
George Orwell believed that Brave New World must be partly derived from the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.[9][10]
Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial
Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham, United Kingdom, and gives a fine and detailed account of the
processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print[vague] of Brave New World states that Huxley
was inspired to write the classic novel by this Billingham visit.
Although the novel is set in the future it deals with contemporary issues of the early 20th century.
The Industrial Revolution had transformed the world. Mass production had made cars, telephones, and
radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The political, cultural,
economic and sociological upheavals of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War (1914–1918)
were resonating throughout the world as a whole and the individual lives of most people. Accordingly,
many of the novel's characters are named after widely recognized, influential and in many cases contemporary
people (see below).
Huxley used the setting and characters from his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions,
particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early
trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character. Not only was Huxley outraged by
the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity and the inward-looking nature of many
Americans,[11] he had also found a book by Henry Ford on the boat to America. There was a fear of Americanization
in Europe. Thus seeing America firsthand, and from reading the ideas and plans of one of its foremost
citizens, Huxley was spurred to write Brave New World with America in mind. The "feelies" are his response
to the "talkie" motion pictures, and the sex-hormone chewing gum is a parody of the ubiquitous chewing
gum, which was something of a symbol of America at that time.
In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton explained
that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias". Much of the discourse on man's future before
1914 was based on the thesis that humanity would solve all economic and social issues. In the decade
following the war the discourse shifted to an examination of the causes of the catastrophe. The works
of H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw on the promises of socialism and a World State were then viewed
as the ideas of naive optimists.
After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men
like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good.
But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent
or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness,
that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than
the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in
all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism.
Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.[12]
For Brave New World, Huxley unsurprisingly received nearly universal criticism from contemporary
critics, although his work was later embraced. Even the few sympathetic critics tended to temper their
praises with disparaging remarks.[13]
Plot
The Introduction (Chapters 1–6)
The novel opens in London in 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population
is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources
are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and
everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted'
and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are
further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within
the social and economic strata of the World State. Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest castes,
'Alpha' and 'Beta', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles",
while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected
to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. Each
'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized egg developing into one unique fetus. Members
of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a
single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce
thousands of children. To further increase the birthrate of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, Podsnap's Technique
causes all the eggs in the ovary to mature simultaneously, allowing the hatchery to get full use of
the ovary in two years' time. People of these castes make up the majority of human society, and the
production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these
people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their
ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to control. All children are
educated via the hypnopaedic process, which provides each child with caste-appropriate subconscious
messages to mold the child's lifelong self-image and social outlook to that chosen by the leaders and
their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations.
To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned
from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as "ending is better than mending," "more stiches
less riches" i.e., buy a new item instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal
employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the
World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play,
the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability
and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma. Soma is an allusion to a ritualistic drink of
the same name consumed by ancient Indo-Aryans. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users
on enjoyable, hangover-free "holidays". It was developed by the World State to provide these inner-directed
personal experiences within a socially managed context of State-run 'religious' organizations; social
clubs. The hypnopaedically inculcated affinity for the State-produced drug, as a self-medicating comfort
mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminates the need for religion or other personal
allegiances outside or beyond the World State.
Recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to the World State, sex is a social activity,
rather than a means of reproduction (sex is encouraged from early childhood). The few women who can
reproduce are conditioned to use birth control, even wearing a "Malthusian belt" (which resembles a
cartridge belt and holds "the regulation supply of contraceptives") as a popular fashion accessory.
The maxim "everyone belongs to everyone else" is repeated often, and the idea of a "family" is considered
pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because
they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene
to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension.
Spending time alone is considered an outrageous waste of time and money, and wanting to be an individual
is horrifying. Conditioning trains people to consume and never to enjoy being alone, so by spending
an afternoon not playing "Obstacle Golf," or not in bed with a friend, one is forfeiting acceptance.
In the World State, people typically die at age 60[14] having maintained good health and youthfulness
their whole life. Death isn't feared; anyone reflecting upon it is reassured by the knowledge that everyone
is happy, and that society goes on. Since no one has family, they have no ties to mourn.
The conditioning system eliminates the need for professional competitiveness; people are literally
bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member
receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. There is no
desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep-conditioning reinforces each individual's
place in the caste system. To grow closer with members of the same class, citizens participate in mock
religious services called Solidarity Services, in which twelve people consume large quantities of soma
and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy.
In geographic areas nonconducive to easy living and consumption, securely contained groups of "savages"
are left to their own devices. These appear to be similar to the reservations of land established for
the Native American population during the colonisation of North America. These 'savages' are beholden
of strange customs, including self-mutilation and religion, a mere curio in the outside world.
In its first chapters, the novel describes life in the World State as wonderful and introduces Lenina
Crowne and Bernard Marx. Lenina, a hatchery worker, is socially accepted and comfortable with her place
in society, while Bernard, a psychologist, is an outcast. Although an Alpha Plus, Bernard is shorter
in stature than the average of his caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiority
complex. His work with sleep-teaching has led him to realize that what others believe to be their own
deeply held beliefs are merely phrases repeated to children while they are asleep. Still, he recognizes
the necessity of such programming as the reason why his society meets the emotional needs of its citizens.
Courting disaster, he is vocal about being different, once stating he dislikes soma because he'd "rather
be himself." Bernard's differences fuel rumours that he was accidentally administered alcohol while
incubated, a method used to keep Epsilons short.
Bernard's only friend is Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering
(Department of Writing). The friendship is based on their similar experiences as misfits, but unlike
Bernard, Watson's sense of loneliness stems from being too gifted, too intelligent, too handsome, and
too physically strong. Helmholtz is drawn to Bernard as a confidant: he can talk to Bernard about his
desire to write poetry.
The Reservation and the Savage (Chapters 7–9)
Bernard is on holiday at a Savage Reservation with Lenina. The reservation, located in New Mexico,
consists of a community named Malpais. From afar, Lenina thinks it will be exciting. She finds the aged,
toothless natives who mend their clothes rather than throw them away repugnant, and the situation is
made worse when she discovers that she has left her soma tablets at the resort hotel.
In typical tourist fashion, Bernard and Lenina watch what at first appears to be a quaint native
ceremony. The village folk, whose culture resembles the contemporary Indian groups of the region, descendants
of the Anasazi, including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna, and Zuni, and the Ramah Navajo, begin
by singing, but the ritual quickly becomes a passion play where a village boy is whipped to unconsciousness.
Soon after, the couple encounters Linda, a woman who has been living in Malpais since she came on
a trip and became separated from her group, among whom was a man to whom she refers as "Tomakin" but
who is revealed to be Bernard's boss, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Thomas. She became
pregnant despite adhering to her "Malthusian Drill" and there were no facilities for an abortion. Her
shame at pregnancy was so great that she decided not to return to her old life, but to stay with the
"savages". Linda gave birth to a son, John (later referred to as John the Savage) who is now 18.
Conversations with Linda and John reveal that their life has been hard. For 18 years, they have been
treated as outsiders: the native men treated Linda like a sex object while the native women regularly
beat and ostracized her because of her promiscuity, and John was mistreated and excluded for his mother's
actions and the color of his skin. John was angered by Linda's lovers, and even attacked one in a jealous
rage while a child. John's one joy was that his mother had taught him to read, although he only had
two books: a scientific manual from his mother's job, which he called a "beastly, beastly book," and
a collection of Shakespeare's works (which have been banned in the World State for being subversive).
Shakespeare gives John articulation to his feelings, though, and he especially is interested in Othello,
Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. At the same time, John has been denied the religious rituals of the village,
although he has watched them and even has had some religious experiences on his own in the desert.
Old, weathered and tired, Linda wants to return to her familiar world in London, as she misses living
in the city and taking soma. John wants to see the "brave new world" his mother has told him so much
about. Bernard wants to take them back to block Thomas from his plan to reassign Bernard to Iceland
as punishment for his asocial beliefs. Bernard arranges permission for Linda and John to leave the reservation.
John also seems to have an attraction to Lenina, as while Bernard is away, getting the permission
to move the savages, he finds her suitcase and ruffles through all of her clothes, taking in the smells.
He then sees her "sleeping" in a soma-induced comatose state and stares at her, thinking all he has
to do to see her properly is undo one zip. He later tells himself off for being like this towards Lenina,
and seems to be extremely shy around her.
The Savage visits the World State (Chapters 10–18)
Upon his return to London, Bernard is confronted by Thomas, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning
Centre who, in front of an audience of higher-caste Centre workers, denounces Bernard for his asocial
behavior. Bernard, thinking that for the first time in his life he has the upper hand, defends himself
by presenting the Director with his long-lost lover and unknown son, Linda and John. John falls to his
knees and calls Thomas his father, which causes an uproar of laughter. The humiliated Director resigns
in shame.
Spared from reassignment, Bernard makes John the toast of London. Pursued by the highest members
of society, able to bed any woman he fancies, Bernard revels in attention he once scorned. The victory,
however, is short-lived. Linda, decrepit, toothless, and friendless, goes on a permanent soma holiday
while John, appalled by what he perceives to be an empty society, refuses to attend Bernard's parties.
Society drops Bernard as swiftly as it had taken him. Bernard turns to the person he'd believed to be
his one true friend, only to see Helmholtz fall into a quick, easy camaraderie with John. Bernard is
left an outcast yet again as he watches the only two men with whom he ever connected find more of interest
in each other than they ever did in him.
John and Helmholtz's island of peace is brief. Lenina tries to seduce John, but John pushes her away,
calling her out on her sexually wanton ways. Whilst Lenina is in the bathroom, humiliated and putting
her clothes on, John receives a telephone call from the hospital telling him that his mother is extremely
unwell. He rushes over to see her and sits at her bedside, trying to get her out of her soma holiday
so that he can talk to her. He is heartbroken when his mother succumbs to soma and dies. He is extremely
annoyed by the young boys that enter the ward to be conditioned about death and annoy John to the point
where he starts to use violence to send them away. John's grief bewilders and revolts the hospital workers,
and their lack of reaction to Linda's death prompts John to try to force humanity from the workers by
throwing their soma rations out a window. The ensuing riot brings the police, who quell the riot by
filling the room with vaporized soma. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive to help John, but only Helmholtz
helps him, while Bernard stands to the side, torn between risking involvement by helping or escaping
the scene.
Following the riot, Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World
Controller for Western Europe. Bernard (who breaks down during the middle of the conversation) and Helmholtz
are told they will be exiled to islands of their choice. Mond explains that this exile is not so much
a threat to force freethinkers to reform and rejoin society as it is a chance for them to act as they
please because they will not be able to influence the population. He also divulges that he too once
risked banishment to an island because of some scientific experiments that were deemed controversial
by the state, giving insight into his sympathetic tone. Helmholtz chooses the Falkland Islands, believing
that their terrible weather will inspire his writing, but Bernard simply does not want to leave London;
he struggles with Mond and is thrown out of the office. After Bernard and Helmholtz have left, Mustapha
and John engage in a philosophical argument on the morals behind the existing society and then John
is told the "experiment" will continue and he will not be sent to an island. John meets with Bernard
and Helmholtz once again before their departures from London and Bernard apologizes to John for his
opportunistic behavior, having come to terms with his imminent exile and having restored his friendship
with Helmholtz.
In the final chapter, John isolates himself from society in a lighthouse outside London where he
finds his hermit life interrupted from mourning his mother by the more bitter memories of civilization.
To atone, John brutally whips himself in the open, a ritual the Indians in his own village had denied
him. His self-flagellation, caught on film and shown publicly, destroys his hermit life. Hundreds of
gawking sightseers, intrigued by John's violent behavior, fly out to watch the savage in person. Even
Lenina comes to watch, crying a tear John does not see. The sight of the woman whom he both adores and
blames is too much for him; John attacks and whips her. This sight of genuine, unbridled emotion drives
the crowd wild with excitement, and — handling it as they are conditioned to — they turn on each other,
in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of soma and sex. In the morning,
John, hopeless, alone, horrified by his drug use in which he participated that countered his beliefs,
makes one last attempt to escape civilization and atone. When thousands of gawking sightseers arrive
that morning, frenzied at the prospect of seeing the savage perform again, they find John has hanged
himself.
Characters
John – the illicit son of the Director and Linda. He was born and reared on the Savage Reservation
("Malpais") after Linda was unwittingly left behind by her errant lover. John the Savage is an outsider
both on the Reservation - where the ignorant natives still practice marriage, natural birth, family
life and religion - and the ostensibly civilised Brave New World: a totalitarian welfare-state based
on principles of stability and happiness, albeit happiness of a shallow and insipid nature. The Savage
has read nothing but The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He quotes them extensively and, for
the most part, aptly, though his allusion to "Brave New World" [Miranda's words in The Tempest] takes
on a darker and bitterly ironic resonance as the novel unfolds. John the Savage is intensely moral.
He is also somewhat naïve. In defiance of BNW's social norms, he falls romantically in love with Lenina,
but spurns her premature sexual advances. After his mother Linda's death, the Savage becomes ever more
disillusioned with utopian society. Its technological wonders and soulless consumerism are no substitute
for individual freedom, human dignity and personal integrity. He debates passionately and eruditely
with World Controller Mustapha Mond on the competing merits of primitivism versus the World State. After
his spontaneous bid to stir revolt among the lower castes has failed, the Savage retreats to an old
abandoned lighthouse, whips himself in remorse for his sins, and gloomily cultivates his garden. But
he is hounded by reporters and hordes of intrusive brave new worlders. Guilt-ridden, the Savage finally
hangs himself after - we are given to infer - he has taken the soma he so despises when it was sprayed
into an adrenaline struck crowd. This Soma influence triggered an orgy which John was also consumed
in. When he awoke the next morning, he realized the mistake he had committed. "'Oh, my God, my God!'
He covered his eyes with his hand." (Huxley, 259)
Bernard Marx – a sleep-learning specialist at the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Bernard is a
misfit. He is unusually short for an Alpha; an alleged accident with alcohol in Bernard's blood-surrogate
before his decanting has left him slightly stunted. Bernard's independence of mind stems more from his
inferiority-complex and depressive nature than any depth of philosophical conviction. Unlike his fellow
utopians, Bernard is often angry, resentful and jealous. At times, he is also cowardly and hypocritical.
His conditioning is clearly incomplete. He doesn't enjoy communal sports, solidarity services, or promiscuous
sex. He doesn't even get much joy out of soma. Bernard is in love with the highly beddable Lenina. He
doesn't like her sleeping with other men, though in BNW "everyone belongs to everyone else". Bernard's
triumphant return to utopian civilisation with John the Savage from the Reservation precipitates the
downfall of the Director, who had been planning to exile him. Bernard's triumph is short-lived. Success
goes to his head. Despite his tearful pleas, he is ultimately banished to an Island, one for others
like himself, for his non-conformist behaviour.
Helmholtz Watson – handsome and successful Alpha-plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering.
Helmholtz is a friend of Bernard. He is restive at the stifling conformism and philistinism of the World
State. Not least, he feels unfulfilled writing endless propaganda doggerel. Helmholtz is ultimately
exiled to an Island - a cold asylum for disaffected Alpha-plus non-conformists - after reading a heretical
poem to his students on the virtues of solitude and for helping John destroy the Soma rations of Delta's
after Linda's death.
Lenina Crowne – a young, beautiful and sexually liberated Beta. Lenina is a popular and promiscuous
vaccination-worker at the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. Somewhat quirky - she normally dates only
one person at a time - Lenina is basically happy and well-conditioned. She uses soma to suppress unwelcome
emotions. Lenina has a date with Bernard, to whom she feels ambivalently attracted; and she goes to
the Reservation with him. On returning with relief to civilisation, she tries and fails to seduce John
the Savage. The Savage loves and desires Lenina; but owing to his quixotic nature, he is repelled by
her forwardness and the prospect of pre-marital sex. So he casts her aside as an "impudent strumpet".
Despite John's rejection of her promiscuity, Lenina begins to grow attached and emotionally drawn to
him, emotions which deeply trouble her and actually move her to sadness for the first time in her life
when she sees how he suffers in his Lighthouse exile.
Mustapha Mond – Resident World Controller of Western Europe. He presides over one of the ten zones
of the World State, the global government set up after the cataclysmic Nine Years' War and great Economic
Collapse. Sophisticated and good-natured, His Fordship is an urbane and hyperintelligent apologist for
Brave New World and its velvet-gloved totalitarianism. Mond defends BNW's ethos of "Community, Identity,
Stability" by comparing his harmonious post-Fordist civilisation with the horrors of the suppressed
historical past. In his youth, Mond had himself flirted with doing illicit scientific research and heterodox
belief. He still keeps a small library of forbidden books in his safe. Yet he opted for training as
a future world leader rather than exile. The Controller argues that art, literature and scientific freedom
must be sacrificed in order to secure the ultimate utilitarian goal of maximising societal happiness.
He defends the genetic caste system, behavioural conditioning and the lack of personal freedom in the
World State as a price worth paying for achieving social stability. Stability is the highest social
virtue because it leads to lasting happiness.
Fanny Crowne – Lenina Crowne’s friend (they have the same last name because only ten thousand last
names are in use in the World State). Fanny’s role is mainly to voice the conventional values of her
caste and society. Specifically, she warns Lenina that she should have more men in her life because
it looks bad to concentrate on one man for too long.
Henry Foster – One of Lenina’s many lovers, he is a perfectly conventional Alpha male, casually discussing
Lenina’s body with his coworkers. His success with Lenina, and his casual attitude about it, infuriate
the jealous Bernard.
Linda – John’s mother, and a Beta. While visiting the New Mexico Savage Reservation, she became pregnant
with the Director’s son. During a storm, she got lost, suffered a head injury and was left behind. A
group of Indians found her and brought her to their village. Linda could not get an abortion on the
Reservation, and she was too ashamed to return to the World State with a baby. Her World State–conditioned
promiscuity makes her a social outcast. She is desperate to return to the World State and to soma. When
she returned she was treated to a series of soma baths and a pleasant death.
The Director – The Director administrates the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. He
is a threatening figure, with the power to exile Bernard to Iceland. But he is secretly vulnerable because
he fathered a child (John), a scandalous and obscene act in the World State.
The Arch-Community-Songster – The Arch-Community-Songster is the secular, shallow equivalent of a
cardinal in the World State society.
The Warden – The Warden is the talkative chief administrator for the New Mexico Savage Reservation.
He is an Alpha-minus.
Others Freemartins: In the book, a "freemartin" (mentioned in chapters 1, 3, 11 and 17) is
a woman who has been deliberately made sterile by exposure to hormones during fetal development; in
the book, government policy requires freemartins to form 70% of the female population.
Of Malpais John the Savage ("Mr Savage"), son of Linda and Thomas (Tomakin/The Director), an
outcast in both primitive and modern society. While he does not appear until partway through the story,
he becomes the protagonist shortly after his introduction. Linda, a Beta-Minus. John the Savage's mother,
and Thomas's (Tomakin/The Director) long lost lover. She is from England and was pregnant with John
when she got lost from Thomas in a trip to New Mexico. She is disliked by both savage people because
of her "civilized" behaviour, and by civilized people because of her weight and appearance. Popé, a
native of Malpais. Although he reinforces the behaviour that causes hatred for Linda in Malpais by sleeping
with her and bringing her Mezcal, he still holds the traditional beliefs of his tribe. John also attempts
to kill him, in his early years. He gave Linda a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
Background figures
These are non-fictional and factual characters who lived before the events in this book, but are
of note in the novel: Henry Ford, who has become a messianic figure to The World State. "Our Ford" is
used in place of "Our Lord", as a credit to popularizing the use of the assembly line. Huxley's description
of Ford as a central figure in the emergence of the Brave New World might also be a reference to the
utopian industrial city of Fordlândia commissioned by Ford in 1927. Sigmund Freud, "Our Freud" is sometimes
said in place of "Our Ford" due to the link between Freud's psychoanalysis and the conditioning of humans,
and Freud's popularization of the idea that sexual activity is essential to human happiness and need
not be limited to procreation. It is also strongly implied that citizens of the World State believe
Freud and Ford to be the same person.[15] H. G. Wells, "Dr. Wells", British writer and utopian socialist,
whose book Men Like Gods was an incentive for Brave New World. "All's well that ends Wells" wrote Huxley
in his letters, criticizing Wells for anthropological assumptions Huxley found unrealistic. Ivan Petrovich
Pavlov, whose conditioning techniques are used to train infants. William Shakespeare, whose banned works
are quoted throughout the novel by John, "the Savage". The plays quoted include Macbeth, The Tempest,
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure and Othello. Mustapha
Mond also knows them because he, as a World Controller, has access to a selection of books from throughout
history, including the Bible. Thomas Robert Malthus, whose name is used to describe the contraceptive
techniques (Malthusian belt) practiced by women of the World State. Reuben Rabinovitch, the character
in whom the effects of sleep-learning, hypnopædia, are first noted. John Henry Newman, Mustapha Mond
discussed Cardinal Newman with the Savage after reading a quote from his book
Sources of names and references
The limited number of names that the World State assigned to its bottle-grown citizens can be traced
to political and cultural figures who contributed to the bureaucratic, economic, and technological systems
of Huxley's age, and presumably those systems in Brave New World:[16] Bernard Marx, from George Bernard
Shaw (or possibly Bernard of Clairvaux or possibly Claude Bernard) and Karl Marx. Henry Foster, from
Henry Ford American industrialist, see above. Lenina Crowne, from Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader
during the Russian Revolution. Fanny Crowne, from Fanny Kaplan, famous for an unsuccessful attempt to
assassinate Lenin. Ironically, in the novel, Lenina and Fanny are friends. George Edzel, from Edsel
Ford, son of Henry Ford. Polly Trotsky, from Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary leader. Benito
Hoover, from Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy; and Herbert Hoover, then-President of the United States.
Helmholtz Watson, from the German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the American behaviorist
John B. Watson. Darwin Bonaparte, from Napoleon I, the leader of the First French Empire, and Charles
Darwin, author of The Origin of Species. Herbert Bakunin, from Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher
and Social Darwinist, and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian philosopher and anarchist. Mustapha Mond, from
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of Turkey after World War I, who pulled his country into modernization
and official secularism; and Sir Alfred Mond, an industrialist and founder of the Imperial Chemical
Industries conglomerate. Primo Mellon, from Miguel Primo de Rivera, prime minister and dictator of Spain
(1923-1930), and Andrew Mellon, an American banker and Secretary of the Treasury (1921-1932). Sarojini
Engels, from Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto along with Karl Marx: and Sarojini
Naidu, an Indian politician. Morgana Rothschild, from J. P. Morgan, US banking tycoon, and the Rothschild
family, famous for its European banking operations. Fifi Bradlaugh, from the British political activist
and atheist Charles Bradlaugh. Joanna Diesel, from Rudolf Diesel, the German engineer who invented the
diesel engine. Clara Deterding, from Henri Deterding, one of the founders of the Royal Dutch Petroleum
Company. Tom Kawaguchi, from the Japanese Buddhist monk Ekai Kawaguchi, the first recorded Japanese
traveler to Tibet and Nepal. Jean-Jacques Habibullah, from the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Habibullah Khan, who served as Emir of Afghanistan in the early 20th century. Miss Keate,
the Eton headmistress, from nineteenth-century headmaster John Keate. Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury,
a parody of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Church's decision in August 1930 to approve
limited use of contraception. Popé, from Popé, the Native American rebel who was one of the instigators
of the conflict now known as the Pueblo Revolt.[17] John the Savage, after the term "noble savage" originally
used in the verse drama The Conquest of Granada by John Dryden, and later erroneously associated with
Rousseau.
Fordism and society
Main article: World state in Brave New World
The World State is built upon the principles of Henry Ford's assembly line—mass production, homogeneity,
predictability, and consumption of disposable consumer goods. At the same time as the World State lacks
any supernatural-based religions, Ford himself is revered as the creator of their society but not as
a deity, and characters celebrate Ford Day and swear oaths by his name (e.g., "By Ford!"). In this sense,
some fragments of traditional religion are present, such as Christian crosses, which had their tops
cut off in order to be changed to a "T". The World State calendar numbers years in the "AF" era—"Annum
Ford"—with year 1 AF being equivalent to 1908 AD, the year in which Ford's first Model T rolled off
his assembly line. The novel's Gregorian calendar year is AD 2540, but it is referred to in the book
as AF 632.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated by recorded voices repeating slogans while they
sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe their own class is superior, but that the other classes
perform needed functions. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and hallucinogenic
drug called soma (named for an intoxicating drink in ancient India) distributed by the Arch-Community
Songster of Canterbury, a secularised version of the Christian sacrament of Communion ("The Body of
Christ").
The biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic
engineering; Huxley wrote the book before the structure of DNA was known. However, Gregor Mendel's work
with inheritance patterns in peas had been re-discovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on
artificial selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists
including Thomas Huxley, half-brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and brother Julian Huxley who
was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. Nonetheless, Huxley emphasizes conditioning over
breeding (see nature versus nurture); human embryos and fetuses are conditioned through a carefully
designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense
heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate), and other environmental stimuli, although there
is an element of selective breeding as well.
Ban, accusation of plagiarism
Brave New World has been banned and challenged at various times. In 1932, the book was banned in
Ireland for its language, and for supposedly being anti-family and anti-religion.[18][19] The American
Library Association ranks Brave New World as No. 52 on their list of most challenged books.[20] In 1980,
it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges.[21] In 1993, an unsuccessful
attempt was made to remove the novel from a California school's required reading list because it "centered
around negative activity".[22]
The book was banned in India in 1967 with Huxley accused of being a "pornographer."[23]
In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz in his book Zaczarowana gra presented accusations of plagiarism
against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz presented similarities between Brave New World and two science fiction
novels written by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski, namely Miasto światłości (The City of the Sun,
1924) and Podróż poślubna pana Hamiltona (The Honeymoon Trip of Mr. Hamilton, 1928).[24]
Comparisons with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Social critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the
foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no
reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would
deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to
passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth
would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared
we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy,
and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians
and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost
infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain.
In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we
fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who himself published several articles on Huxley and a book on Orwell,
noted the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his 1999 article "Why Americans Are
Not Taught History":
We dwell in a present-tense culture that somehow, significantly, decided to employ the telling expression
"You're history" as a choice reprobation or insult, and thus elected to speak forgotten volumes about
itself. By that standard, the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs,
both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons
toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus. Orwell's was a house of horrors. He
seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess
history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion. Whereas Huxley ... rightly
foresaw that any such regime could break but could not bend. In 1988, four years after 1984, the Soviet
Union scrapped its official history curriculum and announced that a newly authorized version was somewhere
in the works. This was the precise moment when the regime conceded its own extinction. For true blissed-out
and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is
taught.[25]
Brave New World Revisited
1st UK edition Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Brothers, US, 1958; Chatto & Windus, UK, 1959),[26]
written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley
considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s.
He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might
go in the future. In Brave New World Revisited, he concluded that the world was becoming like Brave
New World much faster than he originally thought.
Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation as well as all the means by which populations
can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion.
Brave New World Revisited is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his
conversion to Hindu Vedanta in the interim between the two books.
The last chapter of the book aims to propose action which could be taken in order to prevent a democracy
from turning into the totalitarian world described in Brave New World. In Huxley's last novel, Island,
he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally known as a counterpart
to his most famous work.
Brave New World Pre-visited. Huxley's Crome Yellow (1921), Ch V, has Mr Scogan, a believer in "the
goddess of Applied Science," looking forward optimistically to "the next few centuries" when "In vaste
state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires.
The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations;
and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through
a sunlit world."
Related works The First Men in the Moon (1901) by H.G. Wells. The whole lunar population lives
in a single harmonious society, where the offspring starts life in small containers. There it is decided
what kind of caste they will belong to for the rest of their existence, and their development at this
stage is affected to make sure they fit their caste perfectly. Men Like Gods (1923) by H.G. Wells. A
utopian novel that was a source of inspiration for Huxley's dystopian Brave New World. The Scientific
Outlook (1931) by philosopher Bertrand Russell. When Brave New World was released, Russell thought that
Huxley's book was based on his book The Scientific Outlook, released the previous year. Russell contacted
his own publisher and asked whether or not he should do something about this "apparent plagiarism".
His publisher advised him not to, and Russell followed this advice.[27] Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
by George Orwell Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the
plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."[28]
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) by Neil Postman alludes
to how television is goading modern Western culture to be like what we see in Brave New World, where
people are not so much denied human rights like free speech, but are rather conditioned not to care.
Adaptations
Radio Brave New World (radio broadcast) CBS Radio Workshop (27 January and 3 February 1956)
Brave New World (radio broadcast) BBC Radio4 (May 2013)
Movies
Brave New World (1980) Directed by Burt Brinckerhoff Kristoffer Tabori as John Savage Bud Cort as
Bernard Marx Keir Dullea as Thomas Grambell Julie Cobb as Linda Lysenko Ron O'Neal as Mustapha Mond
Marcia Strassman as Lenina Disney
Brave New World (1998) Directed by Leslie Libman and Larry Williams Tim Guinee as John Savage Peter
Gallagher as Bernard Marx Leonard Nimoy as Mustapha Mond Sally Kirkland as Linda Lysenko Rya Kihlstedt
as Lenina Crowne
Publications
Brave New World title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database: Brave New World Aldous
Huxley; Perennial, Reprint edition, 1 September 1998; ISBN 0-06-092987-1
Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley; Perennial, 1 March 2000; ISBN 0-06-095551-1
Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley (with a foreword by Christopher Hitchens);
Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005; ISBN 0-06-077609-9
Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley (with an introduction by Margaret Atwood);
Vintage Canada Edition, 2007; ISBN 978-0-307-35655-0
Huxley's Brave New World (Cliffs Notes) Charles and Regina Higgins; Cliffs Notes, 30 May 2000; ISBN
0-7645-8583-5
Spark Notes Brave New World Sterling, 31 December 2003; ISBN 1-58663-366-X
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (Barron's Book Notes) Anthony Astrachan, Anthony Astrakhan; Barrons
Educational Series, November 1984; ISBN 0-8120-3405-8
Also publications for NSW HSC students.
See also Alpha (ethology) List of quotes from Shakespeare in Brave New World
References
Notes
1.^ "100 Best Novels". Random House. 1999. Retrieved 2007-06-23. This ranking was by the Modern Library
Editorial Board of authors. 2.^ "100 greatest novels of all time". Guardian. 2003. Retrieved 2012-10-10.
3.^ "BBC - The Big Read". BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 26 October 2012 4.^ Anon. "Brave New World". In
Our Time. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 5.^ Bate, Jonathan; Rasmussen, Eric
(2007). William Shakespeare: Complete Works. The Royal Shakespeare Company. Chief Associate Editor:
Héloïse Sénéchal. Macmillan Publishers Ltd. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-230-00350-7. 6.^ see e.g. 'Leibniz', by
Nicholas Jolley (Routledge, 2005) 7.^ Aldous Huxley, Letters of Aldous Huxley, ed. by Grover Smith (New
York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 348: "I am writing a novel about the future — on the horror
of the Wellsian Utopia and a revolt against it. Very difficult. I have hardly enough imagination to
deal with such a subject. But it is none the less interesting work" (letter to Mrs. Kethevan Roberts,
May 18, 1931). 8.^ Heje, Johan (2002). "Aldous Huxley". In Darren Harris-Fain. British Fantasy and Science-Fiction
Writers, 1918-1960. Detroit: Gale Group. p. 100. ISBN 0-7876-5249-0. 9.^ George Orwell: Review, Tribune,
4 January 1946. 10.^ , 18 August 2006 Missing or empty |title= (help) (radio interview with We translator
Natasha Randall) 11.^ The Vintage Classics edition of Brave New World.[page needed] 12.^ G.K. Chesterton,
review in The Illustrated London News, 4 May 1935 13.^ Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper Perennial
Modern Classics; Reprint edition (17 October 2006), P.S. Edition, ISBN 978-0-06-085052-4 — "About the
Book." — "Too Far Ahead of Its Time? The Contemporary Response to Brave New World (1932)" p. 8-11 14.^
Huxley, Brave New World, 1932. (London: HarperCollins, first Perennial Modern Classics edition) p. 113.
"Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! The end". – Bernard Marx 15.^ chapter 3, "Our
Ford-or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological
matters–Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life" 16.^ Meckier, Jerome
(2006). "Onomastic Satire: Names and Naming in Brave New World". In Peter Edgerly Firchow and Bernfried
Nugel. Aldous Huxley: modern satirical novelist of ideas. Lit Verlag. pp. 187ff. ISBN 3-8258-9668-4.
OCLC 71165436. Retrieved 2009-01-28. 17.^ Knaut, Andrew L. (1995). The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: conquest
and resistance in seventeenth-century New Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 168. ISBN
0-8061-2992-1. OCLC 231644472. 18.^ "Banned Books". Classiclit.about.com. 2009-11-02. Retrieved 2010-06-01.
19.^ "Banned Books". pcc.edu. Retrieved 2010-06-11. 20.^ "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of
1990–2000". American Library Association. Retrieved 2012-07-27. 21.^ Grumbine, Robert (1996-06-03).
"Notes on Book Banning". Retrieved 2009-01-28.[unreliable source?] 22.^ Banned Books, Alibris.[dead
link] 23.^ Partap Sharma, "Barer Bones" in C.K. Razdan. Bare Breasts and Bare Bottoms: Anatomy of Film
Censorship in India. Bombay: Jaico House, 1975. 24.^ Smuszkiewicz, Antoni (1982). Zaczarowana gra (in
Polish). Poznań: Wydawn. Poznanskie. OCLC 251929765.[page needed] 25.^ Christopher Hitchens, "Goodbye
to All That: Why Americans Are Not Taught History." Harper's Magazine. November 1998, pp. 37–47. 26.^
"Brave New World Revisited – HUXLEY, Aldous | Between the Covers Rare Books". Betweenthecovers.com.
Retrieved 2010-06-01. 27.^ Russell, Bertrand; John G. Slater With the Assistance of Peter Köllner (1996).
The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 10 – A Fresh Look at Empiricism, 1927–42. Routledge.
p. xxii. ISBN 978-0-415-09408-5. Retrieved 17 September 2008. 28.^ "Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.".
Playboy. July 1973.
Bibliography Huxley, Aldous (1998). Brave New World (First Perennial Classics ed.). New York: HarperCollins
Publishers. ISBN 0-06-092987-1. Huxley, Aldous (2005). Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited
(First Perennial Classics ed.). New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-077609-9. Huxley, Aldous
(2000). Brave New World Revisited (First Perennial Classics ed.). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
ISBN 0-06-095551-1. Postman, Neil (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of
Show Business. USA: Penguin USA. ISBN 0-670-80454-1. Higgins, Charles & Higgins, Regina (2000). Cliff
Notes on Huxley's Brave New World. New York: Wiley Publishing. ISBN 0-7645-8583-5. Russell, Robert (1999).
Zamiatin's We. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-1-85399-393-0.
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Brave New World
Wikibooks has more on the topic of: Brave New World 1957 interview with Huxley as he reflects on
his life work and the meaning of Brave New World Aldous Huxley: Bioethics and Reproductive Issues Audio
review and discussion of Brave New World at The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast Brave New World
on In Our Time at the BBC. (of Brave_New_World listen now) Literapedia page for Brave New World
[hide] v· t· e
Works by Aldous Huxley
Novels
Crome Yellow (1921)· Antic Hay (1923)· Those Barren Leaves (1925)· Point Counter Point (1928)· Brave
New World (1932)· Eyeless in Gaza (1936)· After Many a Summer (1939)· Time Must Have a Stop (1944)·
Ape and Essence (1948)· The Genius and the Goddess (1955)· Island (1962)
Short stories
"Happily Ever After"· "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers"· "Cynthia"· "The Bookshop"· "The
Death of Lully"· "Sir Hercules"· "The Gioconda Smile"· "The Tillotson Banquet"· "Green Tunnels"· "Nuns
at Luncheon"· "Little Mexican"· "Hubert and Minnie"· "Fard"· "The Portrait"· "Young Archimedes"· "Half
Holiday"· "The Monocle"· "Fairy Godmother"· "Chawdron"· "The Rest Cure"· "The Claxtons"· "After the
Fireworks"· "Jacob's Hands: A Fable" (published 1997) co-written with Christopher Isherwood
Short story collections
Limbo (1920)· Mortal Coils (1922)· Little Mexican (US title: Young Archimedes) (1924)· Two or Three
Graces (1926)· Brief Candles (1930)· Collected Short Stories (1957)
Poetry
The Burning Wheel (1916)· Jonah (1917)· The Defeat of Youth (1918)· Leda (1920)· Arabia Infelix (1929)·
The Cicadias and Other Poems (1931)· Collected Poetry (1971)
Travel writing
Along the Road (1925)· Jesting Pilate (1926)· Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934)
Essay collections
On the Margin (1923)· Essays New and Old (1926)· Proper Studies (1927)· Do What You Will (1929)·
Vulgarity in Literature (1930)· Music at Night (1931)· Texts and Pretexts (1932)· The Olive Tree (1936)·
Ends and Means (1937)· Words and their Meanings (1940)· Science, Liberty and Peace (1946)· Themes and
Variations (1950)· The Doors of Perception (1954)· Adonis and the Alphabet (US title: Tomorrow and Tomorrow
and Tomorrow) (1956)· Heaven and Hell (1956)· Collected Essays (1958)· Brave New World Revisited (1958)·
Literature and Science (1963)· The Human Situation: 1959 Lectures at Santa Barbara (1977)· Moksha: Writings
on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1999)
Screenplays
Pride and Prejudice (1940)· Madame Curie (uncredited, 1943)· Jane Eyre (1944)· A Woman's Vengeance
(1947)· Prelude to Fame (1950)· Alice in Wonderland (uncredited, 1951)
Non-fiction
The Perennial Philosophy (1945) Grey Eminence (1941)· The Devils of Loudun (1952)
Plays
The Discovery (based on Frances Sheridan) (1924)· The World of Light (1931)· The Gioconda Smile (play
version, also known as Mortal Coils) (1948)· The Genius and the Goddess (play version, with Betty Wendel)
(1957)· The Ambassador of Captripedia (1965)· Now More Than Ever (1997)
Children's books
The Crows of Pearblossom (1944, published 1967)· The Travails and Tribulations of Geoffrey Peacock
(1967)
Other books
The Art of Seeing (1942)· Selected Letters (2007)
Categories: 1932 novels British science fiction novels Dystopian novels Futurology books Genetic
engineering in fiction Mind control in fiction Novels about consumerism Novels about totalitarianism
Novels by Aldous Huxley Novels set in London Satirical novels Chatto & Windus books
Navigation menu
Create account Log in
Article Talk
Read Edit View history
Search
Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Wikimedia Shop
Interaction
Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages
العربية Български Bosanski Català Česky Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch Eesti Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی
Français Galego 한국어 हिन्दी Hrvatski Italiano עברית Magyar Македонски Nederlands 日本語 Norsk bokmål Occitan
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Polski Português Русский Simple English Српски / srpski Suomi Svenska ไทย Türkçe Українська 中
文 Edit links
This page was last modified on 10 June 2013 at 15:00.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia
Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view
Elizabeth became increasing bold in stating her religious opinions openly -- as well as her
anti-slavery views and support for abolitionist John Brown.
So in 1860 her husband exercised his legal right to have her committed to an insane
asylum.
Elizabeth spent three years in the asylum before being deemed incurable. She was released
back to the custody of her husband, who locked her in a room and nailed the windows shut.
But with the help of a friend, Elizabeth managed to take her husband to court over the
confinement. A jury took only seven minutes to decide that she was healthy, sane, and deserved
her freedom.
Sadly, her case was not unique.
The records from one mental asylum from the era still survive, and they show vast amounts of
cases in which women were diagnosed as insane because they did not accept the prevailing views
of society, or of their husbands.
A common diagnosis was to rule a woman "insane by religious fantasy." In other words, she
did not believe in the exact same religious principles as her neighbors and family members.
Behaving and thinking independently was more than enough to deem a woman crazy and totally
ruin her life.
And everyone in her social circle -- friends, neighbors, family members, and even her own
husband -- was able to rat them out to the authorities for their dangerous, aberrant
behavior.
You'd think this sort of custom would have gone out of style long ago.
But thanks to a new program being developed by the White House, you too can soon report your
'insane' friends and family members who don't express approved social views.
And this new strategy includes programs for people to "seek help" from the government on
behalf of anyone they "perceive to be radicalizing".
Their objective here is to prevent violence and domestic terrorism. That sounds noble
enough.
But even basic truths about violence are completely tainted by ideology and politics.
Angry, menacing rioters rampaging through the streets, torching cars, looting stores, and
destroying property? They're "mostly peaceful", hence this White House program doesn't apply to
them.
But the man who grabs a weapon to defend his family against those angry, menacing rioters?
He's a violent radical who should be reported.
Then there's Dr. Aruna Khilanani, who earlier this month lectured at Yale University about
her fantasies of killing white people.
Again, though, she's neither considered radical nor potentially violent so she doesn't fit
into this new White House program.
Saying, however, that "a man cannot get pregnant," which was enough for
Twitter to ban a Spanish politician recently, is absolutely considered radical.
The rules are terribly confusing. Fortunately the US government will be bringing in the Big
Tech companies to monitor our behavior and keep us all in check.
It's also notable that the federal government is spending boatloads of taxpayer dollars
teaching US government employees about Critical Race Theory, which asserts that everyone is
racist and that you are either a victim or an oppressor based on your skin color.
I say this is notable because they don't spend those same taxpayer dollars on the principles
taught by Martin Luther King, i.e. that we should strive for a society where people are judged
by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
But MLK's view is now considered outdated by the woke progressives in charge.
And they even have 'science' to back up their assertions.
For example, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
published an article last month explaining that whiteness is "a malignant, parasitic-like
condition".
And as we've all been told, you gotta trust the science!
This is rapidly becoming the accepted social view, and any departure from this thesis is
considered 'radical'.
It's ironic that most of the bureaucrats and politicians mandating this training don't have
the first clue what they're talking about.
Recently General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that
teaching Critical Race Theory and "white rage" to military cadets at West Point (my alma mater)
was important.
Yet he simultaneously acknowledged that he doesn't know the first thing about Critical Race
Theory, referring to it as "whatever the theory is. . ."
And that pretty much sums up institutional leadership these days in the Land of the
Free.
Politicians in government, business executives, and now even military generals, are only
concerned about appearances, not substance.
They know nothing about Critical Race Theory. They just want to give the appearance that
they're doing something especially when everyone else is doing the same thing.
Just about every big company and organization, from Coca Cola to Disney to Major League
Baseball to the Central Intelligence Agency, has jumped on board the Woke train and embraced
these idiotic principles.
Hardly a single so-called 'leader' has stood up to say 'I agree there are problems to solve,
but this approach is totally absurd and I'm not going along with it.'
These executives have too much to lose -- power, prestige, paychecks so they fall in line
and do what everyone else is doing.
Standing apart from the crowd, risking your reputation, and raising a voice of dissent takes
courage -- something that is sorely lacking in political and corporate leadership.
This weak, pitiful leadership is the reason why the entire woke movement has snowballed out
of control: no one with any real power is willing to stand against it anymore.
It's also the reason why looting Nike stores and rioting in the streets is seen as 'mostly
peaceful'.
Yet anyone with conservative views is considered "radical", worthy of being committed to
modern-day digital insane asylum (i.e. censored by the Big Tech platforms).
Frankly, if history is any guide, this trend is most likely going to become much worse. But
one day it will subside.
It may take years. But the woke Twitter mob will eventually run out of people to hate and
start feeding on its own fanatics. It's like the Soviet Union: sooner or later the entire
idiotic ideology will collapse on itself.
y_arrow 1
Greed is King 18 hours ago
The Hitler Youth were encouraged to "snitch", and they did, on their parents, their
teachers, everybody. The NAZI Concentration Camps killed Aryans as well as ****.
Welcome to the Elite`s brave new world.
_Conax_ 15 hours ago
Insane, huh.
The soviet communist party used their mental hospitals to silence and punish their
critics. I never trusted shrinks because their profession is based on the hack theories of
bearded hare brains. Everyone either hates their father or want to boink their moms
according to those quacks.
The treatment involves zombie pills.
Are our leftists so weak they can't face the free thinking in the war of ideas?
Absolutely horrifying. And that was in the 20th century, not the 15th!
indus creed 14 hours ago (Edited)
One NY judge tried to commit Dinesh D'Souza to a mental hospital during his campaign
finance hearing. They are gonna declare all old school thinking as insane.
jakevee 18 hours ago
Sounds like North Korea.
Dr Phuckit 12 hours ago
Snitching was a major part of 1984, you got rewarded with a few bread crumbs.
Baby steps until one day you realize ....
Obamanism666 7 hours ago
Bring me the person, we will find a crime
JustSayNo 5 hours ago (Edited)
Sometime this weekend, I'm going to have to find the time to post a little write up I'd
found on the persecution of the Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland in the late 1600's- early
1700's. This included crucifixion of their Presbyterian ministers, tossing their babies
alive into pots of boiling water, hunting the men down and murdering as in the style of an
English fox hunt. This occurred at the hands of the English, and though just one example of
the atrocities spurred by the English aristocracy and bankers of the times, the fate of the
Ulster Scots was probably the worst of it. The Ulster Scots migrated to the US in droves at
the time. They tended to push out into the American wilderness, getting as far away from
the systems of English rule and governance in the American cities as possible. Justifiably,
they hated the English. It seems, that the English aristocracy and bankers are still after
the descendants of the Ulster Scots today- labeling them "domestic terrorists", blaming
them for slavery (which was really to the profit of the English banking system and
investors in trade of the times, and was not of benefit to the average American ). To the
Ulster Scots and others who had suffered in Europe, and some other parts of the world, at
the hands of the English, slavery probably seemed rather tame, and pushing out to the
wilderness and frontiers the way that the Scots did, slavery of Africans was likely not
much a part of their universe . What the Ulster Scots cared about, was freedom from the
rule and governance of the despicable English aristocracy. And with good reason. They also
tended not to talk about what had happened to them, as our Irish-American ancestors tended
not to talk about what had really happened at the hands of the English. Its time to start
talking about the Ulster Scots. Much of the our ideas about freedom, about our relationship
to government, property. about the second amendment and the importance an ability of the
people to protect itself from government, come from the Scots. We need a reminder as to why
the Scots felt this way, based on experiences. Their experience of exactly what government
will do to a people when that people is unable to defend itself, and that government is
controlled by Khazarian and other bankers.
ebear 8 hours ago
"It's like the Soviet Union: sooner or later the entire idiotic ideology will collapse
on itself."
Ozarkian 2 hours ago
The media narratives no longer work. The movers and shakers are losing control and it
should scare the hell out of them. They might actually have to work for a living.
Aireannpure 14 hours ago
Do not comment on social dogma, rhetoric and platitudes dudes.
You need to drink a lot of "woke coke" and wearing exclusively "woke Nike" to digest those
recommendations without laughing.
History repeats, first as tragedy, second as farce. White Guard rebels during Russian civil
War called Bolsheviks "Tovatitcshi"(Comrades) as they prohibited to say Sir to the officers.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I
choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make
words mean so many different things."
As George Orwell has taught us, language manipulation is at the frontline (yes, I have just
broken one of the cardinal rules of his "
Politics and the English Language ," but not his final injunction to "break any of these
rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous") of politicised mind-bending. The sort of
language we are permitted to use circumscribes the thinking that we shall be allowed to engage
in. The assault on language is, therefore, an integral component of the unrelenting warfare
being waged for the conquest and control of the mind. Word elimination and reassignment of
meaning, as Orwell also presciently noted, are essential elements of the campaign to reformat
the mind and eventually to subjugate it.
A breath-taking example of how this process works was recently unveiled by the thoroughly
brain-washed students of the once prestigious Brandeis University who, this time without
prompting from their faculty elders and betters, voted to ban from their campus such odious
words and phrases as "picnic" and "you guys," for being "oppressive". "Picnic" is prohibited
because it allegedly evokes the lynching of Blacks.
The precocious young intellectuals took pains to produce an entire list of objectionable
words and phrases, shocking award-winning novelist Joyce Carol Oates who tweeted in
bewilderment: "What sort of punishment is doled out for a faculty member who utters the word
'picnic' at Brandeis? Or the phrase [also proscribed – S.K.] 'trigger warning'? Loss of
tenure, public flogging, self-flagellation?"
Oppressive Language
Possible Alternatives
Explanation
Killing it
Great job!
If someone is doing well, we
don't need to equate that to
Awesome!
murder!
Take a shot at
Give it a go
These expressions needlessly use
imagery of hurting someone or
Take a stab at
Try
something.
Trigger warning
Content note
The word "trigger" has
connections to guns for many
Drop-in
people; we can give the same
head's up using language less
connected to violence.
Rule of thumb
General rule
This expression comes from an
old British law allowing men to
beat their wives with sticks no
wider than their thumb.
Pknk
Outdoor eating
Tlie term picnic is often
associated with lynchings of
Black people in the United
States, during which white
spectators were said to have
watched while eating, referring
to them as picnics or other terms
involving racial slurs against
Black people.
Go off tlte reservation
Disagree with tlie group, defect
This phrase has a harmful
from the group
history rooted in the violent
removal of indigenous people
from their land and the Itorrible
consequences for someone that
left the reservation.
_arrow
Not Your Father's ZH 8 hours ago (Edited)
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and
to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. " ― George Orwell
The constant reconstruction of language is a highly effective tool when employed against
weak minds... as most folks have only a loose association with the words in their
heads...
As meanings of words are changed the ideas associated with those words change...
consequently a society can be transformed into a different society without ever answering a
single argument...
1748 (in Chesterfield's "Letters"), but the thing itself apparently was rare before c.
1800 as an English institution [OED]; it originally meant "a fashionable social affair (not
necessarily out of doors) in which every partaker contributed something to the general
table;" from French piquenique (1690s), perhaps a reduplication of piquer "to pick, peck,"
from Old French (see pike
(n.1)), or the second element may be nique "worthless thing," from a Germanic source.
As in many other riming names, the elements are used without precision, but the lit.
sense is appar. 'a picking or nibbling of bits,' a snatch, snack .... [Century
Dictionary]
The word also turns up 18c. in German, Danish, Swedish. Later "pleasure party the
members of which carry provisions with them on an excursion, as to some place in the
country." Figurative sense of "something easy" is from 1886. Picnic basket is by 1857.
Picnic table is by 1858, originally a folding table used for outdoor dining.
Meanwhile the top Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Indian etc. schools concentrating on STEM
are laughing their asses off.
John Grady 6 hours ago
Activism is now a career path so to differentiate yourself as an activist you have to
have an angle so you look busy. Endless bickering about minutia makes it look like they're
doing something.
Little wonder that here and there sanity nostalgia is gripping the Western world, at least
those isolated portions of it that are not internalising the sinister "new normal." But it is
seemingly to no avail. All commanding positions are firmly in the hands of lunatics, who are
determined to turn a once great and exemplary civilisation into an asylum.
As George Orwell has taught us, language manipulation is at the frontline (yes, I have just
broken one of the cardinal rules of his "
Politics and the English Language ," but not his final injunction to "break any of these
rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous") of politicised mind-bending. The sort of
language we are permitted to use circumscribes the thinking that we shall be allowed to engage
in. The assault on language is, therefore, an integral component of the unrelenting warfare
being waged for the conquest and control of the mind. Word elimination and reassignment of
meaning, as Orwell also presciently noted, are essential elements of the campaign to reformat
the mind and eventually to subjugate it.
A breath-taking example of how this process works was recently unveiled by the thoroughly
brain-washed students of the once prestigious Brandeis University who, this time without
prompting from their faculty elders and betters, voted to ban from their campus such odious
words and phrases as "picnic" and "you guys," for being "oppressive". "Picnic" is prohibited
because it allegedly evokes the lynching of Blacks.
The precocious young intellectuals took pains to produce an entire list of objectionable
words and phrases, shocking award-winning novelist Joyce Carol Oates who tweeted in
bewilderment: "What sort of punishment is doled out for a faculty member who utters the word
'picnic' at Brandeis? Or the phrase [also proscribed – S.K.] 'trigger warning'? Loss of
tenure, public flogging, self-flagellation?"
All three punishments will probably be applied to reactionary professors who go afoul of the
list's rigorous linguistic requirements.
Not to be outdone by the progressive kids on the East Coast, avant-garde
California legislators have passed a law to remove the pronoun "he" from state legal texts.
The momentous reform was initiated by California's new attorney general, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan,
who after looking up the job requirements made the shocking discovery that the law assumed that
the attorney general would be a man.
Upon review, it turned out that the state code and other legal documents were enabling
unacceptable concepts by using pronouns "he," "him" and "his" when referring to the attorney
general and other state-wide elected officials. Appalled, Ms. Bauer-Kahan denounced these
linguistic lapses for not representing "where California is and where California is going." She
inarguably was right on that score at least, which has perhaps also something to do with the
massive exodus of California residents to less complicated parts of the country.
When lawmakers of a state which is rapidly turning into a North American Calcutta have no
concerns more pressing than to revise the use of pronouns in official documents, that sends a
clear message where that state is going, exactly as the smart and thoroughly up-to-date woman
said.
But as a Pakistani
immigrant father in Seattle, state of Washington, discovered to his chagrin, the linguistic
clowning can have very serious personal and political consequences. After checking in his
16-year-old autistic son for treatment in what he thought was a medical facility, Ahmed was
shocked to receive a telephone call where a social worker explained to him that the child he
had originally entrusted to the medical authorities as a son was actually transgender and must
henceforth, under legal penalty of removal, be referred to and treated as a "daughter."
Coming from a traditional society still governed by tyrannical precepts of common sense and
not accustomed to the ways of the asylum where in search of a better life he and his family
inadvertently ended up, the father (a title that like mother, now officially "number one
parent," is also
on the way out ) was able to conceive his tragic predicament only by weaving a complex
conspiracy theory:
"They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to
absolutely want to push us in that direction. We had calls with counsellors and therapists in
the establishment, telling us how important it is for him to change his gender, because
that's the only way he's going to be better out of this suicidal depressive state."
Since in the equally looney state of Washington the age when minors can request a
gender-change surgery without parental consent is 13, the Pakistani parents saw clearly the
writing on the wall and, bless them, they came up with a clever stratagem to outwit their
callous ideological tormentors. Ahmed "assured Seattle Children's Hospital that he would take
his son to a gender clinic and commence his son's transition. Instead, he collected his son,
quit his job, and moved his family of four out of Washington."
Perhaps feeling the heat from the linguistic Gestapo even in his celebrity kitchen, iconic
chef Jamie Oliver has come on board. Absurdly, Jamie vowed
fealty to the ascendant normal by dropping the term "Kaffir lime leaves" from his recipes ,
in fear that the alleged "historically racist slur" would offend South Africans. No evidence at
all has been furnished or demanded of complaints from South Africa in that regard. But it
speaks volumes that someone of Jamie's influence and visibility should nevertheless deem it
prudent to anticipate such criticism even though, should it have materialised, it of course
would not originate from South Africa but from white Western political correctness
commissars.
Jamie is now busy, but not just cooking. He is going over his previously published recipes
in order to expunge all offensive references to kefir leaves. Orwell aficionados will recall
this precious passage from 1984 : "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book
rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed,
every date has been altered." And now every recipe as well. The dystopia fits, does it not, to
a tee even something as seemingly trivial as a cooking show?
But it is not just recipes. Children's fairy tales are also fair game for 1984 revision.
Hollywood actress Natalie Portman ( Star Wars , The Professional , Thor ), inspired
apparently by the new cultural normal, has taken it upon herself not to write, but to re-write,
several classic fairy tales to make them "gender-neutral," so "children can defy gender
stereotypes." Predictably, pronouns were again a major target:
"I found myself changing the pronouns in many of their books because so many of them had
overwhelmingly male characters, disproportionate to reality," quoth Natalie as she put her
linguistic scalpel to such old favourites as The Tortoise and the Hare , Country Mouse and
City Mouse and The Three Little Pigs .
Need we go on, or does the sharp reader already get the general drift? How about
State University of New York student Owen Stevens , who was suspended and censured for
pointing out on his Instagram the ascertainable biological fact that "A man is a man, a woman
is a woman. A man is not a woman and a woman is not a man." (Owen was snitched on by fellow
students, readers from the former Eastern bloc will be amused to learn.) Or the Nebraska
university basketball coach who was suspended for using in a motivational speech the
mysteriously offensive word "plantation"? Or the hip $57,000-a-year NYC school that
banned students from saying "mom" and "dad" , from asking where classmates went on vacation
or wishing anyone "Merry Christmas" or even "Happy Holidays"? Or
female university student Lisa Keogh in Scotland who said in class "women have vaginas"
(who would be better informed than she on that subject?) and are "not as strong as men", who is
facing disciplinary action by the university after fellow classmates complained about her
"offensive and discriminatory" comments? Or
Spanish politician Francisco José Contreras whose Twitter account was blocked as a
warning for 12 hours after he tweeted what some would regard as the self-evident truth that
"men cannot get pregnant" because they have "no uterus or eggs"?
As
Peter Hitchens noted recently "the most bitterly funny story of the week is that a defector
from North Korea thinks that even her homeland is 'not as nuts' as the indoctrination now
forced on Western students."
One of Yeonmi Park's initial shocks upon starting classes at Colombia University was to be
met with a frown after revealing to a staff member that she enjoyed reading Jane Austen. "Did
you know," Ms. Park was sternly admonished, "that those writers had a colonial mind-set? They
were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you."
But after encountering the new requirement for the use of gender-neutral pronouns, Yeonmi
concluded: "Even North Korea is not this nuts North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this
crazy." Devastatingly honest, but not exactly a compliment to what once might have been the
land of her dreams.
Sadly, Hitchens reports that her previous experience served Yeonmi well to adapt to her new
situation: "She came to fear that making a fuss would affect her grades and her degree.
Eventually, she learned to keep quiet, as people do when they try to live under intolerant
regimes, and let the drivel wash over her."
Eastern European readers will unfailingly understand what it is that Hitchens meant to
say.
ay_arrow
Plus Size Model 9 hours ago
No worries! We're talking about two different things. You explicitly mentioned meanings
of words in your initial post. Now you're also alluding to what a psyop officer would
describe as manipulating the cognitive environment of a target group. Cognitive
manipulation is a much larger toolbox and involves things like perception management,
information management, memory retrieval, what old timers refer to as symbol manipulation,
etc.
In psychological warfare literature, symbols are somewhat of a mental bookmark. You can
really mess people up by altering the bookmarks slightly or changing around the files they
reference in a prolonged campaign.
The Nazi swastika is probably the most successful symbol manipulation campaign ever. It
means different things to different people and these meanings have evolved substantially
over time. Each new generation and is indoctrinated with different presentations of the
swastika. The wide latitude of interpretation and extreme views associated with it have
consistently created huge social flash points over the past 90 years.
Lorenz Feedback 9 hours ago
I think somethings are being overlooked on this point, Semantic prosody concerns itself
with the way unusual combinations of words can create intertextual 'resonance' and can
suggest speaker/writer attitude and opinion. Consider the difference with using very
powerful versus utterly compelling when presenting an argument. Some words shape narratives
better than others and trigger a response well known to advertisers and propagandists...and
help shape public opinion.
Yes... changing the context of words has a huge impact...
ie the word white is now seen in the context of numerous pejoratives...
Cautiously Pessimistic 10 hours ago
I fit in here in America less and less with each passing year. I feel like a stranger in
my own country at times. I am sure that is by design.
Max Power 9 hours ago
On the other hand, as soon as people encounter real problems like hunger, bankruptcy, or
homelessness, all this ivy league brainwashing evaporates in an instance. Just a stupid
game played by wealthy white libtards believing in fairytales.
Huxley and Orwell's protagonists could only dream of what Bezos and Gates do. The latter
overthrew the US President and installed one they prefer, and for good reason.
The combined net
worth of the top 100 ultra-rich people in the US has skyrocketed by $195 billion since Biden
took office, according to Bloomberg's calculations .
These giants control the minds of billions.
Nations hock their lands and industries to purchase
their patent medicines. These giants know our faces, our names, all about us, even the cells we
are made of, down to the last protein. Gods have been defeated, gentle Christ and mighty Sabaoth, not to mention angry Allah. Is that a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new'?
(Eccl 1:10)
No, my jaundiced ancestor was right -- it has already been done in the ages before
us.
"... This sort of thing makes me think about what it will take to preserve important cultural memories. The digitalization of knowledge is, in this regard, actually an incredibly grave threat due to the way that digital records can easily be found and altered, essentially instantly. ..."
Listen to the clip. She talks about how her ancestors were enslaved, and how she grew up under segregation (also true: she was
born in 1952, and grew up in a northern suburb of Baton Rouge). But she goes from that awful true history to the "1619 Project" slander.
This is important stuff. If white supremacy really is "weaved into our founding documents and principles," then the US founding is
fatally compromised. You may have been under the impression that slavery and Jim Crow were failures of the US to live up to the promises
of liberty in the founding documents -- and you would have been right! We fought a civil war over this. The Civil Rights Movement
was launched as a great moral crusade to make those promises real for black Americans.
Now, though, history is being rewritten before our eyes by the Left.
In January 2020, the Socialist government of Spain, led by Pedro Sánchez, proposed a bill of profound cultural and political
significance: a "Law of Historical and Democratic Memory." If adopted, this law will bring to completion a twenty-year effort
on the part of the Spanish left to limit speech and reshape civic life. It would establish a national "Council of Memory," an
organ of state comprising public officials as well as professional "experts" and representatives of nongovernmental but politically
reliable organizations. It would elaborate a comprehensive state policy to promote a left view of Spain's early and mid-twentieth
century. The bill mandates a search for the remains of a number of the "disappeared" on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil
War of 1936–39 and the creation of a "National DNA Bank" to help identify them. It prescribes the placement of "memory plaques"
throughout the country to identify sites and personalities associated with "democratic memory" -- the memory of radical opponents
of the Franco regime, comparatively few of whom favored democracy. The "Law of Historical and Democratic Memory" calls on the
Spanish government to identify and honor alleged "victims," without regard to the fact that many were likely involved in mass
killings and extra-judicial executions.
The proposed law is highly punitive. Symbols, meetings, or statements judged to approve of the Franco regime and the victors
in the civil war are deemed infractions against "historical and democratic memory." Proposed penalties include an elaborate schedule
of fines ranging from two hundred to a hundred thousand euros, the closing for a period of six months to two years of any entity
found in violation, and the confiscation of the means or goods involved in any such activities. That this law will dramatically
restrict freedom of expression and thus violate the Spanish Constitution is apparently irrelevant to the Sánchez government.
The Law of Historical and Democratic Memory is the most dramatic, arbitrary, and punitive proposal concerning discussions of
history anywhere in the Western world. Yet the attitude it reflects is fairly common on the left, which increasingly uses governmental
or nongovernmental means to restrict and punish speech that defends rightwing views, movements, and figures past or present. Politicized
interpretations of history are, of course, not new. But Spain's proposed law is a stark sign of the way the contemporary left
seeks to weaponize history to achieve its goals and silence all dissent.
If you think some version of this is not coming here, you are dreaming. We may not have a law -- which would violate the First
Amendment -- but the complete hegemony the Left enjoys within the academy, publishing, and media will create a situation within a
decade, perhaps less, in which historical opinions that run contrary to the 1619 Project claim will be seen as "problematic," and
suppressed. More Payne:
The proposed law in Spain, however, marks a new tendency to weaponize history on behalf of demonstrably distorted and falsified
interpretations that are politically useful rather than intellectually credible. This tendency is the product not of ignorance
but of intense partisanship. It reflects a millenarian mentality that seeks to purge society of influences and attitudes stemming
from the past in order to achieve a kind of purified utopia. Fundamental to this quest is the unrecognized search for a substitute
to religious faith. This new political faith seeks to build a world of perfect equality and harmonized values. It imagines that
progress can be made toward this immaculate world by presenting politically correct figures as martyrs who died for the coming
utopia. This requires, in turn, scapegoating and driving out their supposed victimizers, who are alleged to be authors of the
evils that assail society in its present, unredeemed state.
The tendency to weaponize history has always been strong in ultranationalist movements and is prominent as well among neo-traditional
forces in the non-Western world. In the past, it has been employed by revolutionary movements of diverse stripes. Only recently
has it been adopted by important sectors of major Western political parties -- a sign of their radicalization and their turn toward
repressive measures of social control, even mind control.
The pandemic has stalled further consideration of the "Law of Historical and Democratic Memory." Spain has suffered proportionately
the greatest devastation of any Western country, due in part to the incompetence and irresponsibility of its government. For the
moment, the extreme left seems more fixated on delegitimizing the parliamentary monarchy established by the 1978 constitution,
hoping to replace it with a Latin-American-style radical republic. The proposal to institutionalize "democratic memory" nonetheless
remains. It is the most elaborate project in the Western world for the systematic weaponization of history. It confirms the penchant
of the Spanish left, first expressed two centuries ago, for adopting the most extreme versions of leftwing ideas. It is a sign
of where leftwing movements across the developed world will head if they are allowed to advance unopposed.
Establishing control of the historical narrative -- as opposed to allowing various competing narratives to flourish -- is a hallmark
of a totalitarian regime. From
Live Not By Lies
:
No culture, and no person, can remember everything. A culture's memory is the result of its collective sifting of facts to
produce a story -- a story that society tells itself to remember who it is. Without collective memory, you have no culture, and
without a culture, you have no identity.
The more totalitarian a regime's nature, the more it will try to force people to forget their cultural memories. In Nineteen
Eighty-Four, the role of Winston Smith within the Ministry of Information is to erase all newspaper records of past events to
reflect the current political priorities of the Party. This, said the ex-communist Polish intellectual Leszek Kołakowski, reflects
"the great ambition of totalitarianism -- the total possession and control of human memory."
"Let us consider what happens when the ideal has been effectively achieved," says Kołakowski. "People remember only what they
are taught to remember today and the content of their memory changes overnight, if needed."
We know from the history of communist totalitarianism how this can be achieved through a total state monopoly on information,
including ideological control of education and media. Laura Nicolae's experience at Harvard, where the next generation of American
and global elites are trained, suggests how this can be accomplished even in free countries: by teaching those who aspire to leadership
positions what it is important for them to remember, and what does not matter.
Again, a law like the one proposed in Spain is not really possible in the US, because of our Constitution. But the unwritten law
of the culture, and the gatekeepers of culture, can achieve much the same thing. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a black professor of Classics
at Princeton and a leading revolutionary voice in the discipline,
has called for considering
"the demolition of the discipline itself" to achieve "reparative intellectual justice." You do not have to have a single law passed
by any legislature for the radical Left to achieve the capture of cultural memory.
Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate studios optioned the 1619 Project for film and television projects. Get used to the narrative that
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield puts forth in her address to Al Sharpton's group. It's going to become standard soon enough. Still,
I would like to know if the President agrees with his UN Ambassador that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution
are embodiments of white supremacy.
This sort of thing makes me think about what it will take to preserve important cultural memories. The digitalization of knowledge
is, in this regard, actually an incredibly grave threat due to the way that digital records can easily be found and altered, essentially
instantly.
We won't need a hundred thousand Winstons, sorting through physical records and altering (or destroying) them.
All
we will need is AI. Winston's role is already well within our technical capabilities to design and implement. All that is needed,
essentially, is the agreement and active connivance of academia, social media, news media, and the major publishing companies
to open up their digital databases to centralized access and editorial control. This does not seem like such a high hurdle, especially
given recent examples such as Amazon's delisting of gender-critical titles and the apparent efforts by hundreds of CEO's to coordinate
political action, etc. All it would take is a few such organizations getting together and agreeing that some sort of technologically
centralized political censorship regime is desirable, and then collaborating to set up an umbrella organization that can be expanded
over time to make it happen. No need for government involvement at all.
In the face of such things, what can dissidents do? Well, it's fairly essential to collect and archive as many physical copies
as possible of important work, and even of things like daily newspapers. Digital editions can be manipulated at will; not so with
print versions. But I think it is also important to wage digital guerilla warfare, given our likely inability to reproduce physical
editions in anything approaching volume. It should be taken as given that the corporate-controlled infrastructure of the internet
will not be available to help (and will, in fact, be in active opposition), which means resorting to means such as peer to peer
networks to distribute tracts containing thought crime. Dark websites accessible only via the TOR browser can be set up to distribute
news and information while making it difficult to trace traffic to and from them. These sorts of things are the 21st century equivalent
of the sorts of things communist dissidents did with their underground printing presses.
It's frankly amazing to be thinking about such things.
"... "Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience." ..."
"... all those responsible for this plandemic are guilty of crimes against humanity. ..."
"Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."
Indeed. Dr. Fauxi is a quack and the medical establishment has lost all credibility.
GoodyGumdrops 15 hours ago
Fauci is an evil psychopath and all those responsible for this plandemic are guilty of
crimes against humanity.
This is starting to look really like staging of "Brave new world..." Today's society is
closer to Huxley's "Brave New World" than to Orwell's "1984". But there are clear elements of
both. If you will, the worst of both worlds has come true today.
In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , Aldous
Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931), who was then living in California, wrote to
Orwell. Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.
Huxley generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to Brave New
World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley politely voices his opinion that his
own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the
philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism, whereas his own version is
more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less
wasteful by other means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's with
sadism and fear.
The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Aldous Huxley.
Could Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us?
Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of advertisements
that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of
them unnecessary. Then comes COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the
Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that be tragically deferred
to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there
was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty
years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental.
These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a form of gene therapy . There
are potential
disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are
nothing new .
Since there have been no actual, long-term trials, no one who contributed to this massive
drug experiment knows what the long-term consequences might be. There have been countless
adverse injuries and deaths already for which the government-funded vaccine producers will
suffer no liability. With each passing day, new side-effects have begun to appear: blood clots,
seizures, heart failure.
As new adverse reactions become known despite the censorship employed by most media outlets,
the more the Biden administration is pushing the vaccine, urging private corporations to make
it mandatory for all employees. Colleges are making them mandatory for all students returning
to campus.
The leftmedia are advocating the "shunning" of the unvaccinated. The self-appointed
virtue-signaling Democrats are furious at anyone and everyone who declines the jab. Why? If
they are protected, why do they care? That is the question. Same goes for the ridiculous mask
requirements . They protect no one but for those in operating rooms with their insides
exposed, yet even the vaccinated are supposed to wear them!
Months ago, herd immunity was near. Now Fauci and the CDC say it will never be achieved? Now
the Pfizer shot will necessitate yearly booster shots. Pfizer
expects to make $21B this year from its COVID vaccine! Anyone who thinks this isn't about
money is a fool. It is all about money, which is why Fauci, Gates, et al. were so determined to
convince the public that HCQ and ivermectin, both of which are effective, prophylactically and
as treatment, were not only useless, but dangerous. Both of those drugs are tried, true, and
inexpensive. Many of those thousands of N.Y. nursing home fatalities might have been prevented
with the use of one or both of those drugs. Those deaths are on the hands of Cuomo and his
like-minded tyrants drunk on power.
Months ago, Fauci, et al. agreed that children were at little or no risk of getting COVID,
of transmitting it, least of all dying from it. Now Fauci is demanding that all teens be
vaccinated by the end of the year! Why? They are no more in danger of contracting it now than
they were a year ago. Why are parents around this country not standing up to prevent their kids
from being guinea pigs in this monstrous medical experiment? And now they are " experimenting
" on infants. Needless to say, some have died. There is no reason on Earth for teens, children,
and infants to be vaccinated. Not one.
Huxley also wrote this:
"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they
will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be
able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height
of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats ."
Perhaps this explains the left's hysterical impulse to force these untested shots on those
of us who have made the decision to go without it. If they've decided that it is the thing to
do, then all of us must submit to their whims. If we decide otherwise, it gives them the
righteous right to smear all of us whom they already deplore.
As C.J. Hopkins has
written , the left means to criminalize dissent. Those of us who are vaccine-resistant are
soon to be outcasts, deprived of jobs and entry into everyday businesses. This kind of
discrimination should remind everyone of ...oh, Germany three quarters of a century ago. Huxley
also wrote, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other
sets of people are human." That is precisely what the left is up to, what BLM is planning, what
Critical Race Theory is all about.
Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, said these new vaccines are "hacking the
software of life." Vaccine-promoters claim he never said this, but he did. Bill Gates called
the vaccines " an operating
system " to the horror of those promoting it, a Kinsley gaffe. Whether it is or isn't
hardly matters at this point, but these statements by those behind the vaccines are a clue to
what they have in mind.
There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love
their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears , so to speak, producing a kind of
painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their
liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
This is exactly what the left is working so hard to effect: a pharmacologically compromised
population happy to be taken care of by a massive state machine. And while millions of people
around the world have surrendered to the vaccine and mask hysteria, millions more, about 1.3
billion, want no part of this government vaccine mania.
In his letter to Orwell, Huxley ended with the quote cited above and again here because it
is so profound:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Huxley nailed the left more than seventy years ago, perhaps because leftists have never
changed throughout the ages. 61,497 173
Fat Beaver 14 hours ago (Edited)
If i am to be treated as an outcast or an undesirable because i refuse the vax, i will
immediately become someone that has zero reverence for the law, and i can only imagine 10's
of millions will be right there with me.
strych10 14 hours ago
Welcome to the club.
We have coffee in the corner and occasional meetings at various bars.
Dr. Chihuahua-González 13 hours ago
I'm a doctor, you could contact me anytime and receive your injection.
Fat Beaver 13 hours ago (Edited)
I've gotta feeling the normie world you think you live in is about to change drastically
for the worse...
sparky139 PREMIUM 10 hours ago
You mean you'll sign papers that you injected us *wink *wink? And toss it away?
bothneither 2 hours ago
Oh geez how uncommon, another useless doctor with no Scruples who sold out to big Pharma.
Please have my Gates sponsored secret sauce.
Unknown 6 hours ago (Edited)
Both Huxley and Orwell are wrong. Neoliberalism (the use of once office for personal
gains) is by far the most powerful force that subjugates the inept population. Neoliberalism
demolished the mighty USSR, now destroying the USA, and will do the same to China. And this
poison dribbles from the top to bottom creating self-centered population that is unable to
unite, much less resist.
Deathrips 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Tylers.
You gonna cover Tucker Carlsons show earlier today on FOX news about vaxxx deaths? almost 4k
reported so far this year.
Is the population of india up in arms or is the MSM?
Nelbev 10 hours ago
Facebook just flagged/censored it, must sign into see vid, Tuck also failed to mention
mRNA and adenovirus vaxes were experimental and not FDA approved nor gone through stage III
trials. Beside deaths, have blood clot issues. Good he mentioned how naturally immune if get
covid and recovered, better than vaccine, but not covered for bogus passports. Me personally,
I would rather catch covid and get natural immunity than be vaccinated with an untested
experimental vaccine.
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
His making of the gamma and delta workforce was quite prescient. We are seeing it play out
now, we all know gammas and delta. There was a really good ABC tv movie made in 1980 Brave
New World. Excellent show, it shows the Alphas and names them Rothchild and so on. Shows what
these people specifically want to do to the world. I wonder if the ruling psychopaths
actually wait for science fiction authors to plan the future and then follow their
script.
Mineshaft Gap 10 hours ago
If Huxley were starting out today no major publisher would touch him.
They'd tell him Brave New World doesn't have a diverse enough of cast. Even the mostly
likable totalitarian guy named Mustapha turns out to be white! A white Mustapha. It's soooo
triggering. Also, what's wrong with a little electronic fun and drug taking, anyway? Lighten
up , Aldous.
Meanwhile his portrait of shrieking medieval Catholic nuns who think they're possessed in
The Devils of Loudun might remind the leftist editors too uncomfortably of their own recent
bleating performances at "White Fragility" struggle sessions.
The "England never lost control of its American Colonies" is a very long running theme.
Yet, does it really matter which is the King of the Outlaw Nations? Certainly there are many
shared attributes beyond language, elite conception of exceptionalism being a major trait.
Neoliberalism certainly arose in England first and was exported here. And there are clearly
linkages in the development of WW1 propaganda to get the USA to enter the war along with the
post-war Anti-Communist Crusade that became the Cold War. But it was the CIA/NSA that
developed the 5-Eyes, but prior to that there was Echelon and many other programs that went
against the UK's interest. And as Orwell foresaw, Airstrip-1 will always be allied with
Oceania. It serves the same purpose next to Europe that Japan does next to Asia. The UK's
occupied, but few ever note that anymore. As sinners and murderers, both are pretty equal,
but they aren't Siamese Twins either where one will die if separated from the other. As
things now stand, both should hang together.
The "Five Eyes" countries, who just happen to all be Spawn of Perfidious Albion, seem to
be more and more infected with the virus of Orwellianism (itself an idea of Anglo culture).
Perhaps parallel to the out-of-control "Five Eyes" apparatus, or as a subset of it, there is
an unspoken out-of-control "Five Mouths" apparatus, of which the NYT is a key outlet ...
Let's hope other countries do everything they can keep that virus out of their systems,
and inoculate themselves and their populations well.
@canadian cents Orwellian is not an english invention. Actually Orwell translated the book
from the russian original We by Jewgeni Semjatin. Written 1920 in St. Petersburg. Maybe its
the best translation in history of literature. He translated not by word or even plot points.
He managed to translate culturally.
He took more than 15 years for that and expressed his admiration for the book before by
saying, he wishes the book will get the best translator in the world. Booth books are
brilliant. I really recommend to read the original. You will understand very clear, where
Orwell see the differences between anglo and russian.
For the rest, i am very agree with you. I can see fractals of the book now everyday and
everywhere.
If you are using Fakebook you are part of the problem. I am pretty tired of people who use
these antisocial media platforms complaining when these platforms do what they do by their very
nature.
Notable quotes:
"... The "reality police" have infiltrated down to the lowest levels now to look for "new normal" violators anywhere. ..."
"... I am pretty tired of people who use these antisocial media platforms complaining when these platforms do what they do by their very nature. ..."
"... Remember when Eric Schmidt got his panties in a twist because some enterprising soul had done some digital digging into his private life? ..."
"... All social media Big Tech platforms are SARPA surveillance programs that added some cool logo, a young captured jew type as Boss and some marketing to morons and lemmings. ..."
"... The sheer narcissism and desperation on these platforms is disgusting and disturbing. Big data and pedophiles love Facebook. ..."
Last week I did a web search for a quote by Goebbels concerning truth and found one
regarding TheState and TheBigLie on TheJewishVirtualLibrary. After posting it to Fakebook, I
was notified that the quote violated "community standards" and wouldn't be seen by anyone
else (except the FBI, or local LEOs perhaps).
Being who I am, I posted the same quote with a link to where I found it
[TheJewishVirtualLibrary] and was notified no one would see any of my posts for a week.
Again, being who I am, I posted a video from TheBabylonBee that illustrated the danger of
likening everything to Nazis, and was notified of a month-long ban.
I then downloaded my data in two formats and deleted the account.
Living life stupid might be inclusive and entertaining, but there's too many options
available to make ignorance enjoyable.
...It is partially Brave New World with a dash of 1984 and a healthy helping of Mordor,
all of which is brightened and made more alluring and addicting with Sexual Revolution.
The "reality police" have infiltrated down to the lowest levels now to look for "new
normal" violators anywhere. If CJ thinks he's a nobody, then I am a sub-sub-sub-nobody, yet I
have had my user account suspended twice now at an obscure news aggregation website,
Fark.com , for making comments that
apparently constitute "Covid misinformation."
Once was when I commented on a story that
stated that there is a need to vaccinate even those that have recovered from actually having
Covid. I said something like, "Why would you need to vaccinate someone whose immune system is
functioning properly and already did the job naturally?" Apparently, even mentioning that
humans have an immune system is now verboten, and thus my comment was deleted and my account
was suspended for 24 hours. The next time I was suspended was just over this past weekend
when I commented on a story about someone ignoring covid rules.
I stated something to the
effect that we should ALL be ignoring the public health "experts" who are petty tyrants.
Well, they have now suspended my account for 72 hours again for "covid misinformation."
Despite being amused that my opinions are somehow "misinformation," it's certainly
enraging that speaking plain common truth is becoming more and more difficult.
I am pretty tired of people who use these antisocial media platforms complaining when
these platforms do what they do by their very nature. They weren't set up to help us they
were set up to enslave us. Get a clue, Farcebook and Twatter et al are not your friends!
All social media Big Tech platforms are SARPA surveillance programs that added some cool
logo, a young captured jew type as Boss and some marketing to morons and lemmings. Absolute
joke. The sheer narcissism and desperation on these platforms is disgusting and disturbing.
Big data and pedophiles love Facebook.
Given that we no longer trust the intentions of most public and private institutions,
i am looking for signs of a new phenomenon, which i call "Fear of new developments in
science or technology". ...due to the belief that said developments will only be used
against us, either by the state or oligarchy. Anyone have thoughts on this?
When I read "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley I considered it an improbable fantasy. But
it certainly does seem now that something of the kind is in our future, if the "best people"
have their way. Another good treatment of the subject is the short story "Welcome to the
Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"Digital giants have been playing an increasingly
significant role in wider society... how well does this monopolism correlate with the public interest?,"
Russian
President Vladimir Putin
said
on
January 27, 2021.
"Where is the distinction between successful global businesses, sought-after services and big data consolidation on the
one hand, and the efforts to rule society[...] by substituting legitimate democratic institutions, by restricting the
natural right for people to decide how to live and what view to express freely on the other hand?"
Was Mr. Putin defending democracy? Hardly.
What apparently worries him is that the
Big Tech might gain the power to control society at the expense of his government.
What must be a nightmare for him -- as for many Americans -- is that
the Tech giants
were able to censor news favorable to Trump and then censor Trump himself
. How could the U.S. do this to the
president of a great and free country?
Putin made these comments at the Davos World Economic Forum, in which he and Chinese President Xi Jinping, sped on by the
"Great Reset" of a fourth industrial revolution, used
enlightened
phrases
to mask dark plans for nation states in a globalist New World Order. Thus did Xi caution attendees "to adapt to
and guide globalization, cushion its negative impact, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations."
In March 2019, Putin signed a
law
"imposing
penalties for Russian internet users caught spread 'fake news' and information that presents 'clear disrespect for society,
government, state symbols the constitution and government institutions.'" Punishments got even heavier with new laws in
December.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to prison for more than three years (with a year off for
time served), in part because he revealed photos of a lavish Russian palace allegedly belonging to Putin on the coast of
the Black Sea. Its accouterments supposedly
include
an $824 toilet brush
. Many of the thousands of people protesting Navalny's imprisonment have since been protesting
Putin by waving gold-painted toilet brushes.
How nice that American Big Tech companies is
pushing
democracy in Russia
-- even while it is denying it at home.
Do you notice how many leaders in Europe have
risen to condemn censorship in America even though many in Europe are censoring their citizens as well, and are not exactly
fans of the person who was being censored, former President Donald J. Trump? Like Putin, they probably do not want Big Tech
competing with their governments, either.
The power-sharing of the U.S. Federal government with Big Tech appears a recipe for
unharnessed power and corruption.
Navalny
caught
on
right away, saying:
"This precedent will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world. In Russia as well. Every time
when they need to silence someone, they will say: 'this is just common practice, even Trump got blocked on Twitter.'"
What watchdog, if any, is now restraining Big Tech in America?
It has
become quite clear that Big Tech's censorship may well have cost Trump the election, even if one ultimately finds that
election fraud did not.
Big Tech took it upon itself to censor an exposé -- published by the
New
York Post
on October 24, 2020, as well as
follow-up
exposés
-- reporting that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, had sold his influence to China and Ukraine, and had raked in
millions for the family.
The Media Research Center (MRC)
found
that
"One of every six Biden voters we surveyed (17%) said they would have abandoned the Democratic candidate had they known the
facts about one or more of these news stories". That information might well have changed the outcome in all six of the
swing states Biden reportedly won.
Last August, Twitter also undertook
censoring
the trailer
of an explosive documentary entitled "
The
Plot Against the President.
" The film, narrated by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) with commentary by leading members of the
Republican Party, exposes leading members of the Democratic Party and their deep state allies, many of whom
knowingly
used
phony evidence to frame President Trump and some in his circle to try convince Americans that he and his campaign had
colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election.
The film claims, using with recently declassified information, that President
Barack
Obama,
as well
Hillary
Clinton
, were involved in an almost four-year attempted coup incomparably more undemocratic than any riot at the
Capital Building on January 6.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee,
claimed
in
August 2020 that Biden also knew of the ongoing efforts to unseat Trump. Nevertheless, Trump did not target them, perhaps
to avoid dividing the country even further.
According to the
Washington Times
, the Twitter account of the movie, which debuted
in October 2020,
attracted
30,000 followers
. Twitter blacklisted it for a day, but after a public uproar, put the popular documentary back. Our
question is: How many blacklistings did Twitter not put back?
The January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was a pivotal event for Trump and the Republican Party. Prior to January 6,
President Trump had offered to deploy 10,000 troops to the capitol, according to his former Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows.
The Pentagon and the Department of Justice had also offered help but were also reportedly
turned
down
by the US Capitol Police The problem, apparently, was "
optics"
--
about a Capitol now surrounded by barbed wire and thousands of troops, which the current Administration now seems to
like
.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for further details about the event were also rejected -- it is not clear by
whom. It is ridiculous, therefore, for anyone to frame the riots, ugly as they were, as a seditious "insurrection,"
particularly in light of what appears to be a massive security failure that could have averted the violence. One thing is
certain: the timing of the event could not have been more perfect for opposition groups, which is probably why it had been
planned for weeks before January 6.
What these efforts and the media did achieve was an end to all attempts to ascertain election fraud at a time when Vice
President Mike Pence was counting Electoral College ballots, and allowing speeches from those supporting that claim. Some
politicians even
called
for
the resignation of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, and referred them to the
ethics
committee
for even suggesting an election audit of battleground states, despite
questions
having
been asked -- with no objections -- concerning the results of the 2000, 2004 and 2016 presidential elections.
Ultimately, the result of the latest "witch hunt" against President Trump, as it has
been
called
,
was a contrived impeachment attempt to bar Trump from a future presidential bid -- a kangaroo court devoid of due process,
hearings, witnesses, and evidence. The prosecution, however, was undeniably eloquent in evoking "democracy" for a totally
undemocratic procedure that justly resulted in Trump's acquittal.
Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter banned Trump and some of his supporters from their cyber domains. An alternative social
media platform, Parler, was banned from the
Apple
and Google
app stores, and then completely
closed
down by Amazon
.
Meanwhile, mainstream social media platforms were
reportedly
used
to rally and organize carry out
riots
in American cities
last year. No one was penalized.
Do not, however, expect such slackness now.
According
to
Fox News:
"People like Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have made various public
statements labeling Republicans as extremists -- with Ocasio-Cortez claiming the GOP has 'white supremacist
sympathizers' within its ranks, and Brennan claiming 'domestic violent extremists' in the form of far-right supporters
of President Trump are more dangerous than Al Qaeda."
Columnist and radio host Jeffrey Kuhner
warns
that
a new bill, H.R. 350, "is the liberals' equivalent of the Patriot Act redux. This time, however, it is not aimed at Islamic
jihadists. Rather, it directly targets Trump patriots." Kuhner writes that the bill "has the full backing of the Democratic
congressional leadership, the Biden administration... Big Media and Big Tech."
"The bill empowers the Deep State to monitor, surveil and spy on American citizens' social media accounts, phone calls,
political meetings and even infiltrate pro-Trump or 'Stop the Steal' rallies.
"Conservatives who are deemed potentially 'seditious' or 'treasonous' can be arrested and jailed, fined and/or lose
their employment. The goal is simple: to crush all dissent to the Biden regime."
Moreover, last month the new Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin,
ordered
a
"stand down "of the entire military for 60 days, "so each service, each command and each unit can have a deeper
conversation about this issue [extremism]." Normally stand downs last only a few hours or days and do not involve the
entire military. Austin, in addition, has pledged to "rid our ranks of racists and extremists."
These are words that can be applied to anyone dreamed up, including Trump supporters, and based, of course, on nothing but
propaganda.
Austin's plan is therefore needless, divisive and dangerous, considering the foreign dangers now circling their prey. This
punishment of the regime's "foes" makes one wonder what is next. Are we already marching in lockstep with Russia and China?
The way to unite and strengthen the United States is not through suppression and punishment but through political power
with checks and balances, a free press and closer adherence to the Constitution.
But here, again, there seems to be. a problem. The Federalist
wrote
in
July:
"According to a new Quillette survey
released
last
month, 70 percent of self-identifying liberals want to rewrite the U.S. Constitution 'to a new Americans constitution
that better reflects our diversity as a people.'"
Oh, so that is what we lack: diversity!
What can Americans Do? We are presently at a tipping point in America. Communist China is working hard and is focused on
global domination; we are just messing around. In an increasingly digital world, the war against infringements on our
freedoms most probably needs to be fought largely in the digital and cyber-space. That is why ending censorship in both the
traditional and social media is such an important priority. First, break up the Big Tech companies. Let them become the
utilities they originally claimed to be, or else be liable to lawsuits as other publishers are.
We do take some comfort that whereas dictatorships in authoritarian countries such as China and Russia is vertical -- from
the top down -- in America, the central government shares power with the states from the bottom up, and with powers
separated: the executive, the judiciary and the legislative.
Fortunately, governors
such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, Greg Abbott in Texas and Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma are now moving
legislatively
to
counter federal laws that may have adverse effects on freedom of speech, jobs, election integrity, the energy industry, the
first or second amendments and general constitutional rights.
This does not speak, however, to the major issue here -- that
democracy cannot
survive in a country where a few technocrats and oligarchs can choose to deny access to information or platforms to
candidates running for office
. It is simply unacceptable that they alone -- unelected, unappointed, untransparent
and unaccountable -- can deem what is "harmful" to society.
The job now for all of
us is to prevent the United States from slowly becoming a full-blown tyranny.
holdbuysell
21 hours ago
The
irony of Apple and the '1984' commercial they ran couldn't be more resounding.
Max21c
12 hours ago
(Edited)
remove
link
The
power-sharing
of
the U.S. Federal government with Big Tech appears a
recipe
for unharnessed power and corruption
...
This is nothing new. It's just wider spread and they're
more blatant and open about their secret police criminality, war crimes against civilians and oppression.
The
terrorists and tyrants in the CIA, FBI, military secret police have always created & abused secret police powers
to rule over America, rob & cheat people, take other people's property & intellectual works & intellectual
property, sick the secret police on innocent American civilians, engage in political persecution of innocent
American civilians, engage in economic warfare & industrial espionage, enrich & empower themselves and their kind,
and essentially wage a war of persecution & oppression & thievery against targeted American civilians.
BDB
20 hours ago
(Edited)
remove
link
We
never had a democracy.
When elections are a media processes and presidents are appointed by central bankers and not elected?
Using the ideology of democracy( " rule by the people") is another way govt belittles us.
The
democracy dogma is another mind control meme for power over others.
Big
Tech (Corporations) and Big Brother (Government) are joined by a revolving door of jobs and corruption
already. There is no becomes. It has already became. Like since before I was born.
Ranger4564
15 hours ago
There is no separation, and there really is no door, it's the same damn organization, just different
outfits and an alias to hide the identity.
Think of it as the subsidiary of a subsidiary of a holding company that is owned by a venture capitalist,
that is controlled by the cabal.
In
fact, most companies people think are independent corporations are actually owned by the cabal in such a
structure. I don't even need to fabricate this.
JohnGaltsChild
12 hours ago
remove
link
Big
tech + Banks = Slavery
OldNewB
13 hours ago
Game over for freedom. When corporations take over and have more power than your own elected government,
greed and power wins out over freedom. America sold itself to the highest bidder.
Max21c
12 hours ago
That's because the crazy people from the intelligence community and secret police community have
basically completely taken over after 911 with the willing collaboration of the puppet press, puppet
journalists, and puppet judges & puppet political class... and they've established what is openly &
blatantly a puppet government.
Also note that they lost in Hong Kong and got beat badly by a Bus Driver in Venezuela. And they're
being routed and defeated and outclassed and out maneuvered all over the globe.
Now let's move to another oracle, a self-described expert of what in the Beltway is known as
the "Greater Middle East": Robert Kagan, co-founder of PNAC, certified warmongering neo-con,
and one-half of the famous Kaganate of Nulands – as the joke went across Eurasia –
side by side with his wife, notorious Maidan cookie distributor Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland,
who's about to re-enter government as part of the Biden-Harris administration.
Kagan is back pontificating in – where else – Foreign Affairs, which published
his latest superpower
manifesto . That's where we find this absolute pearl:
That Americans refer to the relatively low-cost military involvements in Afghanistan and
Iraq as "forever wars" is just the latest example of their intolerance for the messy and
unending business of preserving a general peace and acting to forestall threats. In both
cases, Americans had one foot out the door the moment they entered, which hampered their
ability to gain control of difficult situations.
So let's get this straight. The multi-trillion dollar Forever Wars are "relatively
low-cost"; tell that to the multitudes suffering the Via Crucis of US crumbling infrastructure
and appalling standards in health and education. If you don't support the Forever Wars –
absolutely necessary to preserve the "liberal world order" – you are "intolerant".
"Preserving a general peace" does not even qualify as a joke, coming from someone absolutely
clueless about realities on the ground. As for what the Beltway defines as "vibrant civil
society" in Afghanistan, that in reality revolves around millennia-old tribal custom codes: it
has nothing to do with some neocon/woke crossover. Moreover, Afghanistan's GDP – after so
much American "help" – remains even lower than Saudi-bombed Yemen's.
Exceptionalistan will not leave Afghanistan. A deadline of May 1st was negotiated in Doha
last year for the US/NATO to remove all troops. That's not gonna happen.
The spin is already turbocharged: the Deep State handlers of Joe "Crash Test Dummy" Biden
will not respect the deadline. Everyone familiar with the New Great Game on steroids across
Eurasia knows why: a strategic lily pad must be maintained at the intersection of Central and
South Asia to help closely monitor – what else – Brzezinski's worst nightmare: the
Russia-China strategic partnership.
As it stands we have 2,500 Pentagon + 7,000 NATO troops + a whole lot of "contractors" in
Afghanistan. The spin is that they can't leave because the Taliban – which de facto
control from 52% to as much as 70% of the whole tribal territory – will take over.
To see, in detail, how this whole sorry saga started, non-oracle skeptics could do worse
than check Volume 3 of my Asia Times archives: Forever Wars:
Afghanistan-Iraq, part 1 (2001-2004) . Part 2 will be out soon. Here they will find how the
multi-trillion dollar Forever Wars – so essential to "preserve the peace" –
actually developed on the ground, in total contrast to the official imperial narrative
influenced, and defended, by Kagan.
With oracles like these, the US definitely does not need enemies.
The multi-trillion dollar Forever Wars are "relatively low-cost"; tell that to the
multitudes suffering the Via Crucis of US crumbling infrastructure and appalling standards
in health and education
Spot on. It's amazing that anyone gives voice to Kagan's lack of credibility whatsoever.
That Foreign Affairs does says more about its own unreliability as a source of
valuable opinion. But apparently the "Forever Wars" depiction is bothering the neo-con
Zionists, so we can expect a lot more propaganda from them or worse, false flag attacks to
revive their awful agenda.
This was predictable given the ever decreasing returns for the Empires as they get
hollowed out by their parasitic financial systems. Somehow, I doubt Orwell would be at all
surprised.
Who needs outright censorship when you can just willy-nilly change a words meaning? Or, is
that just another form of censorship?
Yes, I am sure you have read 1984 where the Ministry of Truth took great pride in constantly
issuion new revision of the official dictionary, each issue thinner than the previous one.
This is what is going on now, in addition to change the meaning of words asyou rightly point
out. In my country they have also changed the names of provinces and eliminated counties just
to make people disorientated and confused, thus easy to control.
Undermining faith in the North American Terrorist Organization (NATO) is a Thought Crime
of the highest order!
The punishment for this crime is being forced to watch a conga line of Anglo-American
media mouthpieces blather about whatever is their Moral Outrage of the Month--Clockwork
Orange style.
"So settling on this penny-ante, trivial bullshit -- tattling, hall monitoring,
speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways -- is all
they have. It's all they are. It's why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in
which the public holds them."
It's also why the institutions they and those who think like them control won't last.
With social institutions come problems, with problems comes problem-solving, with
problem-solving comes a set of skills that these child-people do not have. Unfortunately,
neither do a lot of people who complain about them. They're all deposits of Dunning-Kruger
Nation.
Not to underestimate the damage they can do, especially since it seems to be the only
thing they're capable of, but the fact is, the best they'll ever manage is a Pyrrhic Victory.
So, let's call this The Pyrrhic Victory of Dunning-Kruger Nation .
I am continually amazed that Americans miss the obvious. The answer to bigotry is satire
of that same bigotry. From Shakespeare onwards satire was the weapon that most angered and
frightened the bigots. George Carlin and today Jimmy Dore were and are satirists.
Many people feel like this speech police apparatus has been implemented overnight. They
feel that we went from being a relatively free society, to a society where people are
jailed for memes and hunted down by journalists in private chat rooms for saying banned
words.
On a larger scale, this substitution is taking place via a process of moving from
"constraints A" to "constraints B", with an intermediate period of loosening of constraints.
A temporary "near total freedom", which peaked circa 2000 – 2010 mostly, before going
into decline.
As was with race. At first, one was supposed to view people as individuals, and view them
in a color-blind manner. Today, viewing people as individuals in a color-blind manner is
already defined as "racist" by GloboHomo, and we're back to mandatory viewing of people
through a racial group filter, but not the old "filter A", but a new "filter B".
Race used to be a "social construct", as did gender, but now both are again being
presented as manifestations of a transcendental reality, only a redefined one.
Like with sexuality. Everybody screwing everybody turned out to be a temporary transition
from "fascism A" to "fascism B", and now this transition is over and there are even more
rules and traps in the mating ritual, than back in the 19th century.
And gender and fetish-wise, people are now "born this way", sometimes "into the wrong
body", as society has regressed all the way to bronze-age metaphysics. But use modern tech to
enforce them.
Same with censorship. For a number of decades there was less and less censorship, in the
west, then this temporary period of freedom peaked, and now it's also all regressing back to
19th century levels of censorship, but through a new filter, applied by the new hidden
elites.
Another excellent gas-lighting misdirection by GloboHomo -- those normal liberals who want
back the political and lifestyle freedoms of the 1990s are "the fascists". Bravo. Just like
every time urban blacks with illegal pistols chimpout, this means it's all the fault of white
peasants with legal rifles.
The autogenophylia mental-beakdown-promoting sissy hypno porn of today also works like
this. First it promises "infinite pleasure and freedom" by deconstructing the vulnerable
user's current personality, and then after this transitional freedom from restrictions and
resulting waves of dopamine, starts building up forcefully new structures, even more rigid
than the initial ones, thus producing a new artificial personality. Thus a mostly functional
depressed autist is first dismantled, and then reconstructed by a computer program into a
psycho who maintains a permanent manic phase through relentless use of drugs and dildo
riding, and if during the inevitable depressive crash he off himself -- then this is simply
proof how fascist this cruel world is. Kek.
**
The larger misdirection: who are the elites and what is the system? Apparently the
institutional, corporate, creative, academic, and media components of the system are all
constantly fighting the system. Neither Harvard, nor Google, nor Parliament, nor ministers,
nor governors, nor CNN, nor NYT, nor CNBC, nor the mayor, nor the chief of FBI are "the
system, no, they are all in fact "fighting the system". Who is them this mysterious system?
Why, it's the white provincial. He is "the system" somehow, and everything is his fault. And
after you finally put this filthy kulak in his place (or "deprogram" him from his fascism),
then the injustices and inefficiencies of life will evaporate.
The larger transitional freedom phase: In a sense WWI was the culmination of the
dismantling of the old "king-and-aristocracy" based world order. This was followed by a
period in which "all sane people" promoted democracy based on transparency of institutions,
rotation of elites through fair elections, freedom of speech, all that jazz. Now, however, a
new layer of unelected elites has taken the place of the old pre-WWI unelected elites, with
all that entails. The 20th century was to a large extent a larger transitional phase of
temporary freedom from "rigidity A" to "rigidity B", with many smaller cycles taking places,
especially after WWII.
**
Everyone is on constant alert already, and speaking out against these people just draws
their attention. They are soulless monsters, fixated on power. People who have accomplished
nothing in their lives, these failed novelists, failed poets, failed comedians, failed
whatevers are, via this tattletale mercenary work, able to exercise the power to destroy
the lives of people who have accomplished things.
Back in Soviet times if one is a dissident this is impossible, thus one is either a)
clinically insane, or b) a foreign agent, or c) a domestic terrorist. At certain times it was
more fashionable to label people foreign agents, in others -- insane psychos.
To this day people get lost in the cloud of bullshit how "private censorship" is OK and
"state censorship" isn't (although in places like the UK and Canada the distinction is
already mostly imaginary). Like with any cloud of bullshit, you just take a step back and
look at the facts, and do not allow GloboHomo to change definitions and descriptions.
You take a step back, and from outside the cloud of bullshit you ask: "Can a person tell
off-color jokes and state their political or religious values in this country without being
censored and punished? Yes or no? No but no if. Yes or no?" If the answer is yes, then this
is a free society. If the answer is no, then this is not a free society, and it doesn't
matter in the least what mechanisms the system uses to achieve this
un-freedom–"private" institutions or "state" institutions, "hired bullies", or
"activist volunteers".
Lesson 1: private companies above a certain size become political actors. They
should be treated as such. Possibly defined by a mix of variable including annual profits,
budget, reach, direct and indirect employee number. Those definitions should be anchored by
the state and reviewed say once a decade. Lesson 2: private companies have the right to enforce dress, speech, and behavior
codes inside their offices, within reason. They cannot have the right to enforce the same
when their workers are not at work, and certainly can't be allowed to punish workers for how
they dressed or talked when not at work. Lesson 2a: private companies should have the state-protected right to refuse service
in non-essentials (who to bake a cake for), but not have the right to refuse essentials
(staple foods, electricity, water, banking). What is essential and non-essential should be
decided via public debate and anchored to specific rules about once a decade. Lesson 3: the right to freely expressing political opinion must be recognized as a
basic human right protected by national and international law. It is not a privilege, it is a
right. If it is not a right, then this is not a democracy, or even a modern civilization, but
actual neo-feudalism.
**
Jesters like Trump and Farage, God bless them, forced the new system to stop with the
pretense, and shift from the slow boil to high speed, so that every sane person could finally
also stop pretending and accept what is taking place.
Now the new elites-not elites finally stopped also pretending that the masses are
"citizens" and began treating them for real like "dumb filthy serfs".
Did you really think you can just simply vote any way you want to?
Did you really think you can just simply say what you want to say?
Did you really think you can just simply have freedom of faith and morals?
Did you really think you can just simply protest in front of Parliament?
Did you really think that constitutional mechanisms will simply remain functional?
Did you really think the media will just simply be neutral and truthful?
Did you really think you can just simply tell any joke you want?
Did you really think you can just simply remain middle class with normal incomes and private
property?
Did you really think the police will just simply protect you from looters and arsonists?
Did you really think you can just simply defend yourself if the police doesn't interfere?
Did you really think you can just simply decide what is democratic and what isn't and what
state institutions can and can't do?
Did you really think you can just simply decide what is and what isn't a monopoly, and what
corporations can and can't do?
Did you really think you can just simply get to have a say in how much money we'll print and
which businesses get to be propped up?
Did you really think you can just simply have a say in what gets taught in schools?
Did you really think you can just simply have your kids not snitch on you to the
authorities?
Did you really think you can just simply decide which medications to take and which not to
take?
**
They're going big time now. This is no longer just political censorship. Now, you can be
censored for "disinformation," which means "disagreeing with the media at all."
This moving of goalposts and renaming things is a very important part of GloboHomo's
instrumentarium.
Moving goalposts : (especially in terms of various "minorities") from "we are
totally like you let us have equal rights" to "you're the pathological ones, now we get to
control your life". Changing names and meanings : especially terms like "fascism", "racism", "terrorism",
"hate", "radical", "rape", "abuse" and such, and constant fluidity of what these terms mean
is not harmless, far from it.
Because once the branders brand you as one of those, the system reacts as a whole to
punish you. Once definitions are not anchored, but constantly reinterpreted by the modern
equivalent of self-appointed "Old Testament judges", you've just lost your civilization.
They'll even define what is a political opinion or religious belief and what is "unhinged
hate", and the system will react to you according to their definition.
Lesson: any sane society must have a) anchored major goalposts that can only
be changed through referendum; b) must have language purity rules and laws that do not
allow definitions to be changed willy-nilly, and those who do are shamed and fined. Any
change in definition must be debated and approved by some body such as a national academy of
science.
The agenda is to somehow silence half of the population of the United States. They
obviously can't single them all out for humiliation, professional destruction and prison,
so they are going to freeze targets, personalize them, and make examples of them. This is
called "a chilling effect," and it is the current core plan of the ruling class to maintain
control over a population that views them as illegitimate masters.
Hopefully this produces the effect of them being increasingly seen as just "a dangerous
part of life", a permanent external irritant that exists on the spectrum from "annoying" to
"lethal". Thus in turn means a total loss of any moral authority they may have wielded even
just 5 years ago, so that's go.
Let's hope they have not succeeded in poisoning culture to the extent of the inevitable
reaction backlash actually being fashy.
These journalists are not simply tools of the ruling elite, enforcers of a bizarre set
of ever-shifting rules about what you are allowed to think, and they are not simply
anti-intellectual witch-hunters lashing out at things they can't hope to understand. It is
deeper than that. These odious fiends are fundamentally destroyers of creativity. They seek
to smash the imaginative spiritual energy inside of men, that piece of God that was
breathed into us.
This is also why you matter, Mr. Wang Lin. Your stuff is so real it instantly becomes
alive, and becomes part of the noosphere. Whereas they are servant of death and cannot
create. On a wider scale, this is why every institution they touch collapses. They cannot
create their own institutions -- they can merely infiltrate existing ones and kill them from
the inside.
On a more narrow scale, this is what they do with the media environment as well.
Which is also why the new dopamine freedoms they promote come at the expense of older
traditional liberties. Again, it's a cannibalizing effect. They are not creating additional
stuff. They simply substituting stuff, narrowing choice and freedoms, while pretending to be
expanding them.
Lesson 1:Freedoms -- when you promote certain freedoms, do they expand the
existing pool or liberties, or do they come at the price of extinguishing older liberties. If
the new freedoms you promote expand the overall pool of liberties, you are helping the
traditional democratic socium survive and evolve. If the new freedoms you promote come at the
price of extinguishing older liberties, then you are a destroyer who pretends to be a
creator.
Lesson 2:Institutions -- if when promoting new rights, freedoms, and
identities, you are capable of building new institutions for them, and these institutions
mesh in a positive manner with the pre-existing institutions of your society -- you are a
builder and a force for good. If, however, you an only infiltrate and overtake already
existing institutions in order to promote your new rights, freedoms, and identities, or your
attempts to build new institutions come into conflict with preexisting ones -- you are a
destroyer.
Do you add, or do you subtract? Did life become more free or less free because of your
actions? Do you build or do you destroy? Are you a dopamine-addicted slave of chaos, or are
you capable of enjoying the pleasures of life while also being a builder?
**
Anyway, thank you for doing what you do, Mr. Wang Lin.
Back when in the days of your high-octane performance art persona that attempted to
counteract through shock-humor the overtone window hijacking by GloboHomo, the humorless
malignant drama whores couldn't tell when you're serious and when not, or perhaps they
pretended to not being able to tell.
Today, with the outrageous clownish persona toned down into mildly edgy deadpan mode, the
saner adults start not being able to tell what's what.
"... The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy. They are deliberate exercises in doublethink. ..."
"... What the self-styled newspaper of record calls "misguided beliefs" are indisputable facts important for everyone to know. ..."
"... A real "national reality crisis" exists because of Big Government in cahoots with Big Media – like the Times -- serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of most others. ..."
"... "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it (…) 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 as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality“ - George Orwell ..."
The New York Times never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity for truth-telling as
it should be.
It's a notion long ago abandoned in deference to providing press agent services for powerful
interests.
At the same time, the Times finds new ways to disgrace itself.
Calling for a US Ministry of Truth headed by a "reality czar" sounds ominously like what
Orwell described in his dystopian 1984 novel
that's no longer fiction, saying:
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the
Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary
hypocrisy. They are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
Along with Big Brother mass surveillance and newspeak, Orwell's Ministry of Truth was all
about controlling the message, eliminating whatever conflicts with it, memory holes used for
this purpose. The Times and other US major media operate this way now -- a collective ministry of truth as
described above. Featuring the official narrative exclusively, alternative views are filtered out and
suppressed, free and open expression banned in their reports.
In 1984 , unnwanted material went down memory holes to "be whirled away (in) enormous
furnaces devoured by the flames," said Orwell, adding:
"(T)here were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the
lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved,
that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence."
In the US and West, no Orwell-style memory hole is needed, no furnaces, no ceremonial
book-burnings. Big Media in cahoots with diabolical government officials censor and eliminate truth-telling
on what's vital for everyone to know. What Times fake news called a US "reality crisis" amounts to urging greater state-sponsored
censorship than already.
What it called "the scourge of hoaxes, lies and delusions" are hard truths about US imperial
wars, hazardous covid vaccines to be shunned, stolen Election 2020, unelected/cognitively
impaired Biden unable to serve in any public capacity, the anti-Trump Jan. 6 Capitol Hill false
flag, and other cutting-edge issues. What the self-styled newspaper of record calls "misguided beliefs" are indisputable facts
important for everyone to know.
A real "national reality crisis" exists because of Big Government in cahoots with Big Media
– like the Times -- serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of most
others.
It's because of US police state totalitarian rule on a fast track toward full-blown
tyranny.
It's because the US no longer is open, free, and fair.
It's because hardline government is the mortal enemy of ordinary people -- their health,
well-being, safety, and fundamental freedoms being eliminated in real time.
It's because of US war OF terrorism, not on it, rages against ordinary people, wanting them
exploited to serve privileged interests.
It's because America is no longer safe and fit to live in for most of its people.
It's because of the largely ignored greatest ever US Main Street Great Depression while
wealth, power, and privileged interests never had things better.
It's because media like the Times suppress what's crucial for everyone to know.
What the Times called "violent extremism" is state-sponsored.
What it calls a "truth commission" reflects shades of 1984 .
What it calls "domestic terrorists" are FBI, CIA, DHS, local police, and other elements of
oppression to cow ordinary people into submission to a diabolical higher power in
Washington.
Truth-telling as it should be is polar opposite how the Times and other establishment media
operate.
As a collective lying machine, truth-telling is their moral enemy, what they're hellbent for
eliminating in whatever form it shows up. In today's America, Big Brother mass surveillance, police state control, and ministry of
truth Big Lies are part of the national fabric. That's the ugly reality suppressed by the Times and other Big Media. The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists. Growing tyranny heading toward becoming full-blown replaced it. That's the ugly reality establishment media like the Times suppress - to their
disgrace.
Plus Size Model 1 hour ago (Edited)
Representative Gillett, commenting on the Creel Bureau (WWI propaganda Committee
responsible for selling the war to the public):
That is the great danger of such a bureau as this, because we must all admit that if any
administration has in its power a Bureau of Public Information, as it is called, but really
an advertising bureau, a propaganda bureau, a bureau of publicity, to exploit the various
acts and desperations of the Government, it is a very dangerous thing in a Republic; because,
if used in a partisan spirit or for partisan advantage of the administration ,it has
tremendous power, and in ordinary peace-time I do not think any party or any administration
would justify or approve it.
U.S. Congressional Record 65th Congress, 2nd Session, P. 7915
Umh
There was a time, long ago when I considered myself a liberal. I don't think I changed very much, a bit of real
world experience perhaps. Then the leftists changed the meaning of liberal. These people don't even have a clue what they are
setting up.
JoePesci
I am a liberal too. An SF burning man attending acid loving atheist, drive my gf to PP, South America backpacking
peace loving hippie and i hate these fvcking people. They are fascists and not in the slight bit liberal. They
are the same warmongering, corporatist, racist, hypocrites that were neocons under george bush. The very same, just
switched parties
balz
If you enjoyed 1984, try reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which was written in 1920 (first book banned by the USSR!) and
which Orwell reviewed a couple of years before writing 1984. The book also inspired Ayn Rand.
SilverCoinLover
Agreed! A fantastic book, written even before Huxley's Brave New World.
I remember reading it in high school in the 1970s, still have a copy.
Im4truth4all
It takes no genius to see the parallels between George Orwell's "1984" and the democrat/marxists and its agents. Their
philosophy was so accurately described by George Orwell and is as follows:
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold
simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic
against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it (…) 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 as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality“ - George Orwell
"... In the book, the Ministry of Truth decides what is "truth" in Oceania no matter what the actual truth may be, and exercises this monopoly over reality by falsifying the nature of historical events. ..."
"... "truth" becomes whatever the government-approved version of events is in that moment. ..."
"... What the "experts" cited by the New York Times are calling far and what Orwell portrayed in his book are so similar, even Kevin Roose admits, "It sounds a little dystopian." ..."
"... the most harmful "conspiracy theories," – such as Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMD's and supporting "freedom fighters" who were actually jihadists in Libya and Syria – are always exclusively peddled by the mainstream media. ..."
"... The corporate press pushing these two whoppers created the consensus for war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and an international migrant crisis. ..."
"... New limited edition merch now available! Click here . In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here . Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here . ..."
"... "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ..."
"... they can't sell what they're peddling so they have to control the narrative so they can push out propaganda to terrorize the citizens. ..."
"... JFK: For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. ..."
The New York Times has amplified claims by "experts" who are calling for Joe Biden to
appoint a "reality czar," prompting critics to compare the idea to the Ministry of Truth in
George Orwell's 1984.
In an article entitled 'How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis', the
NYT's Kevin Roose cites "experts" who are calling on "the Biden administration put together a
cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by
something like a "reality czar."
The job of this "reality czar" would be to head up "a centralized task force could
coordinate a single, strategic response" to things like COVID-related and election fraud
"conspiracy theories."
"This task force could also meet regularly with tech platforms, and push for structural
changes that could help those companies tackle their own extremism and misinformation
problems. (For example, it could formulate "safe harbor" exemptions that would allow
platforms to share data about QAnon and other conspiracy theory communities with researchers
and government agencies without running afoul of privacy laws.) And it could become the tip
of the spear for the federal government's response to the reality crisis," states the
article.
"Ah, the Ministry of Truth. I've been waiting for this one," responded Raheem Kassam.
While the Orwell comparison has become something of a cliché, in this instance its
the best available. In the book, the Ministry of Truth decides what is "truth" in Oceania no matter what the
actual truth may be, and exercises this monopoly over reality by falsifying the nature of
historical events.
The Ministry of Truth also uses this power monopoly to redefine the very word "truth" under
the rubric of Newspeak, so "truth" becomes whatever the government-approved version of events
is in that moment.
What the "experts" cited by the New York Times are calling far and what Orwell portrayed in
his book are so similar, even Kevin Roose admits, "It sounds a little dystopian."
But if "conspiracy theories" really do pose a deadly threat to society, who is responsible
for pushing the most egregious disinformation?
As we have exhaustively documented – the most harmful "conspiracy theories," –
such as Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMD's and supporting "freedom fighters" who were actually
jihadists in Libya and Syria – are always exclusively peddled by the mainstream
media.
The corporate press pushing these two whoppers created the consensus for war that led to the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and an international migrant crisis.
The New York Times was one of the most prominent outlets that amplified both these damaging
deceptions and yet they faced no consequences whatsoever. Such lies are also far more harmful
to society because mainstream media networks have the biggest platforms, they are amplified by
rigged social media platforms, and they share a common consensus narrative with each other,
meaning there is almost no room for questioning or debate.
If there really was a truly independent "reality czar," the media would be big trouble
because its entire raison d'être is predicated around distorting reality.
* * *
New limited
edition merch now available! Click here . In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It
is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here . Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean
energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here .
StuffyourVAXX 49 minutes ago (Edited)
How the eff did I become an extremist? I work, pay taxes, own a home and have a family,
and all I asked for was a fair election.
Moron Tagger 46 minutes ago remove link
That last bit.
Faceberg 43 minutes ago (Edited)
WTF? The lockdowns were ********, but I laughed at the sheeple. The ministry of truth idea
scares the **** out of me. I think I'll go do an inventory now.
son of sam 38 minutes ago (Edited)
**** gittin really real now! Reality constructs handed out like 'masks' - "reality up," or
you must go to quarantine camp and be 'reality-re-educated' - could mean wearing "google
goggles" 24/7, and enforced 'selfie-taking' every 6 hours so as to prove to the THOUGHT
POLICE that you are not deviating.
USA. It was fun, cool, and good while it lasted. Flic your bics, and shed a tear, as they
drive ol Dixie down, for the very last time
Moron Tagger 48 minutes ago remove link
Reality is for people who can't handle drugs!
ted41776 51 minutes ago (Edited)
i nominate Brennan or Comey, they'll get the job done
edit: actually, now that i think about it, Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch would do a damn
fine job too
so many good candidates
Faceberg 30 minutes ago
Lol. Those people are famous, but they're basically amateurs. If you want the varsity
squad, you need Anti-Defamation league and the Southern Poverty Law Center. That's who's
going to be running the interference, just like they do for Facebook, Google, YouTube, and
Twitter.
As a happy cohencidence, but they have all of the IT infrastructure already built and
ready to go. Talk about serendipity!
The First Rule 41 minutes ago
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act"
- George Orwell
We are THERE.
Foe Jaws 31 minutes ago
That is why Pedo Joe's Sec of Defense has 30,000 troops guarding DC. It will be
interesting to see how long they can keep them there and what will happen once they
leave.
yerfej 29 minutes ago
Every fascist regime ends up where the US is right now, they can't sell what they're
peddling so they have to control the narrative so they can push out propaganda to terrorize
the citizens. Think about it, the US roams the world with its military and CIA terrorizing
everyone and it does the same domestically, kind of funny how they seem to only have one
function.
balz 35 minutes ago remove link
Those people are so sick they are beyond any therapy. Just wish I had a time machine to send them back to USSR in 1934, to see what is the end
point of their sick ideology.
learnofjesuits 10 minutes ago
JFK: For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that
relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration
instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free
choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted
vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient
machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political
operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not
headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor
is printed, no secret is revealed.
Orwell's 1984 predicted all this in 1948. Wikipedia is rewriting history on a daily basis,
education is stifling young minds, free speech controlled, double standard legal system,
burning books next?.... It's all there, 1984 is upon us.
But, remember our ancestors were
considered terrorists by the by the controlling British at the time.
PEACEFUL revolution
starting with 75+ million Americans will work.
After 9/11, the entire country collectively lost its mind in the throes of fear. During that
time, all civil and Constitutional rights were shredded and replaced with the pages of
The USA PATRIOT
Act .
Almost 20 years later, the U.S. has again lost its collective mind, this time in fear of a
"virus" and it's "super mutations" and a
"riot" at the
capitol. A lot of people called this and to the surprise of very few, much like after 9/11,
Americans are watching what remains of their civil liberties be replaced with a new bill.
The DTPA is essentially the criminalization of speech, expression, and thought . It takes
cancel culture a step further and all but outlaws unpopular
opinions . This act will empower intelligence, law enforcement, and even military wings of
the American ruling class to crack down on individuals adhering to certain belief systems and
ideologies.
"The attack on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month was the latest example of domestic
terrorism, but the threat of domestic terrorism remains very real. We cannot turn a blind eye
to it," Upton said. "The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act will equip our law enforcement
leaders with the tools needed to help keep our homes, families, and communities across the
country safe.
Congressman Upton's
website gives the following information on DTPA:
The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 would strengthen the federal government's
efforts to prevent, report on, respond to, and investigate acts of domestic terrorism by
authorizing offices dedicated to combating this threat; requiring these offices to regularly
assess this threat; and providing training and resources to assist state, local, and tribal
law enforcement in addressing it.
DTPA would authorize three offices, one each within the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to
monitor, investigate, and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism. The bill also requires these
offices to provide Congress with joint, biannual reports assessing the state of domestic
terrorism threats, with a specific focus on white supremacists. Based on the data collected,
DTPA requires these offices to focus their resources on the most significant threats.
DTPA also codifies the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, which would coordinate with
United States Attorneys and other public safety officials to promote information sharing and
ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat domestic terrorism. The
legislation requires DOJ, FBI, and DHS to provide training and resources to assist state,
local, and tribal law enforcement agencies in understanding, detecting, deterring, and
investigating acts of domestic terrorism and white supremacy. Finally, DTPA directs DHS, DOJ,
FBI, and the Department of Defense to establish an interagency task force to combat white
supremacist infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement.
Those who read the bill aren't so gung ho to shred the Constitution
Congresswoman Tulsi
Gabbard has some serious reservations. In a recent
interview on Fox News Primetime, Gabbard stated that the bill effectively criminalizes half
of the country. (Emphasis ours)
"It's so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all
Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about,
especially because we don't have to guess about where this goes or how this ends," Gabbard
said.
She continued: "When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking
about how he's spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration
who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to
the insurgencies they've seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy
alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even
libertarians."
Gabbard, stating her concern about how the government will define what qualities they are
searching for in potential threats to the country, went on to ask:
"What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential
extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians,
evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where
do you take this"
Tulsi said the bill would create a dangerous undermining of our civil liberties and freedoms
in our Constitution. She also stated the DPTA essentially targets nearly half of the United
States.
"You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male,
libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their
house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally, " Gabbard said.
Tulsi Gabbard is not the only one to criticize the legislation
Even the ACLU , one of the weakest organizations on civil liberties in the United States,
has spoken out. While the ACLU was only concerned with how the bill would affect minorities or
"brown people," the organization stated that the legislation, while set forth under the guise
of countering white supremacy, would eventually be used against non-white people.
The ACLU's statement is true.
As with similar bills submitted under the guise of "protecting" Americans against outside
threats, this bill will inevitably expand further. The stated goals of the DPTA are
far-reaching and frightening enough. It would amount to an official declaration of the end to
Free Speech.
Soon there will be no rights left for Americans
In the last twenty years, Americans have lost their 4th Amendment rights, and now they are
losing their 1st. All that remains is the 2nd
Amendment , and both the ruling class and increasing numbers of the American people know
it.
"... Despite four years of dire warnings by the corporate media, the Intelligence Community, Hollywood celebrities, the Democratic Party, faux anti-fascists, fake-Left pundits, and pretty much every utterly deluded, Trump-obsessed liberal with an Internet connection, there was no Hitlerian "Reichstag Fire," no Boogaloo, no Civil War II, no coup, no white-supremacist uprising. Nothing. The man simply got on a chopper and was flown away to his Florida resort. ..."
"... I know, you're probably thinking "Wow, how embarrassing for the GloboCap 'Resistance,' being exposed as a bunch of utterly shameless, neo-Goebbelsian propagandists, and liars, and hysterical idiots, and such!" And, in any other version of reality, you'd have a point but not in this one. ..."
"... No, in this reality, "Democracy Has Prevailed!" Yes, it was touch and go there for a while, as there was no guarantee that the Intelligence Community, the military-industrial complex, Western governments, the corporate media, supranational corporations, Internet oligarchs, and virtually every other component of the global-capitalist empire could keep one former game show host with no real political power whatsoever from taking over the entire world. ..."
Hopkins? I got the latest Hopkins ( C.J. Hopkins , that is) on the glorious
victories of our GloboCap Overlords over the Great Orange Hitler/Satan and his deplorable
hordes in the Jan 6 Insurrection, right here:
As they used to say at the end of all those wacky Looney Tunes cartoons, that's all
folks! The show is over. Literal Russian-Asset Hitler, the Latest Greatest Threat to
Western Democracy, the Monster of Mar-a-Lago, Trumpzilla, Trumpenstein, the Ayatollah of
Orange Shinola, has finally been humiliated and given the bum-rush out of Washington by
the heroic forces of the GloboCap "Resistance," with a little help from the US military.
The whole thing went exactly to script.
Well OK, not quite exactly to script. Despite four years of dire warnings by the
corporate media, the Intelligence Community, Hollywood celebrities, the Democratic Party,
faux anti-fascists, fake-Left pundits, and pretty much every utterly deluded,
Trump-obsessed liberal with an Internet connection, there was no Hitlerian "Reichstag
Fire," no Boogaloo, no Civil War II, no coup, no white-supremacist uprising. Nothing. The
man simply got on a chopper and was flown away to his Florida resort.
I know, you're probably thinking "Wow, how embarrassing for the GloboCap 'Resistance,'
being exposed as a bunch of utterly shameless, neo-Goebbelsian propagandists, and liars,
and hysterical idiots, and such!" And, in any other version of reality, you'd have a
point but not in this one.
No, in this reality, "Democracy Has Prevailed!" Yes, it was touch and go there for a
while, as there was no guarantee that the Intelligence Community, the military-industrial
complex, Western governments, the corporate media, supranational corporations, Internet
oligarchs, and virtually every other component of the global-capitalist empire could keep
one former game show host with no real political power whatsoever from taking over the
entire world.
And here was GloboCap's dress rehearsal in Berlin last summer for the Jan 6 Capitol
Reichstag show:
On March 21, 1933, the Nazi-controlled Reichstag passed a law making it a crime to speak
out against the government. The "Regulations of the Reich President for Defense from
Treacherous Attacks against the Government of the National Uprising" made even the
slightest expression of dissent from Nazi ideology a criminal offense. This new law,
among other totalitarian measures, was part of a process known as Gleichschaltung the
process of achieving rigid and total ideological coordination and uniformity in politics,
culture, and private communication by forcibly repressing (or eliminating) independence
and freedom of thought and expression.
GloboCap hasn't done anything that heavy-handed in the course of rolling out the New
Normal totalitarianism, but that's mainly because they do not have to. When you control
the vast majority of the global corporate media, you don't need to pass a lot of
ham-fisted laws banning all dissent from your totalitarian ideology. This isn't the
1930s, after all. Over the last ninety years, the arts of propaganda, disinformation, and
perception management have advanced to a point that even Goebbels couldn't have
imagined.
The skill with which GloboCap and the corporate media delegitimized the anti-New
Normal demonstrations in Berlin, London, and other cities last weekend is a perfect
example of the state of those arts. I'll focus on Berlin, as that's where I live, and the
so-called "Storming of the Reichstag" incident, but it works pretty much the same way
everywhere. I believe there was a curious incident involving a person with a fascist flag
in London, and that the UK media have now officially chosen David Icke to be the
movement's figurehead.
In Berlin, in the days leading up to the protests, government officials and corporate
media propagandists did what officials and propagandists do they relentlessly repeated
their official narrative, namely, that anyone protesting the New Normal (or doubting the
official Coronavirus narrative) is a "violent neo-Nazi extremist," or "conspiracy
theorist," or some other form of existential "threat to democracy."
"... The Walrus law applies: "All governments achieve the reverse of their stated intentions". This Act, and associated DOJ enforcement, will do more to radicalise white males than the KKK in their wildest fantasies could imagine. It is bad law - bad for America - all of it. It makes us all poorer and less free, everyone, even the left wing will suffer and it will drag down our economy. It will increase stress tension and expense. ..."
"... The Capitol invasion is being used as the foundation for a kind of Dolchstoßlegende - the excuse that was spun into the mythical rationale for persecuting German Jewry in the Nazi era. In America's case this consists of the cooperative media (one which would make Goebbels proud) painting all Trump supporters as potential insurrectionists/terrorists and thus enemies of the state. This will not end well. ..."
We are entering an era where "White Supremacist" is the ultimate dirty word, at least
according to the Domestic Terrorism bill of 2021. Read the Act. Guilt is determined by a
committee of..... the Department of Justice. This is an Orwellian development.
The Walrus law applies: "All governments achieve the reverse of their stated
intentions". This Act, and associated DOJ enforcement, will do more to radicalise white males
than the KKK in their wildest fantasies could imagine. It is bad law - bad for America - all of
it. It makes us all poorer and less free, everyone, even the left wing will suffer and it will
drag down our economy. It will increase stress tension and expense.
As Australia's pre eminent Rabbi, John Levi, said yesterday (Australia Day): "plurality (of
ideas) strengthens us". A PC monoculture blaming racist white males for everything that is
wrong hides the true causes and hinders problem solving.
Furthermore radicalised white males are going to respond and the result will be further
polarisation.
I add a tiny cup of fuel to the fire by adding the link to some soon to be contraband below.
Lynyrd Skynyrd is soon to be proscribed. Count on it. Download this while you can. Teach
yourself and your kids the words and to hum it or sing it. It's your identification code.
You left out a link to the actual bill, sponsored by some expected members, however none or
the Squad, or any women, have cosponsored this as yet. I blame the sexism of the original
sponsors. Shame on them.
"'hate crime incident'' means an act described in section 241, 245, 247, or 249 of title 18,
United States Code, or in section 901 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 3631);"
There's the perfectly Orwellian HR-1 that Ms. Pelosi intends to bring to a floor vote as the
first legislative act of the Party of Davos.
To expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics,
strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for
the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.
This legislation if it becomes law will essentially end elections as we have known it in the
past where States run all elections and make the "steal" permanent.
Will they ban the word "redneck"? I come from a very large family of rednecks--women and
men--who worked the fields on farms their entire lives. There is a very large number of
rednecks in this country.
You warned in a previous post how far and how fast the tide would go out - to use the
Shakespearean analogy - once the Dems took power. You were right and I think anyone who could
not see this coming has been deluding themselves. The Left is at war with Deplorables and it
looks very much like they are willing to develop a full blown police state in order to help
prosecute it. This should not be a surprise.
The Walrus law may apply in this case. My only reservation here is the question as to
whether or not this legislation is intended to further radicalize the enemy (white
conservatives). Congress is clueless, as usual, but the more unhinged totalitarian minds could
be hoping for this very outcome (John Brennan I'm thinking of you).
Ever since that fateful day when HRC categorized a large section of the electorate as
"deplorable" it has been obvious that the Dem establishment sees a good portion of the
citizenry not as a constituency to be won over, but as a barrier to Progress. The 2016 election
served to confirm to the globalists that Deplorables were capable of derailing their project.
Now that they are back in power, Deplorables must be demonized.
The Capitol invasion is being used as the foundation for a kind of Dolchstoßlegende - the
excuse that was spun into the mythical rationale for persecuting German Jewry in the Nazi era.
In America's case this consists of the cooperative media (one which would make Goebbels proud)
painting all Trump supporters as potential insurrectionists/terrorists and thus enemies of the
state. This will not end well.
As I said in a recent comment on another post, I think we are entering the phase where
accelerated feedback will quickly harden attitudes on both sides. Can this descent be stopped
or even reversed? I am by no means confident, but would very much like to hear optimistic, yet
realistic counter arguments - as the future looks bleak indeed.
As an aside, I've just noticed that clicking on the "Walrus" category to find your tagged posts
yield none. Not sure whether this is a TypePad error or something I'm doing wrong. Other
category searches work fine.
Once programmed, people will only change their mind if their understanding of the world
becomes untenable
That one is a keeper, I will borrow it myself in the future. Your number 2 is also very
important, I think. People are really suffering from neo-liberalism, and suffering people
tend to complain and lash out at the wrong targets sometimes.
"... Re Trump vs democracy I say the democracy train left the station a long time ago, now it's mostly theatre. ..."
"... Re Biden being the saviour I say I hold little hope because in the past he has been a total supporter of forever war and Wall Street and I see little to indicate he has changed. ..."
"... "Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal." ..."
"... I was reading a post in Ritzholtz about studies of cognitive dissonance. It was about the people who believed a spaceship would come and save them before the earth was destroyed. One point that was made that I think gets overlooked is that these people had jobs, relationships, they fully understood how the world worked 99.999 percent of the time. ..."
"... They were wrong about 1 major thing. I try to remember that I can't be right in everything either, and if I am wrong, how do I know it? ..."
We are great apes, 95% non-rational, with a thin veneer of rationality. We crave
hierarchy.
Life is becoming increasingly difficult materially and emotionally for many many
people.
Media-promoted division is very profitable, and our rulers want us divided and weak, so
division is sown endlessly.
We are immersed in propaganda and live in a literally Orwellian world (forever wars with
interchangeable enemies, total surveillance all the time, internal enemies neutralised). So
false flags, grotesque fabrications, relentless repetition of obvious falsehoods and
contradictory stories, are commonplace.
What I do:I live within the progressive side of things where the 4 points above abound –
especially Trump derangement syndrome and extreme identity politics. With people I almost
never see or don't care if I never do again, I challenge them (respond with comments along
the lines of points 3 and 4).
With people in my close world I am much more careful and usually quite restrained. I
determine how resilient I think the person is. How much challenge they can absorb. I keep in
mind Caitlin Johnson's point that, once programmed, people will only change their mind if
their understanding of the world becomes untenable. I know my few comments will not achieve
that. Re Russia-gate I say the hard evidence seems very weak to me and the story barely
believable.
Re Trump vs democracy I say the democracy train left the station a long time ago,
now it's mostly theatre.
Re general Trump derangement syndrome say I policy-wise he is a
standard Republican, but personally a jack-ass.
Re Biden being the saviour I say I hold
little hope because in the past he has been a total supporter of forever war and Wall Street
and I see little to indicate he has changed.
Once programmed, people will only change their mind if their understanding of the world
becomes untenable
That one is a keeper, I will borrow it myself in the future. Your number 2 is also very
important, I think. People are really suffering from neo-liberalism, and suffering people
tend to complain and lash out at the wrong targets sometimes.
agree completely – very well said. I always try to remember what I used to believe
but no longer do. I believed it than, and I don't think I had less respect for the truth than
– I was just wrong. I could be wrong now.
I was reading a post in Ritzholtz about studies of cognitive dissonance. It was about the
people who believed a spaceship would come and save them before the earth was destroyed. One
point that was made that I think gets overlooked is that these people had jobs,
relationships, they fully understood how the world worked 99.999 percent of the time.
They
were wrong about 1 major thing. I try to remember that I can't be right in everything either,
and if I am wrong, how do I know it?
Interestingly enough, my very liberal neighbor considers me a Trumpist who harbors these
views simply because I'm not a Biden supporter (you're with us or against us, somehow Biden
is labeled as good). I've tried to explain that I would have voted for a Dem if Tulsi had
been allowed to run, but once the DNC deemed her unwelcome, so to did they deem me unworthy.
Of course my failure to place Obama on the throne of divinity shreds any remaining moral
values I may have. It would seem as though any position short of hard left justifies the
label of deplorable. I find I have adopted the strategy of many I know, just keep it to
yourself, dare you temp team cancel.
I think a big part of the problem is that it is sometimes genuinely hard to tell the
difference between crackpot conspiracy theories and, well, true conspiracy theories. And as
most of us know, the mainstream press can't always be trusted.
So here are two examples. What the heck was going on with Epstein? Not just his death, but
his whole life? I won't go into any of the various conspiracy theories because I don't have
evidence, but I strongly suspect there was some intelligence agency or agencies involved. But
anyway, that story has vanished and as far as I know, nobody really knows what was going
on.
Second, I follow Aaron Mate and tentatively believe he is right -- the OPCW is probably
corrupt and lied about the evidence regarding what happened in Douma. If so, that is a
gigantic scandal, made worse by the fact that the press has largely chosen to ignore it. More
generally, I think we got a hugely one- sided and distorted view of the Syrian War. I don't
doubt that Assad is a war criminal, but I think the war crimes of the people we supported (
and our own crimes in the bombing of Raqqa and of Mosul in Iraq) were mostly downplayed or
ignored. In the mainstream US press I think Robert Worth is probably the best reporter. He
doesn't downplay anybody's crimes. But most of the coverage isn't like that.
One could go on and on. I gave up trying to figure out what parts of Russiagate were true.
But my attitude is that even if the Russians did steal the emails, releasing them was a
public service, and for Americans to get hysterical about Russian interference given what we
do all the time is nothing more than a joke.
So anyway, Qanon aside, I don't feel always blame people who believe false conspiracy
theories because it really is hard sometimes to figure out what is true when our mainstream
sources are often unreliable. The NYT has a lot of resources. Imagine what they could be
doing if they really were interested in following a story no matter where it led. But I
suppose if they were like that they probably wouldn't have gotten to be such a powerful
institution in the first place.
I think you are quite correct. I know a number of people that are Trumpists. Only one of
them fits the standard stereotype pushed by the media (no college education, rural, poor,
white male). The rest are all PMC types that are very pro-gun and and anti-tax. One was all
about blue lives matter until Babbitt was killed. He was perplexed when I was not angered she
was killed while storming the capitol building. I tried to explain but nuance is simply not
done.
The bigger issue is, as you say, not whether you believe in conspiracy theories but which
ones. Russiagate is a block of swiss cheese as hole-filled as Pizzagate. However, simply
blowing it off as a conspiracy theory is not easy when stories like Epstein cannot be
explained away. There is probably near-universal disgust of the current ruling class but it
is all being craftily misdirected so as to prevent change. But that sounds curiously
conspiratorial
At 78, after a prolonged illness and without recovering consciousness, Joe Biden succumbed
to the Presidency. The last hopes of the last QAnon believers vanished like smoke in the night,
with Biden assuming the mighty US throne. This is truly a dark day for America and for the
world, as the US example will be followed by many. It is also a farewell to the real world we
were brought up in. The new world is virtual, like most of the inauguration. It is virtual and
dark, ruled by digital companies fronted by old and tired politicians.
War Propaganda: The Cult of MilitarismPart 15a of 'Elephants in the Room'
series By Rod
Driver Global Research, January 20, 2021 Region: USA Theme: Intelligence
This is the second of two posts about war propaganda, and the last of four posts about
propaganda more generally.
"War will exist until the distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same
reputation and prestige as the warrior does today" (John F.Kennedy(1))
War Propaganda Runs Through Our Culture
Hollywood movies about war or spying tend to portray the US military, or James Bond, as the
'good guys' involved in 'goodies vs baddies' conflicts, with little discussion of the crimes of
the US and British militaries and their spy agencies. The US military cooperates closely with
these productions provided that they have final script approval, and can change scripts or
scenes that they do not like. Where movies have tried to say anything negative about the US
military, cooperation has been refused. They expect to have a generally patriotic view of the
US, with the military portrayed as heroes, always with good intentions. These films actually
help to recruit people for the military. The US navy provided planes, pilots and warships for
the 1986 movie 'Top Gun'. This led to a big rise in applications for people to become US
fighter pilots. A more recent development has been the use of internet adverts for Hollywood
movies, which deceptively take people to disguised army recruitment websites.(2)
One of the best examples of CIA propaganda is their manipulation of the film version of
George Orwell's book 'Animal Farm.' The book highlights the fact that politicians in both
capitalist and communist countries can be corrupted by power. The CIA bought the film rights,
knowing that it could be used as a propaganda tool. The CIA's film version omits the most
important part of the ending (which criticises capitalism) creating the impression that it is
only a criticism of communism.(3)
The developers of many computer video games work closely with the US military. There is
increasing use of drones in the military, piloted by soldiers thousands of miles away. What
they see on their control screens is indistinguishable from a video game. The content of some
games involves overthrowing governments in countries such as Venezuela.(4) Evidence from wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq indicates that US soldiers participate in war as if they are playing a
video game, and therefore they can convince themselves that their actions have no
consequences.
Never Question The Soldiers
One of the strongest parts of any pro-war propaganda system is convincing everyone that
whatever criticisms they make, they must always support the troops. But the job of a British or
American soldier has nothing to do with freedom or democracy. They are trained killers whose
job is to invade and occupy other countries, and kill anyone who gets in the way. Britain's
military is much smaller than that of the US, but British propaganda plays an important role in
generating support for war.(5) Military veterans are always praised on television when they
appear at public events. When large numbers of people are being slaughtered in Iraq, there is a
big difference between saying 'The valiant British and American soldiers in Iraq were viciously
attacked by terrorists, but successfully defended themselves' and 'The British and American
occupation forces murdered large numbers of Iraqi people'. Variations of the first comment
appear in US and British media regularly, but the second is a more honest way of describing
what is going on.
Groups of former soldiers, such as 'Veterans for Peace', are now coming forward to explain
that basic training is a form of brainwashing, and that the version of war that they
experience, which is the mass slaughter of innocent people, is completely different from the
propaganda.(6)
Brainwashing Begins In Childhood
Children's comic books about World War 2, such as Commando and War Picture Library, were
very popular for decades after the war. They had a strong focus on patriotism and heroism. They
stereotyped people from enemy countries as cruel or cowardly, and used derogatory terms such as
jerries, huns or krauts for German people, eyeties for Italian people, or nips for Japanese
people.(7) A generation of children grew up with a very distorted view of the war and people in
other countries.
Astute readers will have realised that the materials in these blogs are not taught in
schools. Most young people reach adulthood with no understanding of how the world really works.
This is because governments do not want citizens to understand the crimes they commit.
In 2007 the British government decided to increase its military propaganda in schools and
society more generally. It is encouraging more schools to have cadet forces. Sports
competitions for injured soldiers, such as the Invictus games in the UK, and the Warrior games
in the US, are intended to present former soldiers as heroes.(8) The link between the military
and the British Royal family also plays a propaganda role. More recently, Britain's
cybersecurity agency, GCHQ, started running courses in schools teaching hacking skills, and
inviting young children to visit them.(9) One campaign group noted:
"Armed Forces Day, Remembrance Day, Uniform to Work Day, Camo Day [where people wear
camouflage], in the streets, on television, on the web, at sports events, in schools,
advertising and fashion – the military presence in UK civilian life is increasing
daily"(10)
All of the activities described above are forms of militarism, where people are encouraged
to see the military, and spying, in positive terms; to think of violent, military solutions as
the best way to solve international disagreements; and to ignore peaceful alternatives. There
is no discussion of British and US war crimes, or the illegal spying activities of GCHQ(11) and
its US equivalent, the NSA. Encouraging children to play with military vehicles and weapons,
and to watch military parachutists or airshows, is intended to indoctrinate them. School trips
to war museums have a similar effect. Ideas learned at a young age come to seem like common
sense, as opposed to propaganda intended to serve the interests of rich and powerful people.
These activities play a direct role in recruiting soldiers, but just as importantly, they
recruit a large number of people to support militarism unquestioningly.(12)
The Power of Patriotism
The military activities mentioned above also indoctrinate people into thinking about
patriotism and nationalism, which are incredibly powerful propaganda tools.(13) Putting the
head of a Monarch or an Emperor onto coins was one of the earliest forms of propaganda, and
stamps with the Queen on them have a similar purpose. Royal pageants and processions are
celebrated as major national events. We are encouraged to think of our country as a single
entity, to be proud of it, and to forget, ignore, or be unaware of the crimes of our
government, and the fact that most people have little in common with the billionaires and
millionaires who dominate political decision-making. It makes it easy for decision-makers to
generate support for foreign wars, and to describe others as 'the enemy'.
It is important to realise that some government propaganda is targeted at politicians. This
is where the intelligence services come in. Most people think that intelligence services exist
to provide accurate information. This is only partly true. Some parts of the intelligence
services have a secondary role, which is to present information that supports policy. The US
decided to invade Iraq a long time before the invasion actually happened. From that point
onwards, they were trying to find intelligence that would give them a good excuse to invade.
Intelligence officers in Britain were told that if they did not sign up to a dossier on Weapons
of Mass Destruction, that they knew was untrue, that would be the end of their careers. In the
US, whole new departments were set up. The Office of Strategic Influence was set up in 2001 to
support the war on terror through psychological operations (PSYOPs), which includes creating
fake stories and propaganda. The Office of Special Plans was set up in 2002 specifically to
're-interpret' data to create a case for war. If the data did not support war, officers would
be told that this was not what their superiors wanted to hear, and they should try again until
they came up with the 'right' result.(14)
Anti-war opinions are being censored – Manipulating Information on the Internet
The internet is becoming increasingly important as a source of information, particularly for
young people. Wikipedia began as an online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. On some
non-political topics, it is a useful source of information. Unfortunately, most edits are now
made by a small number of people. There is strong evidence that some of these people are not
honest, independent researchers. They work to protect the establishment against its
critics.(15) Critical websites such as The Grayzone have been blacklisted by Wikipedia, even
though it has an outstanding track record of investigative journalism.(16) Many anti-war
activists, including the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, discovered that their
Wikipedia entries had all been changed hundreds of times in very negative ways by a single
individual (or, more likely, a group of people operating under a single username).
Critical writers have noted that Facebook and Twitter censor their output, and Google
manipulates search results so that critical work does not appear on the first page of results.
This means that it is becoming more and more difficult for people to find information that
challenges the mainstream view.
Some Propaganda is More Subtle – Newspeak and Euphemisms
Most of the war propaganda discussed so far is reasonably obvious, once people have been
made aware that it is propaganda. However, as with other forms of propaganda, war propaganda
actually permeates our society.
We saw in an earlier post about the weapons industry that the word defence is
actually a euphemism for invasions, occupations, mass murder and maiming. There are many other
words that are intentionally used to give a misleading impression of what's going on. The
following is just a short selection of the more obvious ones:
National interest means the interests of the biggest corporations, and the rich
and powerful more generally
International community means the US government and any country that can be bribed
or threatened to support the US
Rogue state is a country that the US does not like. In reality, the biggest rogue
state is the US, with Britain also having a global reputation for ignoring international law
and committing war crimes.
Official secrets and national security are mechanisms to help the most
powerful people cover up their crimes.
George Orwell, the author of '1984', used the term 'Newspeak' to describe how the government
and the media use language as a weapon to limit the range of ideas that people consider
reasonable, and to distort our understanding of important issues. For example, politicians such
as Jeremy Corbyn, who object to invasions or drone assassinations, are labeled as
'soft-on-defence' or 'soft-on-terror',(17) when in fact they are objecting to serious crimes by
our government. If you watch any mainstream news program, particularly on the BBC, you
eventually realise that Newspeak is being used all the time.
"... Consider the religious tenets of the Sickness Cult; specifically, the dogma that requires all to wear a Face Burqa within a privately owned business, even if the owner isn't religious and isn't interested in proselytizing to his customers, much less insisting they show respect for a religion he doesn't subscribe to. ..."
"... "It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen" ..."
One of the nuggets to be mined from the wholesale cancelling of politically unapproved
speech by the Tech Oligarchs – soon to be empowered by government oligarchs, if the
"kraken" doesn't somehow prevent it – is how obvious their pathological dishonesty has
become.
Amazon, Facebook and Twitter have asserted that, as private businesses , they have the right
to decide with whom to do business – and not do business with. But do they feel the same
way about the right of other private businesses to practice what they preach?
Only when it conforms with what they preach.
Consider the religious tenets of the Sickness Cult; specifically, the dogma that requires
all to wear a Face Burqa within a privately owned business, even if the owner isn't religious
and isn't interested in proselytizing to his customers, much less insisting they show respect
for a religion he doesn't subscribe to.
It is a private business, is it not?
Why then must this private business be forced to conduct its business according to the
religious tenets of people who don't own the business? Isn't that a violation of the owner's
rights, just the same as the rights asserted by Amazon, Facebook and Twitter?
... ... ...
These Despicables want to enjoy the right to cancel, close – and decree – to
others while at the same time denying the right of any other privately owned business to set
its own terms and conditions.
The Despicables cannot stand the idea of freedom of religion when it comes to the wearing of
the Face Burqa, for instance. The Holy Vestment must be worn everywhere, even within privately
owned businesses and irrespective of a businesses' private property rights.
... ... ...
RedDog1 18 hours ago remove link
"It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen"
In George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," members of the Outer Party of Oceania engage in
the Two Minutes Hate ritual against Emmanuel Goldstein, who is supposed to be the enemy of the
people but may actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real
enemy -- Big Brother.
In Nancy Pelosi's "Twenty Twenty-One," members of the Democratic Party engage in the Two
Hours Hate against Donald Trump, who is supposed to be the enemy of the people, but may
actually just be a fabricated symbol to distract the people from their real enemy -- Big
Tech.
Two hours of hate -- er, debate -- was held in the House of Representatives last Wednesday
for the avowed purpose of removing a president of the United States. That's all it took. Two
hours. That should tell you everything you need to know about the state of democracy in our
country.
More time is routinely spent on picking wallpaper. But let's face it, most families wouldn't
trust Congress to pick out wallpaper for their living room, so why should we trust these
self-appointed moral arbiters to pick our president?
Well, we don't. Not all of us.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican representative from California, put it plainly in his
90-second speech when he said the
"second annual impeachment" of Donald Trump "isn't really about actual words spoken at a rally.
No, this is all about the unbridled hatred of this president [by Democrats]. You use any
extreme language and any process to oppose the core of what he has really fought for. You hate
him because he is pro-life, the strongest ever. You hate him for fighting for the freedom of
religion. You hate him for Israel. You hate him for defending our borders. You hate him for
putting America first."
They certainly shouldn't hate him -- or impeach him -- just for telling a rally crowd that
"everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and
patriotically make your voices heard." But that's what they did. In two hours.
And before they ever got around to impeaching Trump, they de-platformed him. With stunning
suddenness, Trump went from the most powerful man in the world to a cornered, desperate
fugitive. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google -- they all came for him. Most importantly, they
came for us. Everyone who sided with the president, everyone who agreed with the president
about the questions of election fraud, we are all now guilty by association, and Big Tech has
turned its sights on all of us.
"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"
Those were the words that terrified millions of Americans in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy and
other senators tried to purge the United States of what they considered a subversive movement
designed to overthrow the government.
In that case, of course, it was conservative senators -- both Democrat and Republican -- who
were trying to expose what they called a communist conspiracy. In their zeal to protect the
nation, they trampled on the civil liberties of individual Americans and tried to strip them of
their jobs, their reputations and in some cases their very freedom.
What was the crime most of those Americans had committed? They had either attended a meeting
of the Communist Party, donated money to the Communist Party or signed a petition on behalf of
the Communist Party. In other words, they had exercised their First Amendment rights of speech
and assembly. They had used their own minds and reached unpopular opinions. That was all it
took for McCarthy to try to ruin their lives.
Apparently the American left never forgot what was done to them, and now that they have
achieved absolute power, it looks like they want revenge.
In the lead-up to the impeachment vote, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts put Trump
defender Jim Jordan "on trial" for the new crime of having a dissenting view on the 2020
presidential election. The question McGovern barked at Jordan in a congressional hearing last
week could be repeated in job interviews for years to come:
"Will you admit that Joe Biden won fair and square and that the election was not rigged or
stolen?"
Jordan avoided a direct answer, but of course he and millions of other people don't believe
that Biden won fair and square. In a free country, they could say so, but in Pelosi's "Twenty
Twenty-One," you say so at your own risk. To begin with, you can lose your Twitter account or
your Facebook account, but who's to say that you won't lose your bank account next? China has a
"social credit" system that deprives citizens of certain rights if their score falls below a
certain level of acceptability -- meaning if they don't follow the party line in their thinking
and their public persona. You might lose your job. You might be denied a ticket on a train or a
plane. The only recourse is to do what the party tells you to do -- even if it means accepting
that 2+2=5.
Now, in modern America, we are precipitously close to duplicating the monolithic control of
information that Orwell predicted in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and that the Chinese Communist
Party has perfected.
In the last two weeks, we have seen the power of Big Tech unleashed mercilessly. With the
complicit assistance of Big Media, the Silicon Valley oligarchs not only neutered President
Trump as a political leader by taking away his bully pulpit but also effectively crushed
dissent by demanding that only social media companies that censor unpopular opinions can have a
platform on the Internet. Bye-bye, Parler. You can also make a reasonable case that Democrats
in Congress would never have impeached President Trump from public office so hastily were they
not goaded into action by Twitter and Facebook taking the first step of banning him from public
life.
In a sense, Big Tech has taken cyberbullying to its logical conclusion. When 13-year-olds
are entrusted with cellphones and Snapchat accounts, they can use them to bring shame on
innocent children and even destroy their lives. Often, this involves spreading false rumors
about the person or discrediting them for something they espouse, like their religion, their
political beliefs or their sexual identity.
Tell me how this is different from what Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have done to Donald
Trump and, by extension, the more than 74 million people who voted for him. This group of
post-pubescent cyberbullies in Silicon Valley doesn't like Donald Trump. They feel justified in
calling him names like white supremacist and Nazi and racist. They don't care whether it hurts
him or not. They don't care whether it is true or not. They are strangely enlivened by what
they perceive as their ability to hurt him, to weaken him. Like the mob that they have
attempted to link the president to, these bullies act in mindless concert, emboldened by each
other to see who can strike the deeper blow, who can make the victim hurt more.
And over what? Differences of opinion, for the most part. Strong border or no border? Mask
or no mask? Globalism or Americanism? Carbon credits or fracking? Abortion or no abortion? And
then the last straw -- fair election or fraudulent election?
These should be legitimate subjects for debate in a free society. But not anymore. Big Tech
has banned debate about government policy on the coronavirus, and any discussion of election
fraud is treated as if it were a crime. But wait? It's only a crime to question the government
in a totalitarian system, like that in communist China or Orwell's fictional Oceania, right? In
America, we have the right and obligation to question our government, don't we? Because, if we
don't have that right any longer, then what are they afraid of? What are they hiding?
Bottom line: At some point in some election, the allegations of election fraud have to be
real. It can't always just be the figment of some right-wing president's imagination. And if we
aren't allowed to have free speech, then how do we fight back? If Big Tech and Big Government
have their way, we don't. Just keep your head down and your nose clean -- and never ever
question what you are told.
Remember, 2+2=5. play_arrow
sgt_doom 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link
NTD TV now on cable!?
NTD TV and Epoch Times about the only Real News in America today!
Rolling Stone reports antifa is being "demonized"!
The New Yorker reports that antifa is protecting Portland from "white supremacists"a
RISE IMAGES feeds videos to the networks --- RISE IMAGES is a commie ghost site!
gaaasp 16 hours ago remove link
Two hours of hate? Try 4+ years of constant hate.
J J Pettigrew 5 hours ago remove link
So a person can not ask...
"Who shot Ashli Babbit?"
or
"Did Chris Wray just blackmail Joe Biden?" (Wray get's to keep his job, and Hunter's
laptop)
sunra 11 hours ago remove link
'big tech' is a result of 9/11, banks and the patriot act meeting stupids.
big tech has become the power tool and real time dashboard of banks and politicians to
rule the sheeple.
LouTurks PREMIUM 3 hours ago remove link
Einstein's Island is opening under new management! Thank you Joe
Following the January 6th riots at the Capitol in Washington DC, Donald Trump became the
first president in US history to be impeached twice after being charged with
�incitement of insurrection�. Trump was also banned from Twitter and DE
platformed from other sites. We examine this decision by Silicon Valley , as well as the
domestic terror laws being pushed by Democrats, as some warn that recent events could be
used to increase authoritarianism and expand the surveillance state.
You can't separate Silicon Valley giants from the security state, Welcome to Crazyville
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the corresponding regional offices of the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith ( ADL ). But, the FBI is running a coverup of the full
dimensions of its criminal collusion with the ADL , arguing that other documents must be
protected because of Executive Orders and because the ADL is an important source.
We are beyond fiction we are well into the rewriting of history.
Edwige , Jan 17, 2021 8:58 AM Reply to Moneycircus
Napoleon said "history is a set of lies that people have agreed upon". This isn't just a
pithy aphorism or a metaphor, it's a literal and deep truth.
Same as when another freemason, Mark Twain, said, "if you don't read the newspaper you are
uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed". Master Mason of the Scottish
Rite Samuel Clemens was telling the truth but in such a way it would't be perceived as
such.
Umbrellas as freemasonic symbols, they're very fond of an arch.
The Trump prject was all about identifying the populists i.e. those plebs who would vote
for what the oligarchs don't currently want. 'Populist' is elastic as 'kulak'. They are the
ones currently being "impeached", not Trump. Their guilt is assured. Anyone who, for example,
fancies going on a march against vaccinations will discover they were in the dock too. Anyone
not down with the plan is a violent insurrectionist now and can expect to be policed as such.
. .
Foreword to Brave New World, second edition -- circa 1947
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Here's my abridgement:
In the meantime, however, it seems worth while at least to mention the most serious defect in
the story, which is this. The Savage is offered only two alternatives, an insane life in
Utopia, or the life of a primitive in an Indian village, a life more human in some respects,
but in others hardly less queer and abnormal. ... Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that
sanity is impossible. ... If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third
alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the
possibility of sanity -- a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of
exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation.
In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian , politics
Kropotkinesque cooperative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath,
they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as
though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and
intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos,
the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of
Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the
Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of
life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the
achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final
End?"
.... and here is the Foreword, in full:
Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you
have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of
behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is
not the best way of getting clean.
Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at
least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in
relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted
out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary
shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it
missed at its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins
committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth -- all this is
surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one.
Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to
rewrite the book -- and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should
probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it
originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer
to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else.
In the meantime, however, it seems worth while at least to mention the most serious defect
in the story, which is this. The Savage is offered only two alternatives, an insane life in
Utopia, or the life of a primitive in an Indian village, a life more human in some respects,
but in others hardly less queer and abnormal. At the time the book was written this idea, that
human beings are given free will in order to choose between insanity on the one hand and lunacy
on the other, was one that I found amusing and regarded as quite possibly true. For the sake,
however, of dramatic effect, the Savage is often permitted to speak more rationally than his
upbringing among the practitioners of a religion that is half fertility cult and half
Penitente ferocity would actually warrant. Even his acquaintance with Shakespeare would
not in reality justify such utterances. And at the close, of course, he is made to retreat from
sanity; his native Penitente -ism reasserts its authority and he ends in maniacal
self-torture and despairing suicide. "And so they died miserably ever after" -- much to the
reassurance of the amused, Pyrrhonic aesthete who was the author of the fable.
Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible. On the contrary, though I
remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am
convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it. For having said so in
several recent books and, above all, for having compiled an anthology of what the sane have
said about sanity and the means whereby it can be achieved, I have been told by an eminent
academic critic that I am a sad symptom of the failure of an intellectual class in time of
crisis. The implication being, I suppose, that the professor and his colleagues are hilarious
symptoms of success. The benefactors of humanity deserve due honour and commemoration. Let us
build a Pantheon for professors. It should be located among the ruins of one of the gutted
cities of Europe or Japan, and over the entrance to the ossuary I would inscribe, in letters
six or seven feet high, the simple words: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD'S EDUCATORS. SI
MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE.
But to return to the future . . . If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the
Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would
lie the possibility of sanity -- a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a
community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the
Reservation. In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian,
politics Kropotkinesque cooperative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the
Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New
World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious
and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos,
the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of
Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the
Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life
being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by
me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"
Brought up among the primitives, the Savage (in this hypothetical new version of the book)
would not be transported to Utopia until he had had an opportunity of learning something at
first hand about the nature of a society composed of freely co-operating individuals devoted to
the pursuit of sanity. Thus altered, Brave New World would possess artistic and (if it is
permissible to use so large a word in connection with a work of fiction) a philosophical
completeness, which in its present form it evidently lacks.
But Brave New World is a book about the future and, whatever its artistic or philosophical
qualities, a book about the future can interest us only if its prophecies look as though they
might conceivably come true. From our present vantage point, fifteen years further down the
inclined plane of modern history, how plausible do its prognostications seem? What has happened
in the painful interval to confirm or invalidate the forecasts of 1931?
One vast and obvious failure of foresight is immediately apparent. Brave New World contains
no reference to nuclear fission. That it does not is actually rather odd, for the possibilities
of atomic energy had been a popular topic of conversation for years before the book was
written. My old friend, Robert Nichols, had even written a successful play about the subject,
and I recall that I myself had casually mentioned it in a novel published in the late twenties.
So it seems, as I say, very odd that the rockets and helicopters of the seventh century of Our
Ford should not have been powered by disintegrating nuclei. The oversight may not be excusable;
but at least it can be easily explained. The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of
science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals. The triumphs
of physics, chemistry and engineering are tacitly taken for granted. The only scientific
advances to be specifically described are those involving the application to human beings of
the results of future research in biology, physiology and psychology. It is only by means of
the sciences of life that the quality of life can be radically changed. The sciences of matter
can be applied in such a way that they will destroy life or make the living of it impossibly
complex and uncomfortable; but, unless used as instruments by the biologists and psychologists,
they can do nothing to modify the natural forms and expressions of life itself. The release of
atomic energy marks a great revolution in human history, but not (unless we blow ourselves to
bits and so put an end to history) the final and most searching revolution.
This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in
the souls and flesh of human beings. Living as he did in a revolutionary period, the Marquis de
Sade very naturally made use of this theory of revolutions in order to rationalize his peculiar
brand of insanity. Robespierre had achieved the most superficial kind of revolution, the
political. Going a little deeper, Babeuf had attempted the economic revolution. Sade regarded
himself as the apostle of the truly revolutionary revolution, beyond mere politics and
economics -- the revolution in individual men, women and children, whose bodies were
henceforward to become the common sexual property of all and whose minds were to be purged of
all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of traditional
civilization. Between sadism and the really revolutionary revolution there is, of course, no
necessary or inevitable connection. Sade was a lunatic and the more or less conscious goal of
his revolution was universal chaos and destruction. The people who govern the Brave New World
may not be sane (in what may be called the absolute sense of the word); but they are not
madmen, and their aim is not anarchy but social stability. It is in order to achieve stability
that they carry out, by scientific means, the ultimate, personal, really revolutionary
revolution. But meanwhile we are in the first phase of what is perhaps the penultimate
revolution. Its next phase may be atomic warfare, in which case we do not have to bother with
prophecies about the future. But it is conceivable that we may have enough sense, if not to
stop fighting altogether, at least to behave as rationally as did our eighteenth-century
ancestors. The unimaginable horrors of the Thirty Years War actually taught men a lesson, and
for more than a hundred years the politicians and generals of Europe consciously resisted the
temptation to use their military resources to the limits of destructiveness or (in the majority
of conflicts) to go on fighting until the enemy was totally annihilated. They were aggressors,
of course, greedy for profit and glory; but they were also conservatives, determined at all
costs to keep their world intact, as a going concern. For the last thirty years there have been
no conservatives; there have been only nationalistic radicals of the right and nationalistic
radicals of the left. The last conservative statesman was the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne; and
when he wrote a letter to the the Times , suggesting that the First World War should be
concluded with a compromise, as most of the wars of the eighteenth century had been, the editor
of that once conservative journal refused to print it. The nationalistic radicals had their
way, with the consequences that we all know --Bolshevism, Fascism, inflation, depression,
Hitler, the Second World War, the ruin of Europe and all but universal famine.
Assuming, then, that we are capable of learning as much from Hiroshima as our forefathers
learned from Magdeburg, we may look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited
and only partially ruinous warfare. During that period it may be assumed that nuclear energy
will be harnessed to industrial uses. The result, pretty obviously, will be a series of
economic and social changes unprecedented in rapidity and completeness. All the existing
patterns of human life will be disrupted and new patterns will have to be improvised to conform
with the nonhuman fact of atomic power. Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will
prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind doesn't fit -- well, that will be
just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and a bit of amputation -- the
same sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since applied science really
got into its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic than in the past.
These far from painless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitarian
governments. Inevitably so; for the immediate future is likely to resemble the immediate past,
and in the immediate past rapid technological changes, taking place in a mass-producing economy
and among a population predominantly propertyless, have always tended to produce economic and
social confusion. To deal with confusion, power has been centralized and government control
increased. It is probable that all the world's governments will be more or less completely
totalitarian even before the harnessing of atomic energy; that they will be totalitarian during
and after the harnessing seems almost certain. Only a large-scale popular movement toward
decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. At present there
is no sign that such a movement will take place.
There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.
Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass
deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is demonstrably
inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy
Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive
of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have
to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in
present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, news- paper editors and
schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and unscientific. The old Jesuits' boast
that, if they were given the schooling of the child, they could answer for the man's religious
opinions, was a product of wishful thinking. And the modern pedagogue is probably rather less
efficient at conditioning his pupils' reflexes than were the reverend fathers who educated
Voltaire. The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something,
but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of
view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr.
Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local
political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much
more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most
compelling of logical rebuttals. But silence is not enough. If persecution, liquidation and the
other symptoms of social friction are to be avoided, the positive sides of propaganda must be
made as effective as the negative. The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be
vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists
will call "the problem of happiness" -- in other words, the problem of making people love their
servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into
existence; for the sake of brevity, I assume that the all-powerful executive and its managers
will succeed in solving the problem of permanent security. But security tends very quickly to
be taken for granted. Its achievement is merely a superficial, external revolution. The love of
servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human
minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others, the following
discoveries and inventions.
First, a greatly improved technique of suggestion -- through infant conditioning and,
later, with the aid of drugs, such as scopolamine.
Second, a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to
assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy.
(Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to
infect others with their discontents.)
Third (since reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of
taking pretty frequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and the other narcotics, something
at once less harmful and more pleasure-giving than gin or heroin.
And fourth (but this would be a long-term project, which it would take generations of
totalitarian control to bring to a successful conclusion), a foolproof system of eugenics,
designed to standardize the human product and so to facilitate the task of the managers. In
Brave New World this standardization of the human product has been pushed to
fantastic, though not perhaps impossible, extremes. Technically and ideologically we are
still a long way from bottled babies and Bokanovsky groups of semi-morons. But by A.F. 600,
who knows what may not be happening? Meanwhile the other characteristic features of that
happier and more stable world -- the equivalents of soma and hypnopaedia and the scientific
caste system --are probably not more than three or four generations away. Nor does the sexual
promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American
cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years,
no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve
months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As
political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.
And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or
conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the
freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to
reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
All things considered it looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone, only
fifteen years ago, could have imagined. Then, I projected it six hundred years into the future.
Today it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us within a single century. That is,
if we refrain from blowing ourselves to smithereens in the interval. Indeed, unless we choose
to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made
the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two
alternatives to choose from: either a number of national, militarized totalitarianisms, having
as their root the terror of the atomic bomb and as their consequence the destruction of
civilization (or, if the warfare is limited, the perpetuation of militarism); or else one
supranational totalitarianism, called into existence by the social chaos resulting from rapid
technological progress in general and the atomic revolution in particular, and developing,
under the need for efficiency and stability, into the welfare-tyranny of Utopia. You pays your
money and you takes your choice.
In the foreword to the 1946 edition of his novel, Brave New World , Aldous Huxley anticipated the
continued emergence, perhaps in novel forms, of statist totalitarianism:
There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.
Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass
deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is
demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin
against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the
all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of
slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it
is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda,
news-paper editors and schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and
unscientific.
Because, in 1946, the world had yet to witness the horrors of Red China, North Korea, Cuba,
and Cambodia, Huxley guessed wrong that artificial famines, mass imprisonment, and political
executions would go out of fashion. Totalitarianism is impossible without brute violence. And,
from our brave new world of 2021, where Big Tech's promiscuous deployment of tools like
Machine
Learning Fairness and
shadow banning prevent users' exposure to wrongthink, his estimation of propaganda methods
as "crude and unscientific" is badly out of date.
But how chilling is Huxley's prescience about propaganda ministers, news editors, and
schoolteachers training generations of serfs to willingly obey "political bosses and their army
of managers"?
Just like the truism that "generals always fight the last war," Huxley's point that there's
"no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old" calls for both vigilance and
imagination on our part; our next totalitarian enemy isn't limited to patterns of
twentieth-century Nazism or Soviet-style Communism.
For instance, the suffocating blanket of censorship and suppression of free speech, which
seems to defy any constitutional remedy because it's not directly traceable to
government action, remains a problem without an obvious solution. Regardless, it's an open
secret that the corporate executives in media, Big Tech, and Hollywood managing this
suppression are acting on behalf of a single political party -- a party that, due in large part
to that interference and suppression now have near total control of the federal government.
Townhall's Matt Vespa quotes even a liberal reporter, Michael Tracey, warning that the
"absolute authoritarian lunacy" of Twitter's decision to ban President Trump isn't about
"'safety,' it's about purposely inflating a threat in order to assert political and cultural
dominance." Warns Tracey, "The new corporate authoritarian liberal-left monoculture is going to
be absolutely ruthless -- and in 12 days it is merging with the state ." [My
italics].
Glenn Greenwald, another committed progressive, also complains "
that political censorship has 'contaminated virtually every mainstream centre-left
political organization, academic institution and newsroom.'" In October, Greenwald, co-founder
of The Intercept news site,
resigned after they refused to publish his article
about Joe Biden and Hunter's shocking influence-peddling, unless Greenwald first removed
"critical points against the Democratic candidate."
In
reality, standing alone with election fraud notwithstanding , last October's lockstep
decision by an entire news industry to suppress the starkly headline-worthy scandals around
Hunter Biden's laptop, along with all other negative stories about Joe Biden, accounts directly
for 17% of Biden voters who would have abandoned him "
had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories." Because those lost votes
"would have changed the outcome in all six of the swing states won by Joe Biden," re-electing
Trump, burying those stories was first-degree election interference.
Huxley foresaw this, too:
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by
refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is
silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr.
Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local
political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion
much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most
compelling of logical rebuttals.
In 2020 alone, news outlets systematically misinformed, or kept uninformed, scores of
millions of voters whose only news sources are either mainstream media or the occasional
de-contextualized sound bite. Corporate news, in addition to disappearing the Hunter Biden
story:
Misreported that opportunistic politicians imposing destructive, arbitrary lockdowns to
stop the spread of the Wuhan virus were only "following the science," while disregarding all
scientific studies showing how lockdowns were ineffective, detrimental, and even deadly;
Misreported for months that Black Lives Matter/Antifa's nightly demonstrations were
"mostly peaceful," while refusing to report on hundreds of BLM and Antifa-organized protests
involving widespread arson, looting, and violence against police and innocent civilians;
Perpetuated the dangerous myth that black men are casually shot down by white police
every day, while ignoring that "statistics "
flatly debunk the false narratives about 'racist white cops' and the 'hunt for unarmed
black men'";
Parroted the Democrat talking point that Trump's allegations of election fraud were made
"without any evidence," while obstinately refusing to investigate well-documented evidence of
pervasive election irregularities in battleground states.
But Fake News is only as powerful as its consumers are gullible. Knowing that, PJMedia's
Stephen Kruiser was able to predict in advance that a Biden win would be "the complete triumph
of decades of
public education indoctrination ," which is no longer education, anyway, but "more of a
leftist catechism class." Journalist
William Haupt III reports that 12 years of Common Core "has resulted in 51 percent of our
youth preferring socialism to democracy." It's also why "[t]wo thirds of the millennials
believe America is a racist and sexist country and 40 percent agree America is 'the most
unequal society in the world.'" In fact, in 2011 Chuck
Rogér traced this decline to the sixties, when teachers' colleges began churning out
"[s]ocial justice-indoctrinated teachers [who] instill resentment in 'non-dominant' (minority)
children and guilt in 'dominant' (white) children. Judging by the abundance of guilt-ridden
white Americans, the tactic is working its magic well." At present a reported
3,500 classrooms across fifty states are incorporating the New York Times ' specious
1619 Project , which teaches that every accomplishment in America's history came out
of slavery . The purpose of this all this falsified history? Not education, but more
generations of Americans "unable to discern
fact from fiction ."
Now that progressives have complete control of Washington, they'll escalate their lies -- of
commission, and especially of omission -- to gain a tighter and more permanent grip. Still,
Truth remains their real enemy. It explains social media's current blitz of de-platforming
conservatives, trying to drop an "iron curtain," just as Huxley predicted, to separate the
people from undesirable facts.
Likewise, fidelity to truth is our best defense; that, and continuing to refuse their lies.
That's one positive action Solzhenitsyn was able to offer his comrades who felt
powerless against the repressive Soviet system, "the most perceptible of its aspects" being
lies: "Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace
everything, but not with any help from me."
T.R. Clancy looks at the world from Dearborn, Michigan. You can email him at [email protected] .
In today's climate of political correctness and economic uncertainty, ad revenue only goes
so far to keep an independent voice like AmericanThinker.com going. If you enjoy our articles,
please consider supporting us with a direct contribution of as much or as little as you can
give. Your donation will ensure that we continue to bring great pieces from our outstanding
columnists.
If Orwell had done what's so popular now and written a prequel to 1984 he would pretty
much have described us.
amaericeltoi 1 hour ago
Huxley's vision seems more likely than Orwell's. Of course both dystopias have intrusive
governments, but Huxley's view of the technological aspects of the oppression were much more
prophetic. Genetic engineering, mass drugging, and planned consumption/consumerist economics
being the key to the planned technocracy. The evidence may be the widely heralded use of
genetic manipulation, unparalleled "pushing" of drugs to control every aspect of
emotional/intellectual well being and subtle but effective marketing through data mining.
I'm saving my Complete Works of Shakespeare and laying low . . .Brave New World be
hanged!
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), who used the pen name George
Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid
prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of
democratic socialism.
Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is perhaps
best known for his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella
Animal Farm (1945). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting
his experience of working class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938),
an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, are widely acclaimed, as are his essays
on politics, literature, language, and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list
of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian
-- descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices -- has entered the language
together with many of his neologisms, including, but not limited to, cold war, Big Brother,
Thought Police, Room 101, memory hole, doublethink, and thoughtcrime.--Wikipedia.
"The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering... all
thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting,
triumphing, persecuting - three hundred million people all with the same face."
That was a quote from George Orwell's seminal work 1984 - a masterpiece that describes life
in a totalitarian state that demands blind obedience.
The 'Party' controlled everything - the economy, daily life, and even the truth. In Orwell's
1984 , "the heresy of heresies was common sense."
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has
been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been
altered."
"And the 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."
If you were ever caught committing a thoughtcrime -- dissenting from the Party for even an
instant– then "your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you
had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten."
Now, our world obviously hasn't become quite as extreme as Orwell's dystopian vision. But
Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government certainly seem to be giving it their best effort.
70,000 thought criminals have already been purged from Twitter. Facebook and Reddit are
feverishly removing user content. Apple, Google, and Amazon have banned entire apps and
platforms.
Undoubtedly there is plenty of wacky content all over the Internet– misinformation,
ignorance, rage, hate, violence, and just plain stupidity.
But these moves by the Big Tech companies aren't about violence. If they were, they would
have deleted tens of thousands of accounts over the last few years– like the mostly
peaceful BLM activist who Tweeted "white people may have to die".
Or the countless others who have advocated for violent uprisings against the police
Then, of course, there's the #assassinatetrump and #killtrump hashtags that has Twitter has
allowed since at least 2016. Or the #killallmen hashtag that's allowed on Twitter and
Instagram.
This is not about violence. It's about ideology. If you hold different beliefs than the
'Party', then you risk being canceled or 'de-platformed' by Big Tech.
Icons like Ron Paul– who spent years criticizing the current administration's monetary
and national defense policies, and had nothing to do with the Capitol, have been suspended or
locked out of their Facebook pages.
The hammer has dropped, and it is now obvious, beyond any doubt, that you better watch what
you say– your livelihood, your social life, and your safety may just depend on it.
Or else, you will be purged, canceled, deleted from the Internet, denied payment processing
by Visa, PayPal, and Stripe, and expelled from domain registrars like GoDaddy.
The message is clear: behave and think exactly as we tell you, or you will lose everything
you have worked for, in the blink of an eye.
Sure, the 'Party' may give lip service to tolerance and unity. As long as you fall in line.
Otherwise it's more rage and ridicule.
They act like you're a crazy person because you have completely legitimate questions and
concerns– whether about Covid lockdowns, censorship, media misinformation, etc.
It's extraordinary that after so much deliberate misinformation and bias, the media still
expects people to take them seriously. CNN seems to believe that think anyone who doubts their
credibility is a 'conspiracy theorist.'
All of these trends are probably making a lot of people very nervous. Even scared. Despair
has undoubtedly set in, much like in Winston Smith, the main character in Orwell's 1984.
So, for all the Winstons out there, the most important thing right now is to remain
rational. As human beings we tend to make terrible decisions when we're scared, sad, or
angry.
Have confidence in knowing that you have MUCH more control over your own life, livelihood,
and future than they want to you believe.
But you absolutely will have to make some deliberate, potentially difficult decisions.
For example, if you're fed up with Big Tech, you can de-Google your life. No one is holding
a gun to your head to have a Facebook account or use gmail. There are plenty of other options
out there that we'll discuss in future letters.
More importantly, you might find that your hometown isn't safe anymore– especially if
you live in a big city controlled by politicians intoxicated on their Covid powers.
It's really time to consider your immediate environment – if the local schools are
brainwashing your kids, the dictatorial health officials shutting down your business, or nosy
neighbors ready to turn you into the Gestapo for having family over for the holidays, then you
might think about moving.
That might simply mean moving a few miles to a new county. Or a new state/province. Or
potentially overseas. We'll help provide you with information on plenty of options.
It might also be time to reconsider some of your business infrastructure– to have
backup web servers and payment processors, for example, if you have an online business.
It might be time to consider some new financial options as well, lest the banks jump on the
band wagon and start 'canceling' accounts for heretics.
But that's the silver lining: we've never had more alternatives than now. Everything–
technology platforms, financial institutions, and even our personal residence– it's all
replaceable. All of it.
We have never had more control over our own privacy, data, livelihood, and environment as
long as you have the willingness to take action.
2banana 2 hours ago remove link
GAB and Brave browsers,
rumble and bitchute video,
Signal for voice and messaging,
Session for messaging,
Epoch times for news,
Fastmail and ProtonMail for email,
Duchduckgo and dogpile for search,
And use a paid VPN like private internet access
Leave the phone at home as often as you can and pay cash.
Southern_Boy 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
Use https, not http exclusively and don't use any web site that won't take it.
Fastmail is owned by Opera and its mail servers are located in the US, so it will not
protect you from subpoenas.
The GAB browser is called Dissenter.
Consider TOR for infrequent forays into the "dark web".
Don't forget that BitCoin (BTC) is traceable.
Use a free version of CCLEANER after every browser session to erase as much of your tracks
as you can.
Signal is a suspect because of its controlled ownership community
Using the same vendor for VPN as Anti-Virus is against IT security best practices
Paying for anything with your bank card is a red flag. Whoever you give your credit card
to now has your identity, including ZeroHedge. Consider creating an LLC or other identity
(preferably offshore) to fund a "burner" credit card or get a refillable debit card that you
can fill up using cash. Then you can pay for VPN, email and paid content subscription
services using an assumed name or LLC cover name. Assume that any payment to any tech service
with your personal card will be used for identification purposes.
Pay with money orders if possible.
Change cellular phone companies every 1 to two years. Avoid data usage on cellular phone,
consider using multiple WiFi hotspots for calls.
Consider 2-3 cheap used phones with cheap, pay as you go services and swap them regularly
and randomly.
Do not have contact lists on your cell phone and reset to factory settings every 6 months
to wipeout any data.
Reload from bare metal your laptop or desktop PC OS every 6 months.
Send random gibberish as an encrypted email every month or so and check if it's unusually
slow to be received or if any vendor calls or asks you about anything. If they do, you are
being tracked. There are no coincidences.
Make infrequent but regular phone calls with your multiple phones to law enforcement,
federal "three letter agency" main switchboards, politicians and random people. Just tell
anyone who answers it was a mistake and an improperly dialed number. If you get hold music,
then stay on as long as you can because traffic analysis will not know if your actually
talking to someone or not. If anyone is investigating or tracking you, your signals traffic
(CDR) will automatically confound them and involve unwanted parties that will confound and
scare the hounds.
If you are technically competent, consider getting any open source product you use and
then compile it yourself after reviewing the source. Check for hidden open doors or reporting
communications that aren't needed.
Fateful Destiny the Book 2 hours ago
1984 was prophetic for its time, but Fateful Destiny is the new dystopian benchmark novel
for what is to come. Get yours now: https://amzn.to/3owM5Sh
TheLastMan 1 hour ago
The media filter is dominant. Control the narrative, control the world. The official
narratives are perpetually meshed into daily consciousness. You must know it is literally
spellbinding.
Similar dangers exist on alt media sites like zh. Beware the narrative. Look for at least
three sides to every story - his side her side and maybe the truth
OpenEyes 1 hour ago
As much as possible, now is the time to start 'going grey' (if you haven't already
started).
One example: I see a lot of people, understandably, saying to delete your facebook
account, gmail account, twitter account etc. My recommendation, DO NOT do this. You don't
think "they" aren't keeping track of those who are doing this, especially right now? By
taking those actions you are pinning a big red flag on yourself.
No, my advice, just simply abandon your account. Stop commenting, posting, reading, etc..
simply walk away and stop using those accounts. It will take some time for 'them' to notice
that your account is inactive, if they even do. And, an inactive account will likely be
treated far less seriously than an actively deleted or cancelled account.
Keep your heads down and your family safe. Best wishes to all.
Misesmissesme 3 hours ago (Edited) remove link
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever. -
George Orwell: " An Instruction Guide for 2021 "
Cardinal Fang 2 hours ago (Edited)
Like that scene in The Graduate where the guy leans in and tells Dustin Hoffman 'One
word...Plastics' I am going to lean in and say 'One word...Wearables'
So Google just completes their acquisition of 'FitBit'...even though the Justice Dept has
not finished their anti-trust investigation...
Anyhow, it's all coming clear. The next stage in our Orwellian nightmare is Covid will be
the excuse to make you 'wear' a device to prove you are Covid free in some way. It will be
your permission slip, plus they can spy on you in real time even if you leave your phone
home, because you will not be able to leave your home without your 'Wearable'...
Then, in short order, you will get tired of your 'wearable' and beg for the chip
implant.
You will beg to be vaccinated and chipped like sheep.
They literally can't help themselves.
Jim in MN 2 hours ago
All new and improved ankle bracelets!
Only $299.99 and yes, it is required or else.
Batteries, monthly surveillance fees and random fines not included.
Dr.Strangelove 2 hours ago
I just watched 1984 and it is scary similar to the US political environment.
We are all Winston.
SullyLuther 1 hour ago remove link
Huxley will be proven correct. Z O G doesn't need a boot perpetually on our necks, when we
are so passive and ignorant.
Workdove PREMIUM 1 hour ago
They just need to make narcotics and psychedelics free and his vision of the future will
be complete. Orwell was correct too. We got both.
NIRP-BTFD 3 hours ago
Now, our world obviously hasn't become quite as extreme as Orwell's dystopian vision.
But Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government certainly seem to be giving it their best
effort.
This is just the beginning. The technocrats at the WEF are planning to control your
thought with chips and brain interfaces. Now tell me what is neuralink that Musk is workign
on? I'm sure DARPA has technologcy that can allready do this.
seryanhoj 2 hours ago
It's hard to believe USA is now headed to a society like the worst days of the USSR.
Back in the fifties , paranoid Senator McCarthy used similar extreme methods to cancel all
those who he considered to by stealth communist sympathizers, or anyone who had been within
100 feet of one. Ironically his methods resembled those of Joseph Stalin.
He was finally discredited by an outstanding and brave news man who took the risk of
persecution by denouncing senator McCarthy's methods as unamerican .
So this kind of thing is not without precedent in USA.
IMO, it's a combination of those plus, a la 1984 , and distractions, sports
particularly. I was taught early that knowledge is power, then picked up Socrates admonition:
The unexamined life is not worth living; which later led to this formula: Gnosis=Logos. Then
there's defending against Machiavelli's Prince, which requires knowledge. Plus the
Enlightenment-based premises upon which the USA was founded. And most importantly, if you're
to be part of a self-governing nation, one must be informed as many Founders observed. I'm
well versed on what an ignorant life is like as there was a time from my late teens to my mid
30s when I lived that way, with my 50-60 hour per week job, chasing women and having fun
taking precedence. I do often wonder if my efforts are useful. Maybe not so much anymore
since the trolls seem to have stopped trying to smear me.
FBI is soliciting people to identify people involved with the rumble on Capitol Hill. This
is very 1984ish. The FBI must have the best facial recognition software in the land. Really?
This is heading to a dark place. (My man of the year is the Trump rebel with the Trump hat
waving holding the podium. He would be a rich man if he could get a copyright on that photo.
They really had to go this far to catch him? LOL)
The proles were more or less happy in 1984's London because they were supplied with cheap
food, booze, fags, records and cheap tabloids and pulp books. They had everything they needed
(and could afford it) to live their working-class lives and would never rise up –
therein lies Winston's frustration – revolution is simply beyond their mental
horizon.
Trumproles on the other hand have not been looked after very well by their Very Big
Brother and are unhappy – but remain proles – creatures of low consciousness and
intelligence and little understanding of the world beyond their fence. "America has most
freem in the world! If America goes down, the World is doooomed!" (that was one "patriot's"
lowing outside the Capitol). No, old chap, if you dispose of yourselves peacefully, the world
will rejoice and thank you forever. Thank you for the music though – some of it will
live on forever.
To expect any meaningful revolutionary action from them is a tad optimistic. Even a
chaotic mass action is beyond them because they do possess a healthy survival instinct and a
certain low cunning which middle-class observers often overlook.
Ultimately of course, if Iranians are our allies, let them enjoy this moment when a
tormentor-in-chief of their nation sinks in oblivion.
Fair points, Ken, but there is another difference between now and "1984" which
requires the prole class to have more than "low consciousness and intelligence and little
understanding of the world." Orwell wrote, "Everywhere there is the same pyramidal
structure, the same worship of a semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for
continuous warfare When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity.
Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or
disregarded."
The people of Oceania can be ignorant and insane because Eurasia and Eastasia operate on
the same level. However, can that be said of today's Russia, China, Iran, etc.? If the
"Western" prole class is too far below those opposed to our Orwellian overlords, then the
dystopia loses. Yet needing to raise their level makes them liable to oppose the dystopia
themselves.
Perhaps that is what makes things worse. Here in Britain, they would rather let the people
go without or risk bad vaccines than talk to Russians about using theirs. And of course the
attack on China is exploding. Perhaps they are trying to prevent what you are talking about.
If people started to cooperate, there would be no room for the criminals currently ruling the
West.
Yes, Ken, the banker gangsters are trying, and Orwell said they would try, too. "There
should be no contact with foreigners If he were allowed contact with foreigners he
would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been
told about them is lies."
However, the banksters could not prevent that. Orwell's Eurasia, the Soviet Union, was
collapsing, so Brits were needed to help fill the void left by Bolshevik-brand Communists.
Orwell's Oceania, which includes the US, was protesting and fragging corrupt officers over
the continuous war in Vietnam, so Brits were needed to help build up Orwell's Eastasia, which
includes China, as a replacement super-state. Yet as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
recently said, "We don't need a world where China becomes another United States."
If Eastasia is never really coming and Eurasia is never coming back, doesn't it stand to
reason that Oceania will likewise fail ?
I am not talking about working-class (although I conflate occasionally) but PROLES that
Saker talks about. And trust me, I'm not. Anybody who could have voted for the dismantling of
the American industry and social networks under Reagan can't be very bright!
Hello my friend, what a sad day for the ideal of a democratic and free republic it is. If
Americans rise up, it will not be for the sake of Donald Trump or his Presidency. It will be
when it is clear that if they don't rise up against tyrants and usurpers, the American
Revolution as an ongoing proposition is over for good. There hasn't been enough pain just
yet.
As somebody whose life has been enriched by American music and other things I wish the
American people all the best in their struggle but please ask them to stop bringing immense
harm and pain and suffering to the world. American military (thank you for your service) and
state apparatus have killed between 30 and 40 million people since the end of WWII (Johan
Galtung). In the words of Professor Galtung:
Galtung has stated that the US is a "killer country" guilty of "neo-fascist state
terrorism" and compared the US to Nazi Germany for bombing Kosovo during the 1999 NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia.[26][27]
According to Galtung, the US empire causes "unbearable suffering and resentment" because
the "exploiters/ killers/ dominators/ alienators, and those who support the US Empire because
of perceived benefits" are engaging in "unequal, non-sustainable, exchange patterns". In an
article published in 2004, Galtung predicted that the US empire will "decline and fall" by
2020. He expanded on this hypothesis in his 2009 book titled The Fall of the US Empire
– and Then What? Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US
Blossoming?.[28][29]
Hello Ken Leslie, You mention Johan Galtung the Norwegian peace researcher.
Can you give me the exact places where I can find your quotes? especially the quote of about
30 – 40 million people killed by the US State apparatus.
Thank you for putting me in touch with this special man.
Keep safe, Donald
For all their unspeakable beastliness, the Germans did their slaughter while fighting (at
least some of the time). Most of the deaths caused by the USA have been caused to innocent
civilians or vastly inferior opponents. If I were to factor in the risk involved in mass
killing and multiply by it, the magnitude of the US crime would at least double.
Well, I see it for sure, not confident that others will, as Americans as a society have
never been particularly self-reflective.
I have an identity though that is grounded in natural and spiritual truths that predate
1776 AD, and will last after America is gone in it's present form. On that note, I say;
Hi Ken,
I don't disagree with your description of the proles, however they are not our enemy.
Our true enemy are the people who act and talk like gentlemen, those who speak of lofty
ideals and then use their bombs and cruise missiles to murder civilians halfway across the
globe. Give me proles, who mind their own business, any day over those guys.
Perhaps but I'm not sure why people are convinced that "working-class" Americans –
ultra right-wing bordering on fascist can provide a solution. Trump caused more damage to
peace than most other criminals-in-chief and these American proles (I'm in so sod the world)
have always voted for right-wing reprobates such as Reagan and Bus(c)h. Why should they
change now?
I have had recently a severe disagreement with a close friend who was a Australian Viet
Nam vet. In his opinion the US is/was the cornerstone of world order and its moral actions
over the years has kept the world in order by its muscle.
This is not a light matter as he is friend whith whom I said in reply 'you must be
kidding'. Minutes later the divide became real and we have not spoken for a few years. He no
doubt saw some things in his time in service that formulated such an opinion and I would
hazard a guess he is not Robinson Crusoe in that regard.
So neither of us is young and we both have travelled the world for many, many years since
with a similar view on most things moral or newsworthy.
So the destruction of empire I found to my cost has ramifications on a personal level if
not otherwise.
Remember for artists with limited attention span the personal is often more critical than
the general.
The dismantling of a neo-liberal world order from within the US would have a profound
effect on the rest, who espouse the same ideology. Also, the economy of the US is intertwined
with a large portion of the world. A US collapse will have a negative effect on many people,
just as the collapse of the Soviet system devastated the average person who lived within its
system. Yes, the world is tired of their perversions, stupidity, and violence inflicted upon
other nations. What should be hoped for is a more peaceful slide into a multipolar economic
system and a return of US Constitutionalists to power. Most regular people have committed no
crimes and shouldn't suffer from the crimes of corrupt, spineless scum that have made a
mockery of their own nation States.
Last thing the world needs is another madman in power. The famous "mad" leaders were able
to come to power due to grave injustices. Usually, from a second State that has an axe to
grind. Violence begots violence for sure. I don't know if US has the environment for a
classic type of madman to grab power. Though it can be argued most of their modern leaders
are mad for starting criminal wars and deserve punishment. However, no use leader has the
spine or charisma of such leaders. I agree with you, though the likelihood of it is less
likely in my opinion. As for a soft implosion and a rebuild with the true vales that united
all people of the country be reestablished. It's always darkest before the dawn.
Despite its Satanic foreign policy since WWII (I mean this literally – the demon of
the Third Reich simply swapped bodies), I don't think that anybody really wishes ill to the
broad palette of humanity that inhabits the USA. What we do ask is for a good slap that will
awaken them to the harm their sons (and increasingly daughters) have caused to the world
(thank you for your disservice!).
Fortunately, it appears that the slap will be self-administered – although I can see
the CIA troglodytes blaming China and Russia for the yesterday's farce.
Thank you – I don't mean to disrespect any group of people but really don't believe
that some kind of revolution can come from this particular demographic. It is the curse of
successful propaganda – they believe so much in "America the exceptional" that it is
difficult for them to try and dismantle it. Please look at the clashes – it's nothing
like real or colour revolutions – lots of swearing and "patriotism" and then home to
wide screen TVs and narrow beer bottles.
Second, what would be the cause of the revolution? That the USA has reached its natural
apex and is now slowly sinking? Why, the British and the Soviets could have done the same but
did spare the world their drama – latter at a considerable cost. I have a feeling that
many (me included) buy into the "exceptional" lie – which has now come to haunt the
Americans. Yes, they were betrayed but they enjoyed every minute of it while the rest of the
world groaned under their sanctions and bombs.
Agreed. We don't need a revolution, we need a resignation. Resigned to the new facts on
the ground in the 21st century. The US was never the one "indispensable nation" that
we were all led to believe, but regardless of that, we're certainly not anymore. We need to
resign ourselves to that fact and then demand that we resign from the odious task of
pretending to be the glorious imperialist hegemon that our politicians and lying media tell
us we are. No more glorious leaders and no more delusional ideas about ever becoming "great
again." The entire world will be better off once that happens, and who knows, the rest
of the world might even still be willing to forgive us our multitude of sins committed
these past many years if we do it now. But that's going to take a level of maturity,
fortitude, and humility that's currently nowhere in evidence.
Thank you for a mature and forward-looking post. That is exactly the posture the Russians
assumed and are coping ok. If there is even a small number of American people who believe
this – there is hope.
Shame that most people will ignore your deep insight. To survive, America must join the
world as an equal – prepared to prosper and suffer like everybody else. Otherwise the
suffering will be Boschian and like nothing we have ever seen.
The age of the wokeTard and progressive / liberal Jingoism is has arrived.
Procrastin8 4 hours ago remove link
See my above comments about Gulag Archipelago. Look at Soviet history. Many of the
original revolutionaries were assassinated, or merely swept aside if they were very lucky.
The Soviet Union managed to imprison on flimsy pretexts, work to death at slave labor, or
just shoot, millions of their own citizens. And for what? To prop up a bloodthirsty, paranoid
regime, fearful that any person could be an enemy, that every shadow contained a lurking
threat. Mapped to our modern world: if things got that bad here (let's hope they don't), even
if you were the world's best Democrat, you supported and contributed to the campaigns, you
marched with MLK and BLM, whatever, when the time comes, they will come for you and none of
your past will be of any avail. The mere fact that you are White, or if you were Black, you
once voiced approval of Whites, will be enough to condemn you.
Your opening sentence reminds me of something. I've just finished Solzhenitsyn's famous
Gulag Archipelago. Once in the prison camp, a prisoner may become convinced that everyone
else is guilty; that he is the only innocent man. Gulag should be required reading for
everyone. Another prime lesson: no matter your political ideology, no matter how "pure" you
were, even if you were a true revolutionary, you are still elibile for being shot/slave
labor, once the bad guys get into power (Lenin, Stalin played these roles in the Soviet
Union.) At some point, any pretense of law or civil procedure is tossed aside. Steal
vegetables from a job site because you're starving. Theft of state property, ten years. Did
you make a off-color joke or comment about the Leader in an unguarded moment? Anti-Soviet
agitation. Ten years. Were you captured by the enemy during the war? Then clearly you were
collaborating with the enemy. They could get you on any pretense, or just because they had a
quota to fill that month.
"Can't happen here?" It already is -- in slow motion.
They are going after conservatives now, as "dangerous vigilantes". My RINO governor today
canceled his inauguration, due to "fear of right wing protestors", and "my family's safety
comes first". . . Re-education camps are next, folks.
ZENDOG 17 hours ago (Edited)
Is it time, for vigilante justice ????
Because the ussa DOJ, is nowhere to be found.
NoDebt 17 hours ago
Saw this coming a ways off. That's one of the reasons I registered as an Independent in
2016 (the other was the Rs shameful lack of support for their own presidential candidate).
This year I might just flip to Democrat.
Not that it matters for voting reasons because I'm never participating in that fraudulent
process again.
But, one must consider that some "political camouflage" might be advisable in certain
areas of the country.
Procrastin8 4 hours ago
See my above comments about Gulag Archipelago. Look at Soviet history. Many of the
original revolutionaries were assassinated, or merely swept aside if they were very lucky.
The Soviet Union managed to imprison on flimsy pretexts, work to death at slave labor, or
just shoot, millions of their own citizens. And for what? To prop up a bloodthirsty, paranoid
regime, fearful that any person could be an enemy, that every shadow contained a lurking
threat. Mapped to our modern world: if things got that bad here (let's hope they don't), even
if you were the world's best Democrat, you supported and contributed to the campaigns, you
marched with MLK and BLM, whatever, when the time comes, they will come for you and none of
your past will be of any avail. The mere fact that you are White, or if you were Black, you
once voiced approval of Whites, will be enough to condemn you.
The Biden regime will be a mass murdering war criminal American regime--just as surely as
the Trump regime is a mass murdering war criminal American regime.
In an Orwellian democracy like the Land of the Free™ (or other capitalist nations),
changes in the ruling political party are used to disguise continuation of the same malignant
America Way of Life itself.
Indeed, there is only one political party in the USA: that of the American Evil
Empire.
And all the fake "partisan political differences" exist only to promote America's Fake
Democracy in general.
My concerns have been those of many writers throughout the ages -- poets, rebels,
journalists, philosophers, passionate writers of every stripe, desperados for truth and a
peaceful world of love and kindness. Those I have admired the most, believers or unbelievers --
it is often hard to tell the difference, nor does it matter -- were those who dismissed
categories, distinctions, or labels, but who wrote freely because for them to write freely was
to live freely and not to be caged by anyone's restrictions as to what they should be saying or
how they were saying it.
For them truth was their God, and through the weaving of words down a page they were always
seeking to disclose what was hidden from common sight. They used language to open up cracks in
the consensus reality that the great poet and writer Kenneth Rexroth called the "social
lie":
Since all society is organized in the interest of exploiting classes and since if men knew
this they would cease to work and society would fall apart, it has always been necessary, at
least since the urban revolutions, for societies to be governed ideologically by a system of
fraud."
Indeed, we live in the era of massive fraud where the trans-national wealthy elites, led by
the American war and propaganda machine, continue to try to convince the gullible that they are
saviors of humanity even as they lie and cheat and murder by the millions.
So what follows are my efforts to unearth the fraud, while celebrating the beauty of life
and telling little stories here and there that I hope exemplify its comedy and tragedy. I am
always experimenting every time I sit down to write. Not consciously, since I let inspiration
guide me. Often, as I think is evident in many pieces, thoughts come to me when walking, and
from those initial thoughts comes the path I follow, not knowing exactly where I am headed.
Some of these essays are highly intellectual and structured; some, straightforwardly political;
others are meanderings that seek to express essential truths I sense in the telling.
... ... ...
The unspeakable is a term coined by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in the mid-1960s. He
meant it to point to a systemic evil that permeates American society that defies speech:
It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said;
the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment
when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is
the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience "
It is, in other words, the plague that is us when we live in the nest of the unspeakable as
obedient servants of the American Empire. Douglass makes the plague manifest in order to give
us hope, and in speaking the unspeakable, he shows us both the radical evil and the redemptive
courage that we are all capable of.
I'm literally sickened by the actions of some in the main stream media, leftists and their
minions in the education system that are seeking to rewrite history and ostracize anyone that
supported President
Donald Trump . Regardless of where anyone stands politically, everyone should oppose these
un-American tactics and disinformation war against the Commander-in- Chief.
The media, however, along with the help of powerful tech giants, are d oing everything in
their power to control the narrative of the Trump administration and by doing so change the
history of our nation.
Sharyl Attkinson's book
Slanted: How the media taught us to love censorship and hate journalism, lays it out
perfectly. She, like others who are concerned about censorship and the media's devolving role
in our Republic, compared the situation to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. She describes
the protagonist in Orwell's book, Winston Smith, whose job is to edit history for the Ministry
of Truth. Of course, Orwell naturally was describing a society that was rewriting history with
lies and a world where Big Brother was watching everyone.
It is essentially happening to our country now, but not by the dystopian government
described by Orwell but by a complex network of ideologists that are now in control of some of
the most essential industries to America's freedom.
Look at this headline from Yahoo. It is the first headline from the publication's Friday
story revealing Donald Trump Jr's diagnosis with COVID-19: Former reality TV show host's son
tests positive for COVID-19 , by Patrick
Gomez.
What an insult to the American people and to President Trump. Yes, he is still the president
of the United States. What was the point of this headline and others like this but to slowly
rewrite history and to erase this President and the administration's achievements.
Benny Johnson is right "the media is already trying to erase the fact that he is
President."
This has been happening since Trump became the Republican candidate nominee in 2016.
Think about the last four years of Trump's presidency. Think about the onslaught of lies
against him in the media. In fact, the outrageous lies that were perpetrated against Trump, his
campaign and the White House before, during and after his 2016 election. The Russia Hoax was
truly a conspiracy against the President by former senior Obama Administration officials who
didn't want him in office. They weaponized both federal law enforcement and the intelligence
community against him and then used the media to spread the lies that were later proven to be
false by investigations conducted by those of us who believed in seeking the truth.
This is the truth about the 2020 election: 73 million Americans voted for Trump, the most of
any Republican President in history. Moreover, if you, like me, believe that there may be a
significant chance that this election was plagued with enough fraudulent behavior that only a
thorough investigation could ever uncover, then he may have garnered the most votes of any
American President.
If Americans don't start demanding better we will only have ourselves to blame for what will
come in our future.
It's not going to end with President Trump. Others will be the target of these actions in
what is truly becoming a new dystopian world. Republicans and Democrats alike that don't fit
the mold of this new shadow government will meet a similar fate.
The actions of these leftists Marxist ideologues embedded in our nation's schools, combined
with left leaning social media platforms and their virulent spread of these unAmerican ideas is
what we have been witnessing.
I certainly hope we wake up, expose it and stop the infection before it kills our liberty
and shreds our Constitution.
palmereldritch , 12 minutes ago
The Neoliberals could never recognize themselves in the works of Orwell today because that
would require critical thinking skills, self-awareness and basic literacy, all things (among
others) programmed by their 'education' to be missing from their abilities.
"... I'm not sure that this is an original idea, but I've always thought that people missed the point about 1984 in that it is not about the evils of Government, so much as it is about the the Inner Party. The Government, represented by the Outer Party, is simply a tool that the Inner Party uses to maintain control and implement its agenda. The Inner Party is the real enemy, not the Government per se. The Outer Party is simply a means to an end. Right? ..."
"... Political correctness trying to rewrite history, continuing to try to keep a whole area of our population on a guilt trip (the South) while totally ignoring the warts on the rest of the country, focusing on the wealthy while calling the poor "parasites" are just a few of today's attempts at Doublethink. Something to think about. ..."
"... Excellent, to the point, and very well explained so even I can understand it. Begs an association to current events in America. The Democratic Party comes to mind. This is even more applicable to me since I grew up in socialism/communism in Eastern Europe. Until you know what living under limited freedom means you do not know freedom. ..."
Natalie Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical psychology. She specializes in Pediatric Psychology and Behavioral Medicine.
At the beginning of the book 1984, these words are presented as the official motto of the nation of Oceania:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
-- George Orwell, 1984
These slogans were created by an entity known only as "The Party," which consist of those in charge of the country. The words
are written in enormous letters on the white pyramid of the Ministry of Truth, which considering that they are obvious contradictions,
seems to be an odd place to put them.
The fact that this motto is written on a government building for a department called the Ministry of Truth suggests that the author
is trying to convey that these statements are somehow true for the society he has constructed. These are just the first in a series
of contradiction written throughout the book and they serve to represent the nature of the society and how it is held together through
the way in which these opposites function.
Orwell opened his book in this way on purpose in order to introduce the reader to the concept of Doublethink , which is
what allows the people of Oceania to live with constant contradictions in their lives. Doublethink is the ability to hold two opposing
ideas in one's mind simultaneously.
The Party develops this ability in it's citizens by undermining their individuality, independence and autonomy and by creating
an environment of constant fear through propaganda. In this way, the Party breaks down their ability to think rationally and makes
citizens accept and believe anything they tell them, even if it is entirely illogical.
The book is filled with similar contradictions like the ones seen in the opening quote. For example:
The Ministry of Peace oversees war
The Ministry of Love carries out the torture of political prisoners and serve as the police of Oceania
The Ministry of Truth is in charge of changing the content in history books and in the news to agree with the Party's beliefs
These contradictions keeps the citizens constantly off balance, so they are never sure of themselves or each other and must rely
on the party for guidance as to how to live their lives.
The fact that the national motto of Oceania is just as contradictory as these other examples emphasizes the success of the Party's
campaign of psychological mind control. The government has become able to maintain the apparent veracity of these opposing statements
because the functions they serve which make them a reality in the society of Oceania.
What Is the Meaning of "War Is Peace" in 1984 ?
The first slogan is probably the most contradictory of the three. The people of Oceania believe that the saying War is Peace means
that in order to have peace one must tolerate the horrors of war. It does not equate the two as the statement might otherwise suggest.
The people fully believe that war is bad and peace is good.
Yet, as in real life, the people have come to the understanding that sometimes one must make terrible sacrifices in order to have
a peaceful nation. The war does not take place on the soil of Oceania but instead, somewhere far from it so they don't see the horrors
of the battle, the destruction, the wounded and dead in front of them. They only hear about it through the daily announcements made
by the Party.
While this contradiction may seem like a logical reality at first, it becomes less so when the reader realizes that there is actually
no war occurring at all. It is a made up fiction created by the Party just to keep the people in line. It is intended to keep their
attention focused elsewhere, so that they do not realize how the Party is controlling their every thought and action.
The motto War is Peace indicates how having a shared enemy unites the people of Oceania and helps them remain on a common course.
It gives them something to worry about external to the way the country is being run, that is happening somewhere else. It helps to
prevent them from becoming consciously aware of the obvious problems in their own society. This mentality, put in place for the benefit
of the Party, gives the people someone other than the government to blame for their problems, making them easier to rule.
A state of constant war demonstrates that people are sacrificing for the greater good of the society, pledging their effort and
money to the war, and devoting themselves to their country and government. From the Party's point of view, all of this is good in
that the more people that invest in and commit to their nation and government, the fewer problems they will perceive.
This saying focuses the people's attention, preventing them from being consciously aware of the obvious problems in their own
society, where they are being actively manipulated and controlled. If people find themselves having thoughts counter to accepted
government rhetoric, they can quickly distract themselves by thinking about the war and worrying over the possibility of attack.
What Is the Meaning of "Freedom is Slavery" in 1984 ?
The second motto, Freedom is Slavery, represents the message that the party imparts to the community that anyone who become independent
of society's control is bound to be unsuccessful. A society that is based on free will result in chaos and the devolvement of the
society. Since the slogan is commutative, if freedom is slavery then slavery is freedom. Here, the Party communicates the message
that those who are willing to subjugate themselves to the collective will or the will of the society which by definition is the will
of the Party, will be freed from danger and wanting what they can't have. Society defines what is good, what is acceptable, what
is desirable. Those who focus on those things and on fulfilling the will of the society will be free from despair and will lack nothing,
at least nothing that society, or the Party, condones.
The Party embodies the idea of a paternalistic structure for those who live in Oceania. Hence, the idea of the Government surveilling
it's citizens being presented under the guise of "Big Brother." Adherence to the ideals and rules are ensured by this individual,
who is presented as a family member and who is supposed to only have the best interests of the people in mind.
In order to survive in this society, the citizens must ignore the clear reality that Big Brother is certainly not a family member
showing concern, but is rather the government spying on everything the citizens do in order to control them. The Party even interprets
facial gestures and nonverbal communication and the people can be tortured as political prisoners because of behavior interpreted
as subversive.
The obvious contradiction here is that it is only by enslaving yourself to the government and whatever they condone that you are
free from harm and imprisonment. Freedom in Oceania means the freedom to do and think what the Party wants without deviating from
their rules and regulations.
What Is the Meaning of "Ignorance is Strength" in 1984 ?
There is also the need for the citizens to subvert their will and their awareness to accept the contradictions the government
puts forth. They are expected to bury the truth and accept irrationality such as is demonstrated in the three statements. Ignorance
is therefore strength as it is the willing ignorance of the people who ignore obvious contradictions. They fail to investigate such
inconsistencies as a non-existent war with an ever changing enemy.
It is this ignorance that maintains the power of the government and the seeming coherence of the the society. It is only through
ignorance that people can find the strength to live in a totalitarian society where the government oppresses them even while communicating
to them how fortunate they are.
When first reading these three slogans, most people scratch their heads wondering how conflicts that can arise from equating two
opposites. But the idea of contradiction is one of the main themes of the novel. In particular, specific themes include:
A shifting definition of freedom and enslavement
The nature of trust and true loyalty
What reality is and how it is affected by appearances
All of these themes are contradictory, yet they power the plot of the novel.
Shifting Definitions of Freedom and Enslavement
One idea presented in Orwell's book is expressed in the saying:
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The government has grown to become omnipotent, writing its own version of reality by changing the content of history books, and
making the people too fearful to think critically.
The Party is so powerful that when it says 2+2=5, the people accept this and come to mindlessly believe it. When the Party declares
that Oceania is at war with Eurasia, they distribute heaps of propaganda and edit records so that the people accept that this is
how it is and has always been. When the government then says Oceania is at war with Eastasia and has always been at war with them,
the people allow their reality to be changed and accept this as true. Not only that, but they accept that Eurasia has always been
their ally.
Even so, the people do not perceive any of these contradictions as a type of enslavement. They willingly let the Party tell them
what to think, what to believe, what to value, and how to act. They allow the government to change these ideals whenever they choose,
believing the new propaganda as fact and repressing the previous reality.
The people must be aware on some level that they are accepting clear opposites, reversals of what is presented as fact, and revisions
of history. Yet they have come to accept this as a small price to pay for safety from their assigned, feared enemy.
It is almost as if the government sometimes changes reality just because they can. There is no need to change a fictional enemy,
as the entire war is made up anyway. Creating a new contradiction for the people seems sometimes to be done just because the Party
is able to do so, and because it keeps the population on its toes. The government has not only come to rule completely, but has reached
a point where it takes pleasure in enslaving people so they do, say, and believe whatever their master tells them.
The nature of the relationship between the Party and its citizens is very much like slavery. The people must serve the government,
and any attempt to "escape" with independent thought is brutally punished. The people are valued only insomuch as they benefit the
government.
In 1984 , Winston, the protagonist, and Julia, his lover, secretly attempt to escape from the mind control of the government
in a room they rent above Mr. Charington's shop. They believe the old-fashioned room has no telescreen, a device through which the
Inner Party surveils the population.
But in fact the room does have a telescreen hidden behind a painting, and Mr. Charington is actually a member of the thought police.
The notion of freedom cannot be maintained as Winston and Julia are attempting to define it. They cannot be free just because they
remove themselves from their normal environment and go to a different room. There is no escape.
As the book comes to a close, Winston's idea of freedom has changed. He no longer has a sense of individual self, he has, in essence,
become selfless, a part of the greater society. Now, he is not only compliant with the Party's dictates, but he wants to be compliant.
He loves Big Brother and has no difficulty rejoicing when he hears about a tactical victory in Africa. The author then states that
he slips back into a blissful dream where he perceives himself to have a soul as white as snow as he confesses and reports more people
to the thought police.
The novel ends by saying that the long hoped for bullet entered Winston's brain. This does not mean he actually died, but that
the independently-minded Winston, whose idea of freedom was freedom from Big Brother and the dictates of the Party, died. This suggests
that Winston was willing to give up all that he had fought for and accept being subservient, controlled, and manipulated.
In today's complex world, it can sometimes feel as if having others take responsibility for making decisions for us would be freeing.
We wouldn't have to struggle with different options or accept the consequences of bad decisions and situations we can't control.
For different people, different degrees of autonomy, responsibility, and consequences contribute to the way freedom is defined. Some
may feel free when they have more control over their life, even if it means they have more responsibility. For others, the stress
of responsibility hampers their sense of freedom.
More choices may be construed as freedom, while numerous options may paralyze. Thus, freedom may be perceived in different ways
by different people. As we see with Winston and Julia, this is even true in the dystopia of 1984.
Trust, Loyalty, and Betrayal
The twisted nature of trust, loyalty, and betrayal is a recurring theme in the novel 1984. Winston is betrayed by Mr. Charrington,
O'Brien, and Julia. He also betrays Julia as well as himself. Yet the novel explores the nature of trust and how it plays into loyalty
and betrayal. Without trust, there can be no loyalty or betrayal, and trust is almost non-existent in the novel. The characters can
never know if they are being observed, either in person or through the telescreen.
It is also impossible to know who is a member of the thought police, and even those who are not part of the thought police often
betray others by turning them in. On multiple occasions those closest to one other–such as spouses, siblings, parents, and their
children–may betray each other. Yet this is what is expected of the members of this society. Citizens report one another with zeal.
Prior to their arrest and torture, Winston and Julia believe the only true betrayal is the betrayal of the heart, as this is the
only kind of betrayal they have control over. They learn that they actually have no control over this type of betrayal either, as
in the end they have no choice but to betray each other and themselves. What establishes their loyalty to each other is trust in
something outside of the Party and Big Brother, but this idea is eventually broken.
They aren't traitors, though, until the Party makes them traitors through torture, when they confess to betraying the entire society
and are forced to further betray anyone toward whom they may feel loyalty. The Party seeks to eliminate potential betrayal at the
root by getting rid of all trust and loyalty.
So, the contradiction exists whereby trust and loyalty to other citizens is deemed bad, while trust and loyalty to the Party is
deemed good. Moreover, betrayal of the Party is deemed bad, while betrayal of others is deemed good. The irony is that when all loyalty
toward other citizens is destroyed, no true loyalty toward the Party can exist either. Still, loyalty based on fear and manipulation
is satisfactory to the Party.
Winston believes that despite knowing they will turn against each other and tell the Party what they want to hear about each other's
sins, as long as they continue to love one another this will not be betrayal. This is an idealistic and naive viewpoint, since he
clearly tells Julia that, once they are captured, there will be nothing they can do for each other.
Truthfully, they can remain loyal to the other by not giving up information. But neither of them consider this an option. When
you cannot put another over yourself, or stop yourself from saying something that could harm the other, true or not, not only can
there be no trust and thus no loyalty, there can be no love.
The Appearance of Reality vs. True Reality
In the novel, O'Brien tries to teach Winston about the nature of reality under the Party through torture, manipulation, and fear.
Winston attempts to hold onto his belief that there is a true reality that cannot be controlled by the Party, especially in relation
to the past, which is fixed and a part of people's memories. O'Brien points out that the Party controls all documents as well as
people's thoughts, so the Party truly can control the past.
This absolute control leads to the assertion that whomever controls the past controls the future, and whomever controls the present
controls the past. O'Brien is arguing that the Party's version of the past is what people believe, and what people believe is truth
even if it has no basis in true reality. This is related to the Party slogans in several ways.
O'Brien wants Winston to let go and allow himself to be torn down so he can be reconstructed as a citizen that is loyal to the
Party. This ties into the reversal of the traditional idea of freedom and enslavement, as it is only in allowing oneself to become
enslaved by the Party, by fully accepting it and its ideals, that one can get rid of the stress and strain involved in fighting against
it.
Once one accepts the Party, they no longer have to worry about what to think, how to act, or what to do with their lives. It is
all done for them, and they are free from the burden of self-determination. By waging war against self-determination one can find
peace. The easiest way to do this is through ignorance, which provides a person with the ability to accept anything the Party wants
them to believe. This allows them to be a model citizen, and in this world, that is a strength.
Concluding Thoughts
In today's world we all too often fail to notice that we are allowing ourselves to be enslaved as well. Sometimes this is due
to propaganda and the lack of alternative information that is easy to obtain. Other times it may be do to shear laziness and the
failure to seek the truth or to let ourselves realize that we are contributing to our own slavery such as when we turn over personal
information online without thinking twice.
We register brief outrage when learning of the government's intrusion into our private lives such as with hidden wires that allow
them to access our mobile conversations and data. But we just as quickly let it go without demanding redress, with the excuse that
we can't do anything about it or that that the company in question must deal with it. We let government officials change reality
with false facts and fake news and again give lip service to our anger and disbelief but allow them to remain in office saying that
is what politicians do and we have to accept the bad with the good.
In other words. we are letting those who lead, those in power, define our reality, at least in part. This is done through whatever
means will help them retain power as opposed to what is in our best interests. We accept propaganda that reverses itself similar
to the war propaganda in 1984. For instance, whether Libya is our staunchest enemy or ally has depended on if there was benefit to
one vs. the other at the time.
We can accept that a nation is our friends one day and our enemy the next, largely by allowing ourselves to remain ignorant. We
fail to learn everything we can about the situation, instead, simply believing the position the government tells us to believe. We
allow ourselves to be led to wage war on what we know to be reality that is based on manipulated collective memories of events.
This may seem like peace since we don't have to work to undercover the truth of situations, but it is taking the easy way out
and allowing others to define our past, present and future. The only way to find true freedom, peace and strength is to refuse to
blindly accept whatever we are told just to keep things simple and non-confrontational.
We need to come to the conclusion that it is time to wage war on such automatic acceptance of manipulated reality. We can take
a stance and follow our words with actions, demanding there be consequences for those who attempt to feed the public lies dressed
up as alternate facts or who rewrite history according to their own best interests. This is ultimately what will lead to true strength,
the abandonment of ignorance and ultimately freedom and peace.
If you found this article useful or interesting, please share on Facebook or Pinterest.
Related Articles
If you enjoyed this article, you might enjoy these, as well:
A Different View of Women
in Orwell's 1984
Orwell has been criticized for his misogynistic portrayal of women in 1984. However, a careful look at how the female characters
impact the male characters, in particular Winston, and the Party suggests that they have great importance in the plot.
Related Questions What Are the Four Ministries in 1984 ?
Ministries in 1984 are the departments of the government that maintain the status quo. Each of the ministries has a different
responsibility. The four ministries and their functions are as follows.
Ministry
Function
Ministry of Truth
Alters official documents to reflect the artificial reality dictated by Big Brother. Distributes propaganda, controls the
flow of new information, and alters documents from the past to make them align with the present.
Ministry of Love
Enforces the rules of the government by carrying out surveillance of Oceania's citizens. Employs the thought police to spy
on and capture potential offenders. Carries out the imprisonment and torture of political prisoners.
Ministry of Peace
Carries out all matters of war, including the creation of armies and the creation of weapons.
Ministry of Plenty
Carries out the production of goods like food, clothing, appliances, and equipment.
What Is Facecrime in 1984 ?
Facecrime in 1984 is committed when a citizen of the Party reveals that they are committing thoughtcrime through the expression
on their face. It may also be something that indicates abnormality such as a nervous tic, a look of anxiety, muttering to oneself,
for example. Anything that suggests someone has something to hide.
Facecrime can be detected using telescreens, a citizen spy, or a member of the thought police.
What Is Thoughtcrime in 1984 ?
Thoughtcrime in 1984 is committed when a citizen of the Party thinks "deviant" thoughts, which would include any thoughts
that have to do with individuality or freedom. A citizen can be charged with thoughtcrime for simply thinking about thoughtcrime.
Thoughtcrime is detected with telescreens installed throughout Oceania that have both microphones and cameras. Thoughtcrime can
also be detected by the inflection of one's voice or the micro-expressions of their face (called facecrime ). Members of the
thought police, an organization within the Ministry of Love, or a citizen spy may catch someone committing thought crime which leads
to the individuals arrest and interrogation.
What Is Doublethink in 1984 ?
Doublethink in 1984 occurs when a person knows that something is not true, but believes it to be true anyway. One example
of the citizens of Oceania using doublethink is if Big Brother were to say that 2+2 equals 5. While mathematical fact says that 2+2
equals 4, through the use of doublethink, 2+2 can equal 5.
Doublethink is a fact of life in Oceania, and must be used everyday in order to survive. The best citizens in George Orwell's
dystopian universe are those who have mastered the art of doublethink.
What Is Duckspeak in 1984 ?
Duckspeak in 1984 occurs when someone speaks without thinking, like a quacking duck. In Oceania, saying that somebody is
using duckspeak can be interpreted as either good or "ungood" depending on who is speaking and what they are saying.
If a citizen is saying something in line with the parties ideals then it is good. If they are carelessly saying something against
the Party doctrine then it is "ungood" and results in their arrest and interrogations.
What Does it Mean to Be Vaporized in 1984 ?
To be vaporized in 1984 is to be captured by the thought police for a crime and eliminated. Being vaporized means you not
only cease to exist, but have never existed. Once you have been vaporized by the Ministry of Love, the Ministry of Truth goes to
work removing every trace of your existence.
Often, those who are vaporized are not even told of their crimes. Instead, they are simply abducted one day, taken to the Ministry
of Truth, tortured until they admit to some wrongdoing, asked to implicate others, and vaporized. The cycle continues endlessly,
and keeps citizens vigilant when it comes to enforcing Big Brother's rules and ideologies.
In one scene from the book, Winston, is his job at the Ministry of Truth, has to edit an article from the past about a man who
was recently vaporized. Since he is now considered an unperson , Winston fills the hole left by this man by creating an entirely
fictional character, a decorated war hero. Other departments in the Ministry of Truth go to work making a face for the man, taking
pictures of him in professional studios that make it look like he is in some far away, war-torn land. Once this work is finished,
the real man is gone, replaced by a fictional one.
What Is an Unperson in 1984 ?
An unperson in 1984 is a person who has been vaporized and no longer exists (and has never existed). This is the term the
Inner Party uses to refer to those they have had removed from society through vaporization.
A large part of Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth is to fill the gaps in history that are left in the wake of unpersons.
Questions & Answers
Question: Is the statement, "War is Peace" a paradox or an oxymoron? Also, what are some examples of paradoxes and oxymorons in
literature?
Answer: Many people confuse oxymorons and paradoxes. Both can be recognized in everyday conversation as well as in literature.
However, they are not the same thing and have different purposes.
A paradox is a statement or group of statements that may on the surface appear to embody contradictions or seen absurd but upon
further reflection be seen as true or at least as something that makes sense. They are contrary to what we normally believe and can
make us think about things in different ways or more deeply. They, therefore, are frequently employed as literary devices. An oxymoron
is comprised of two opposing or contradictory words that are used for dramatic effect.
War is peace seems like a contradiction and an absurd one at that. War is the most brutal act we can carry out against each other.
It is far from peaceful. Sometimes war is necessary to ensure that peace can occur.
Consider the situation where a country is constantly launching missiles at another country, going on stealth raids or other types
of limited attacks that may be months apart and each a single occurrence but which still result in the loss of life, property, the
constant fear or another attack that causes the population to have to change the way they live to protect themselves from harm and
terror when the attacks occur.
This is not a state of peace. So to stop all this, the country being attacked launches a war against the other nation to render
it impossible for them to continue the attacks both materially and based on the conditions of either a cease-fire or final agreement.
The country that had been previously attacked wins the war following which they now have peace and are free from fear of further
attack.
In Animal Farm, also by George Orwell, there is a cardinal rule set forth for all the animals. Part of it states:
"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
This statement seems like it is impossible. First of all, equal is equal; it's an absolute without a related quantity. You can't
have something that is more equal or less equal. So then, if all the animals are equal, you can't have some that are more equal.
This would imply that some are either better, have more power, have more of a right to make decisions or deserve more resources than
others. Again this would not suggest equality.
But in the novel, the government has never treated everyone equally even while stating that everyone is equal. It is akin to the
separate but equal doctrine that once justified systems of segregation and the dual education system in the south. It was determined
that as long as black children were provided with equal facilities as white children, segregation didn't go against the Constitution.
But these separate schools were anything but equal.
In another, example, In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet states, "I have to be cruel to be kind." Again being cruel and being kind
are considered to be opposite and mutually exclusive such that an action that is cruel cannot be kind and vice versa. We typically
don't see someone who is cruel to us as a kind person.
In this example, Hamlet is speaking about his mother, and his intention to kill Claudius, his Uncle. It will be a tragedy for
his mother, who is Claudius's wife, but Hamlet thinks that killing his father's murderer will ultimately be the best thing for this
mother. So in the greater scheme of things, while it may seem cruel initially, Hamlet feels that the kindness he is doing is far
greater.
In another Shakespeare work, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, it says,
"The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is Rainbow in her womb "
The lines are at once describing the birth, with the earth being the birthplace, and death with the same earth housing Juliet's
tomb. The second life, juxtaposes the idea of a grave, again alluding to death, with a womb, which is associated with birth.
In the poem, My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold by William Wordsworth, is the line:
"The child is father of the man "
This line seems reversed for it should be the man who is the father of the child. But thinking about it more carefully, it can
be seen that childhood and everything that happens during this stage sets the stage for what comes after. So childhood is the basis
for adulthood and thus, childhood "fathers" the man or adulthood.
There are numerous examples of an oxymoron in literature, but probably the most obvious one is from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Romeo learns he has fallen in love with an unavailable woman and feels as if he has descended into chaos. All his hopes and dreams
have been shattered. Shakespeare portrays this sense of discord through the use of opposites that don't make sense much the same
as Romeo's life no longer makes sense to him. This is communicated through phrases such as loving hate, heavy lightness, serious
vanity, feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, waking sleep.
Natalie said: "Given everything that is going on in the world today and our current President in the U.S. I think so many of the
things Orwell wrote about have already come to pass in our society. "
Well Natalie, you are clearly drinking the INGSOC Party Kool-Aid if you think the current president represents the worst of 1984...
the previous president (Obama) and his party see 1984 as their bible.
Daniel on May 28, 2019:
Hilarious that both 1984 and Brave New World predicted the future. Even more hilarious that us proles are still allowed to read
them as a token freedom of "and what are you going to do about it?".
Natalie Frank (author) from Chicago, IL on September 15, 2018:
No, you have that reversed, jnjerrynelson. The Inner Party rules Oceania, making up 2% of the population. They are the ones that
have the power and make the decisions for the society. The outer party is essentially the middle class and composed of the more educated
members of society. They are largely responsible for implementation of the Party's policies (though this is actually carried out
through spying and reporting on each other often aimed at gaining a bit more safety from being arrested) but they have no say in
anything. They have strict rules applied to them. The proles are the lower class and have the same rules applied to them they just
have less resources and lower level jobs. The inner party is the government.
jnjerrynelson on September 12, 2018:
Hi Natalie - I read the great 1984 many years ago and think about it all the time these days. I'm not sure that this is an original
idea, but I've always thought that people missed the point about 1984 in that it is not about the evils of Government, so much as
it is about the the Inner Party. The Government, represented by the Outer Party, is simply a tool that the Inner Party uses to maintain
control and implement its agenda. The Inner Party is the real enemy, not the Government per se. The Outer Party is simply a means
to an end. Right?
Derek on September 07, 2018:
Actually,1984 is NOT pessimistic -- everyone ignores the Appendix, which is clearly written in Oldspeak -- after the novel's events. It
begins-''Newspeak WAS (my italics) the official language of Oceania'', and later-about a slogan-''it was believed with a fervour it
is impossible for us to understand today'' -- implying the Party has been overthrown. Also, don't forget the idea that maybe Julia really
was an agent of the Thought Police, with her access to quality tobacco, chocolate, etc.
Natalie Frank (author) from Chicago, IL on September 04, 2018:
Naum, Thank you for interest and your comment. I agree with you that the war is real from the standpoint of the people of Oceania.
I hope I made that clear in the article. The point I was making as since from the standpoint of the government the war is made up
and the people already believe in it, what does it matter who the enemy is? It causes the government added to work to suddenly change
the enemy - they have to then ensure all of the people are on the same page, make announcements, change all sorts of documents and
all the textbooks every time they do this.
So it would seem in the governments best interests since the war is always somewhere far away with the people only having a vague
idea where so they'll never to near and find out the whole thing is a lie, to keep the enemy the same. It would serve the same purpose
of unifying the people and make them willing to sacrifice resources, freedom, privacy etc. on behalf of the war effort.
My opinion is that the reason they change what is already a fictional enemy - meaning that while Eurasia and Eastasia, exist Oceania
isn't at war with either - is for the purpose of doublethink, control and power. The government wants to get the people engaging
in doublethink as much as possible so it is automatic. This is the main source of power for Ingsoc.
It also means the government can tell them blue is red and up is down then immediately say no, red is green and down is sideways
and the people will have no problem switching from the first set of illogical statements to the second, fully believing each in turn.
This makes them easy to control as they stop thinking for themselves, and let Ingsoc do all the thinking and decision making for
them.
This allows the government to remain in complete control, to have all the power and different from most real life situations,
they don't have to worry that the people will overthrow them - it takes a thinking population to first see things differently from
the way they are told to believe and do what it takes to carry out a revolt.
Thanks again for reading the article and taking the time to comment. I hope you return to take a look at some of my other articles.
Naum Shuv on August 29, 2018:
Thank you for this extremely interesting article.
However, I cannot agree with one of your statements. Just one.
"There is no need to change a fictional enemy, as the entire war is made up anyway."
In my opinion, the war in the novel is absolutely real. I mean, it is artifical, of course, but it is not fictional. Unfortunately,
war is real in our life too, and loss of dozens or even hundreds human lives is of no importance for politicians.
Natalie Frank (author) from Chicago, IL on August 21, 2018:
The more I look into it, the more similarities I see between what Orwell predicted and warned us about and the society we live
in today. It really is an amazing parallel in a lot of ways. Thanks for reading and for commenting, Linda.
Natalie Frank (author) from Chicago, IL on August 05, 2018:
Dora - I'm glad you found the article interesting and relevant. Given everything that is going on in the world today and our current
President in the U.S. I think so many of the things Orwell wrote about have already come to pass in our society. Thanks for reading
and commenting.
Natalie Frank (author) from Chicago, IL on August 05, 2018:
Hi Doris - You are so right about what you said. We may not call it doublethink but that's not to say we don't do it a whole lot.
We read 1984 and can't imagine living in such a world but fail to see that many of the things he warned us about have come true in
spades. Just the fact we are accepting the idea of fake news and alternative facts, perhaps giving lip service to being outraged
but at the same time we are letting leaders stay in power who are actually admitting to doing this as well as responsible for coining
the terms in the first place. I'm sure what you saw in Russia was even worse as these things are certainly not limited to our country
and have been going on elsewhere a lot longer. But seeing it actually develop under our noises with our awareness and ultimate acceptance
or at least refusal to do anything is frightening and frustrating. Thanks for stopping by and for the comment. I am just finishing
another article on other similarities between our world and 1984 - I hope you'll check back for it and take a look once it's published.
I'll look forward to your response.
Doris James MizBejabbers from Beautiful South on July 09, 2018:
I agree with your analysis on 1984. Good job! I read this book back in the dark ages when I was a college student and found it
so frightening that I thought it too ridiculous to even consider the possibility that it could come true. Today, I'm not so sure,
and that is what really concerns me.
Political correctness trying to rewrite history, continuing to try to keep a whole area of our
population on a guilt trip (the South) while totally ignoring the warts on the rest of the country, focusing on the wealthy while
calling the poor "parasites" are just a few of today's attempts at Doublethink. Something to think about.
I like Tom's' comment mainly because I spent two weeks in the Soviet Union in the late 80s. Although I enjoyed traveling through
a couple of major Russian cities, I could not wait to get back home to my own country, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
HA!
Tom S on July 06, 2018:
Excellent, to the point, and very well explained so even I can understand it. Begs an association to current events in America.
The Democratic Party comes to mind. This is even more applicable to me since I grew up in socialism/communism in Eastern Europe. Until you know what living under
limited freedom means you do not know freedom.
Doris James MizBejabbers from Beautiful South on May 04, 2018:
Excellent analysis of Orwell's 1984. I read the book during my sophomore year of college in the 1960s, and it has stuck with me
all these years enough to see a parallel with today's propaganda being spoon fed to us through both professional and social media.
It doesn't matter whether we are losing elections allegedly due to fake news sourced from Russian hacking or whether Southerners
are being fed a constant barrage that they are bad people because of something their ancestors did over 150 years ago. The result
is still the same, and it stems from the same premise of mind control as was evident in the dystopian novel. Just as in 1984, people
are accepting this form of mind-control as truth and allowing it to stir up hate for each other. In today's society, as was then,
there seems to be a preponderance of the absence of love.
Linda Crampton from British Columbia, Canada on May 03, 2018:
This is a very interesting and thought-provoking analysis, Natalie. 1984 is an impressive book that contains some fascinating
ideas. I enjoy reading people's thoughts about the story and its implications for today. BY
NATALIE FRANK
It's hilarious hearing democrats say "no-one is above the law" as they cheat the system becoming multi millionaires via
insider trading and selling their influence.
Over these last few weeks Tucker has been one of the few people to stand up to the mob and refuses to give in. Tremendous
respect for people who refuse to give up their dignity.
Numerous other figures of lesser rank have been purged, their careers and livelihoods
destroyed for Tweeting out a phrase such as "All Lives Matter," whose current classification
as "hate speech" might have stunned even George Orwell.
Indeed: In some ways, our 'normal' is more insane than anything in Orwell's fiction.
"So, in this case, I think there is a significant portion of the American
intelligentsia who genuinely believe in this mad thesis that perpetual war will always solve
positively all the domestic problems of the USA. I don't think this is pure cynicism: many of
those Cold War living fossils really envision an even better America for their children and
grandchildren by promoting an all-out war against China, Russia, Iran, North Korea et al -
even in the stances where USA proper is attacked and Americans directly die because of
it."
America is channeling its Inner George Orwell, as the only solution the Americans have to
deal with their fading global hegemony and domestic national implosion is to recycle their
old Cold War tactic of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.
The United States of Oceania has always been at war with East Asia or Eurasia or Osama Bin
Goldstein!
America is truly a sick country, and its worse than any COVID-19.
"... Antiracism has been transformed... At the time of the great migration, it is no longer a question of welcoming newcomers by integrating them into European civilization, but exposing the faults of this civilization ..."
"... He referred to "self-racism" as "the most dismaying and grotesque pathology of our time". Its capital is London. ..."
"... Vandalism and self-hatred are quickly gaining ground. The epic of great discoveries associated with British Empire has become shameful. The protests are not about slavery. No one in the UK today would cheer that period. It is rather a call for cultural cleansing of all the works contradicting the new mantra: "diversity". ..."
"... "A new form of Taliban was born in the UK today" , wrote Nigel Farage, referring to two giant ancient Buddha statue that were blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. ..."
"... This movement of hating the West -- which has, as all of us do, an imperfect history -- seems to have begun in British universities. In Cambridge, professors of literature asked to replace white authors with representatives from minorities to "decolonize" the curriculum. The student union of London's prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) asked to remove Plato, Kant, Descartes, Hegel and others from the curriculum, because they were "all white" -- as if the color of our skin should be the sole determinant of our thoughts. In Manchester, students painted over a mural based on Kipling's poem "If". ..."
"... A scholar of colonialism, Nigel Biggar, said that a "climate of fear" has returned to British universities. The University of Liverpool recently agreed to rename a building honoring former prime minister William Gladstone. At Oxford, meanwhile, the statue of Cecil Rhodes, philanthropist and founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), risks being the next to go. ..."
"Every record has been destroyed , every book rewritten , every statue and street building has been renamed ... nothing exists
except an endless present in which the Party is always right ..." - George Orwell, 1984.
"Antiracism is no longer the defense of the equal dignity of people, but an ideology, a vision of the world,"
said the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, son of Holocaust survivors.
"Antiracism has been transformed... At the time of the great migration, it is no longer a question of welcoming newcomers by
integrating them into European civilization, but exposing the faults of this civilization".
He referred to "self-racism" as "the most dismaying and grotesque pathology of our time". Its capital is London.
" Topple the racists " consists of a map with 60 statues in 30
British cities. The removal of the statues is being requested to support a movement born in the United States after a white policeman,
Derek Chauvin, killed a black man, George Floyd,
by kneeling on his neck.
In Bristol, a crowd
pushed the statue of philanthropist and slave-owner Edward Colston into the harbor. The act was followed in London by protests
vandalizing statues of Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. London's Mayor Sadiq Khan, after
removing the monument to Robert Milligan, a Scottish
slave trader, from outside the Museum of London Docklands,
announced the creation of commission to review tearing down statues that do not reflect "the city's diversity". Two more statues
were ordered
to be removed from two London hospitals.
Vandalism and self-hatred are quickly gaining ground. The epic of great discoveries associated with British Empire has become
shameful. The protests are not about slavery. No one in the UK today would cheer that period. It is rather a call for cultural cleansing
of all the works contradicting the new mantra: "diversity".
"A new form of Taliban was born in the UK today" ,
wrote Nigel Farage, referring to two giant ancient
Buddha statue that were
blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.
"Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won't be worth living in".
The
list of statues to be removed includes the names of Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson, two major figures in British history,
as well as Nancy Astor, the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament and take a seat in 1919. Also on the list were the
names of Sir Francis Drake, Christopher Columbus and Charles Gray (the prime minister whose government supervised the abolition of
slavery in 1833).
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, expressing opposition to the removal campaign,
said :
" We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and
towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those
statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the
education of generations to come."
British post-colonial guilt is, however, having repercussions far larger than statues. There is, for instance, still total silence
about persecuted Christians,
according to a UK bishop leading a government review into their suffering. There is also, notably, a retreat from the world's
stage.
"When the West loses confidence in itself, because of excessive or misplaced guilt over colonialism, it turns to isolationism",
noted Bruce Gilley, a professor of political science.
"We are afraid that anything we do is colonial. There's plenty of countries willing to step into that global governance gap:
China, Iran, Russia, Turkey".
Post-colonial guilt is also suffocating freedom of speech in the UK. The former British "equality watchdog" chief, Trevor Phillips,
was suspended from the Labour Party after allegations of "Islamophobia".
Phillips' guilt? Being critical of multiculturalism.
According to Phillips:
"In my view, squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe
that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties,
and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long."
Phillips also
claimed that British politicians and journalists are "terrified" of discussing race, thereby leaving multiculturalism to become
a "
racket " exploited by some to entrench segregation. A man of
Guyanese origin , a
Labour Party veteran and an
equality commissioner spoke the truth to the multiculturalists.
The activists who campaign to remove the statues want radically to change the look of the British capital. The clash seems to
consist of, on one side, violent censors who bully everyone, and on the other side, cowardly, appeasing politicians, who are afraid
and bow to the vandals. Monuments are a vital and visible part of a global city; they embody their place in the history of a city,
otherwise only bus stops and Burger Kings would remain there. These protestors appear to wish for a revised, sanitized history. If
we do not quickly understand that, if we erase our past, as the former Soviet Union tried to do, it will be easier for people to
create their vision of our future with no rudder to anchor us or our values. We will be left with nothing in our hands but shattered
pieces of our history and culture.
This movement of hating the West -- which has, as all of us do, an imperfect history -- seems to have begun in British universities.
In Cambridge, professors of literature
asked to replace white authors with representatives from minorities to "decolonize" the curriculum. The student union of London's
prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
asked to remove Plato, Kant, Descartes, Hegel and others from the curriculum, because they were "all white" -- as if the color
of our skin should be the sole determinant of our thoughts. In Manchester, students
painted over a mural based on Kipling's poem "If".
A scholar of colonialism, Nigel Biggar,
said that a "climate of fear" has returned to British universities. The University of Liverpool recently
agreed to rename a building honoring former
prime minister William Gladstone. At Oxford, meanwhile, the statue of Cecil Rhodes, philanthropist and founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),
risks being the next to go.
"There is a bit of hypocrisy," Lord Patten, the chancellor of Oxford,
commented , "in Oxford taking money for
100 scholars a year, about a fifth of them from Africa, to come to Oxford, and then saying we want to throw the Rhodes statue...
in the Thames" .
He said that his own view remained the same as one "expressed by Nelson Mandela at a celebration of the Rhodes Trust in 2003":
that despite the "problems associated with Cecil Rhodes in history, if it was alright for Mandela, then I have to say it's pretty
well alright for me". But not for the revisionists.
Western history is seemingly being remade to portray all of Western civilization as just one big apartheid . It is as if we should
not only pull down statues but also pull down ourselves. But a successful democracy, cannot be built on just erasing the past.
The statue in London of Churchill -- who stood against the Nazis during the Second World War and saved Europe from barbarism --
was
covered up by the city authorities during recent protests. Its visual erasure
reminds one of the nude statues in Rome covered up by authorities to please Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, or the "disappearance"
of portraits in the former Soviet Union, of people whom the Politburo decided had fallen out of favor. There is a falsity in erasing
one's history. One may not have a perfect history, but it is one's history, nevertheless. As the historian Victor Davis Hanson
wrote , a country "does not have to
be perfect to be good." Excising the distasteful parts does not change what happened; they may even be replaced with parts that are
more distasteful.
Some London museums already adopted this covering-up and self-censorship a while ago. The
Tate Gallery in London banned a work by John
Latham that displayed a Koran embedded in glass. The
Victoria and Albert Museum showed, then withdrew, a devotional art image of Muhammad. The
Saatchi Gallery featured two works of nudes overlaid with Arabic script, which prompted complaints from Muslim visitors; the
museum covered the works. The Whitechapel Art Gallery
purged an exhibit containing nude dolls.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary just
revised the definition
of "racism" to include "systemic racism", presumably meaning that the entire society is guilty and unjust.
The censors seem to want to control our mental universe, as in George Orwell's novel,
1984 :
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street
building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the 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".
This process of Western self-abasement began long ago. The Labour Party councils in the UK, for example,
began to examine all the statues under their jurisdiction. The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, instead of defending the rule of
law, called the violent removal of the statue of Colston an act of "
historical poetry ". When vandals started to destroy statues, many applauded. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it
" politically correct
iconoclasm ".
A week before the statues row, people in the UK knelt in the name of George Floyd. It was as if there was a collective claim that
Western society as a whole had to repent. It seemed a form of ideological hysteria, not so distant from that of the Inquisition or
the Salem Witch Trials: those who knelt were presumably supposed appear as if they were more moral, on the "right side" of justice.
There were even
British
policemen kneeling, as, in the US, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats
knelt to their overlords. Both were acts of irresponsibility
and capitulation. A few days later, the British establishment kowtowed to the new Taliban.
What is this macabre ideological game aimed at accomplishing? Not taking down monuments as such, like the statues of Christopher
Columbus which have been
torn
down or beheaded . It is more than that. It is a power-grab to create a cultural revolution, to prevent anyone from saying that
cultures are not all the same; to put Europe's past on trial; to instill perennial remorse into consciences, and to spread intellectual
terror to advance multiculturalism.
How many people will refuse to go along with this coerced suppression of history? If many kneel to this new totalitarianism, who
will have the courage to stand up for Western history and culture?
It looks like the USSR managed to bite the USA from the grave and infect plenty of people
here who developed a strong allergy to any opinion different from their own. Kind of
political COVID-19 virus.
Performed by you farce of playing Jewish Commissar in a leather jacket in this blog should
probably be stopped.
You have neither IQ nor moral standing to judge others the way you do. And your political
and other preferences are far from being interesting to anybody here.
The toxicity that Matt writes about isn't just due to Trump - it's due to the left
abandoning traditional liberal values in favor of political correctness and identity
politics. This new Red Guard of ideological purity is the natural - shocking - evolution of
that....
1984 -- The writer of Truth rewrites history to fit whatever they want. Read the book.
That's the news media today. A warning leftists: Stalin and Hitler controlled the media. It's
not TRUMP controlling the media. Or ignoring the truth. And it should scare the hell out of
every American.
Crazy times indeed. It is reminiscent of the Hollywood Terror. A tipping point will come
when enough people are sickened of their arbitrary and capricious cultural fascism.
Mr. Taibbi fires a warning shot to alert us that the "instinct (in the American media)
to shield audiences from views or facts deemed politically uncomfortable has been in
evidence since Trump became a national phenomenon." I would say not "since" -- that vile
instinct has merely been more in evidence. The media's fear and hatred for diversity of
opinion, for the freedom of speech, has doubtless worsened ...
This is looking like another 1960's type insurrection that will end up the same way: it will
be used by the rich and powerful elites (notice how the corporate controlled media has gone
on one knee for BLM and has gone outright anti-white?), there will be a back lash that will
crush it (right after the election), and its leaders will be either absorbed into the
establishment or offed.
America looks like a hybrid of Stephen King, Brave New World, and 1984 and the rich and
powerful US elites and intel agencies stroke it and love it. Notice that the US super rich
have been raking it in since January 2020? While at the same time Trump is busy making the US
a vassal state of Israel and accelerating the roll-out of Cold War v2 which is just fine with
US elites that will not change with the election of moron Biden (if the people elect Biden
they are electing his VP as Biden will not last long; he is a lot like Yeltsin that was
pumped up on mental stimulants and nutriments to perform for short periods until the next
treatment).
"... This is where Orwell enters the convergence , for the State masks its stripmining and power grab with deliciously Orwellian misdirections such as "the People's Party," "democratic socialism," and so on. ..."
"... Orwell understood the State's ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it controls every level of community, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of Monopoly capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation and the regulation of private monopolies? ..."
"... Aldous Huxley foresaw a Central State that persuaded its people to "love their servitude" via propaganda, drugs, entertainment and information-overload. In his view, the energy required to force compliance exceeded the "cost" of persuasion, and thus the Powers That Be would opt for the power of suggestion. ..."
"... "My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World . ..."
"... As Marx explained, the dynamics of state-monopoly-capitalism lead to the complete dominance of capital over labor in both financial and political "markets," as wealth buys political influence which then protects and enforces capital's dominance. ..."
The global crisis is not merely economic; it is the result of profound financial,
sociological and political trends described by Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley.
The unfolding global crisis is best understood as the convergence of the dynamics described
by Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley. Let's start with Franz Kafka , the writer (1883-1924) who most
eloquently captured the systemic injustices of all-powerful bureaucratic institutions--the
alienation experienced by the hapless citizen enmeshed in the bureaucratic web, petty
officialdom's mindless persecutions of the innocent, and the intrinsic absurdity of the
centralized State best expressed in this phrase: "We expect errors, not justice."
If this isn't the most insightful summary of the current moment in history, then what is? A
lawyer by training and practice, Kafka understood that the the more powerful and entrenched the
institution and its bureaucracy, the greater the collateral damage rained on the innocent, and
the more extreme the perversion of justice.
We are living in a Kafkaesque nightmare where suspicion alone justifies the government stealing from its citizens, and an
unrelated crime (possessing drug paraphernalia) is used to justify state theft.
As in a Kafkaesque nightmare, the state is above the law when it needs an excuse to steal your car or cash. There is no
crime, no arrest, no due process--just the state threatening that you should shut up and be happy they don't take everything you
own.
All these forms of civil forfeiture are well documented. While some would claim the worst
abuses have been rectified, that is far from evident. What is evident is how long these kinds
of legalized looting have been going on.
When the state steals our cash or car on mere suspicion, you have no recourse other than
horrendously costly and time-consuming legal actions. So you no longer have enough money to
prove your innocence now that we've declared your car and cash guilty?
Tough luck, bucko--be glad you live in a fake democracy with a fake rule of law, a fake
judiciary, and a government with the officially sanctioned right to steal your money and
possessions without any due process or court proceedings-- legalized looting .
They don't have to torture a confession out of you, like the NKVD/KGB did in the former
Soviet Union, because your cash and car are already guilty.
This is where Orwell enters the convergence , for the State masks its stripmining and power
grab with deliciously Orwellian misdirections such as "the People's Party," "democratic
socialism," and so on.
Orwell understood the State's ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it
controls every level of community, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of
the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of
Monopoly capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation
and the regulation of private monopolies?
What is the EU bureaucracy in Brussels but the perfection of a stateless State?
As Kafka divined, centralized bureaucracy has the capacity for both Orwellian obfuscation
(anyone read those 1,300-page Congressional bills other than those gaming the system for their
private benefit?) and systemic avarice and injustice.
The convergence boils down to this: it would be impossible to loot this much wealth if the
State didn't exist to enforce the "rules" of parasitic predation.
Aldous Huxley foresaw a Central State that persuaded its people to "love their servitude"
via propaganda, drugs, entertainment and information-overload. In his view, the energy required
to force compliance exceeded the "cost" of persuasion, and thus the Powers That Be would opt
for the power of suggestion.
"My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of
governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I
described in Brave New World .
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."
As prescient as he was, Huxley could not have foreseen the power of mobile telephony, gaming
and social media hypnosis/addiction as a conditioning mechanism for passivity and
self-absorption. We are only beginning to understand the immense addictive/conditioning powers
of 24/7 mobile telephony / social media.
What would we say about a drug that caused people to forego sex to check their Facebook
page? What would we say about a drug that caused young men to stay glued to a computer for 40+
hours straight, an obsession so acute that some actually die? We would declare that drug to be
far too powerful and dangerous to be widely available, yet mobile telephony, gaming and social
media is now ubiquitous.
... ... ...
Last but not least, we come to Marx. As Marx explained, the dynamics of
state-monopoly-capitalism lead to the complete dominance of capital over labor in both
financial and political "markets," as wealth buys political influence which then protects and
enforces capital's dominance.
Marx also saw that finance-capital would inevitably incentivize over-capacity, stripping
industrial capital of pricing power and profits. Once there's more goods and services than
labor can afford to buy with earnings, financialization arises to provide credit to labor to
buy capital's surplus production and engineer financial gains with leveraged speculation and
asset bubbles.
But since labor's earnings are stagnant or declining, there's an end-game to
financialization. Capital can no longer generate any gain at all except by central banks
agreeing to buy capital's absurdly over-valued assets. Though the players tell themselves this
arrangement is temporary, the dynamics Marx described are fundamental and inexorable: the
insanity of central banks creating currency out of thin air to buy insanely over-priced assets
is the final crisis of late-stage capitalism because there is no other escape from
collapse.
Having stripped labor of earnings and political power and extracted every last scrap of
profit from over-capacity (i.e. globalization) and financialization, capital is now completely
dependent on money-spewing central banks buying their phantom capital with newly printed
currency, a dynamic that will eventually trigger a collapse in the purchasing power of the
central banks' phantom capital (i.e. fiat currencies).
When there is no incentive to invest in real-world productive assets and every incentive to
skim profits by front-running the Federal Reserve, capitalism is dead. Paraphrasing
Wallerstein, "Capitalism is no longer attractive to capitalists."
We can see this for ourselves in the real world: if "renewable energy" was as profitable as
some maintain, private capital would have rushed in to fund every project to maximize their
gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the
Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch , this hasn't been the case. Rather, "green energy"
remains dependent on government subsidies in one form or another. If hydropower is removed from
"renewables," all other renewables (solar, wind, etc.) provide only 4% of total global energy
consumption.
Japan's stagnation exemplifies Marx's analysis: Japan's central bank has created trillions
of yen out of thin air for 30 years and used this phantom capital to buy the over-valued assets
of Japan's politically dominant state-capitalist class, a policy that has led to secular
stagnation and social decline. If it weren't for China's one-off expansion, Japan's economy
would have slipped into phantom capital oblivion decades ago.
Kafka, Orwell, Huxley and Marx called it, and we're living in the last-gasp stage of the
cruel and unsustainable system they described. So sorry, but investing your phantom capital in
FANG stocks, Tik-Tok and virtual-reality games will not save phantom capital from well-deserved
oblivion.
The wristband and microchip sound fab for children under 18 so we monitor to ensure their
safety, especially in educational settings and on school trips. It would enable them to be
located if lost or snatched. If it can be used to monitor language and aspects of behaviour
then they could not be falsely accused of of antisocial actions. If they don't comply then
child care benefits or access to higher education could be withdrawn as a sanction. It may
even improve road safety if they drive illegally or badly. Any chance of a tiny electric
shock feature to the microchip?
If you thought you knew everything about Eric Blair/George Orwell, I suggest
reading this essay as a test. Hopefully, you'll discover many facets not known before as
I did.
Orwell's career was a lot more complicated than that. Basically, he came from a relatively
prosperous middle-class family, which allowed him to play the game of the writer, when it
worked, and to come back to the family when things were thin. Of course he exploited his own
experiences, as every writer does. That doesn't detract from the great creations. Animal Farm
and 1984 don't have direct origins.
Posted by: Laguerre | May 20 2020 21:39 utc |
32 @Posted by: karlof1 | May 20 2020 18:51 utc | 26
That essay is a real shame, an impossible intend of whitewashing and redime Orwell, just
another intent on rewritting of history, and try to paint what is black as white.
Neo-language
This intent could be inscribed along the rescues of Stepan Bandera and the Forest Brothers as
new heroes of NATO world in their offensive against reviving socialist ideas.
That Orwell did not change even a bit after returning from Burma is proven by the fact
that he came to Spain, and strolled around there with the Trotskyites of POUM, to elaborate
black lists of communists which then were provided to Franco, at result of which many people
was tortured and summarily executed. He, this way, contributed greatly to decimate the
resistance in the side of the legitimate republican government, and thus, to help the
fascists in their way to power, well supported by the US with arms and fuel and by the air
forces of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Orwell: Sneak sighting of British secret services in the Cold War (is declassified by MI-5
and documented). Its function: to expose communists. He even betrayed Charles Chaplin,
exiled in his native England for FBI persecution. "Referrer". "Always loyal"
@Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 20 2020 21:40 utc | 33
In the essay by Alert Escusa linked above, it is studied the historical context in which
Orwell published his most famous works, at all innocent, debunking the legend on that he was
kinda an outsider and was about to self-publish Animal Farm , being the checked
reality that he had full support of the birgueoisie to publish his influential works when the
time was more propice for the capitalists.
As a sample, a button:
What was happening that year of 1943, while Orwell was writing his Animal Farm? It was not
exactly, as Pepe Gutiérrez says "the distribution of the world", but something quite
different that he hides from us: the Nazis had invaded the USSR two years ago,
exterminating millions of Russians and devastating much of the country. The greatest battle
of the war, Stalingrad, had taken place, and it was not yet known who would win the
conflict, whether Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. No one could safely predict that Nazism
would be extirpated from Europe, the Nazi death camps had not yet been discovered, but
Orwell was obsessed with his anti-Soviet writings. What did Orwell want to portray with his
Farm Rebellion? Nothing more and nothing less than the following: "The specific purpose
Orwell threw into it with a sense of urgency was the desire to exploit the "myth" of the
Soviet Union, as a paradigm of the socialist state".
There are plenty of comments about it. It is only worth reflecting on who benefited from
Orwell's position in 1943. The victory was precisely achieved by the Soviet people and the
Red Army at the price of innumerable human sacrifices, also easily forgotten in the West,
where the true character of the anti-fascist war is hidden. It is logical that the USSR,
which had suffered a war of extermination unprecedented in history, and which also defeated
the collaborationist and fascist regimes of Eastern Europe, along with the popular and
communist guerrillas, was seen as a liberating power by broad sectors of local populations.
In addition, the communist guerrillas, ideologically linked to the USSR, had come to have
great prestige throughout Europe: so much so that, in the first French general elections
after Nazism, the French Communist Party was the most voted party, achieving more out of 5
million votes representing 30% of the electorate [7]. As we will see later, the USSR had
very well-founded reasons to believe that a new war was being prepared against him, this
time with the country devastated, so it was logical and legitimate that he try to win
allies against the possibility of a new world war. This is a long way from "distribution of
the world" and trying to equate imperialism with socialism, as will be seen later.
I must say the replies to my 26 go in many directions. As to Martin Sieff's essay, it's
fundamentally a well deserved critique of the BBC that segues into a discussion about how
George Orwell would easily recognize its Fake News for what it is that draws on Finding George
Orwell in Burma for some of its content. (A very short preview's available at the
link and it can be borrowed if you're an Archive member, for which there's no excuse as it's
free.) IMO, the comments fit Sieff's intent quite well. Judging from book excerpts offered here , the book's more
a critique of Myanmar than Orwell, although the additional sources provided at page bottom
leads to credibility questions. I also note that most websites promoting Finding lead
with the NY Times jacket blurb which is more about dissing Myanmar than revealing what
was found regarding Orwell. Sieff says he knows the author but doesn't speculate on why he
chose a female nom de plume; I too wonder why as I don't see what purpose it could serve
unless it's anti-Myanmar propaganda that Orwell would recognize or something similar.
Curious--an innocuous comment becomes a can of worms. Also curious how Orwell and his
writing still generate an intense level of controversy.
karlof1 , May 20 2020 22:47 utc |
42H.Schmatz , May 20 2020 22:52 utc |
43
@Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 20 2020 22:08 utc | 36
A bit more from the must read essay linked, even related to current events...
2. THE HISTORICAL ENVIRONMENT OF "ANIMAL FARM" AND "1984"
What events were taking place in the western world at that time, which caused a
favorable change of attitude towards Orwell's publications, of those who were previously
reticent? Neither more nor less than the imminent offensive against socialism, which had
already lost almost thirty million lives during the anti-fascist war and had suffered
appalling material destruction.
While the first copies of Animal Farm were being printed and bound, some
extremely disturbing events were taking place. Just at the end of the war, Nazi spies and
war criminals were being recycled by the American spy services, such as the German SS
General Reinhard Genhlen, whose spy network passed entirely to the Americans and was used
in Eastern Europe to promote the anti-Soviet uprisings in East Berlin in 1953 and Hungary
in 1956. Clandestine networks were created to evade thousands of Nazi criminals towards
Latin America and the USA. Later, with Japan defeated, the operation was repeated with the
Japanese scientists who are experts in bacteriological weapons, responsible for the deaths
of tens of thousands of allied prisoners, but who were secretly brought to the United
States. Meanwhile, during the 1945 Potsdam conference, which brought together Hitler's
victorious allies - where the alleged "honeymoon" took place to "divide the world" - US
President Truman and English Churchill had speculated before Stalin about the power the
western allies had with a new secret weapon. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima. According to Ian Gray, Stalin's biographer: "Stalin and the majority
of Russians immediately understood the terrible meaning of this fact ... Stalin realized
that the Americans had used the bomb mainly to impress and threaten Russia". Stalin and the
Soviets were right: the American Secretary of State, James Byrnes, recognized that the bomb
was necessary not against Japan, but "to make Russia moldable to Europe".
As the historian Pauwels has explained, the initial will of the Soviets in Europe was
not to have like-minded regimes and their own zone of influence, but to intervene in
Germany to prevent it from engaging in a second war, this time together with its former
allies against the USSR. This is demonstrated by the fact that until well into the post-war
period, the Soviets did not help to make any political-social change in the liberated
countries. It was Truman's nuclear policy that forced the Soviets to stand face to face
with the Americans in Eastern Europe, thus deterring American aviation: from this way they
would have to carry out a long trip until arriving at the Soviet cities where they had to
drop their bombs. This caused the political and social changes in Eastern Europe to
accelerate, which, however, were already taking place autonomously since the end of the war
thanks to the triumph of the popular anti-fascist forces. This fact not only saved the USSR
from a new war and enabled socialism to survive: stability in Eastern Europe laid the
foundations for a development of national liberation struggles and for socialism throughout
the world: in 1949 the victory of the Chinese Revolution heralded the triumph of many
others, putting all capitalism in danger of death.
In parallel, just after the Cold War started by imperialism, the conservative British
leader Churchill theorized about the need to build an Iron Curtain to contain the
communists and allegedly asked the American President Truman to attack the USSR with the
atomic bomb by means of a preemptive attack. Churchill was not just any character, but one
of the most influential leaders of the British Empire, champion of English colonialism and
the participation of his country in World War I, therefore responsible for many millions of
deaths and suffering of peoples.
That was the real reason for the delay in publishing Animal Farm . Orwell,
naturally, during the anti-fascist war could not see his anti-Soviet work published until
the end of the conflict, since it would have been quite awkward for the Western governments
allied to the USSR, who were risking their lives against the Nazis, to criminalize in this
way a friendly government. On the other hand, at that time, from the Orwellian model, it
would be difficult for western and world public opinion to understand how it was possible
that the Soviet people fought with such a degree of sacrifice and heroism, expelling the
Nazis from Europe: all the other bourgeois regimes, where there was freedom, had collapsed
rapidly and had collaborated with the Nazis.
It was in connection with these events that the first copies of Animal farm were
placed on the shelves of bookstores. Precisely the publication coincided with the end of
World War II and the dissolution of the anti-fascist alliance between England, USA, and the
USSR. The first edition is exactly from 1945 in England, published by Secker &
Wargburg, from London, and from 1946 in the USA, published by Harcourt, from New York. The
capitalist governments, which were imminently going to promote Animal Farm , were
evaluating different options to attack the USSR: from rearming German units as shock
brigades to attack the Soviets, to the launch of "preventive" atomic bombs. The prestige
that the USSR had among all the workers of the world, fundamentally the Europeans who
suffered the Nazi atrocities, was enormous, as well as among the intellectual and popular
sectors, whose reflection could be followed in the great influence that some communist
parties had. It was necessary to dismantle this prestige to sweep the opposition of the
world public opinion to an armed aggression against those who liberated Europe from Nazism,
and Orwell's novels came as a ring to a finger for this purpose, since they were a good
instrument to spread among the so called mass culture, just as later were the film versions
of his works.
Albert Escusa, gives in his essay a good semblance of what kind of person could Orwell
really be:
Orwell was above all a great individualist, with some important personal contradictions and
prejudices that led him to oscillate along various paths without being able to commit
himself in a stable and permanent way to anything that was not himself, in such a way that,
when he became disenchanted with some social processes that he was unable to interpret
correctly and scientifically, ended up ranting against what he believed to be the object of
his anger.
We can see it in Corbière's sharp description: "Who was Orwell? A sniper, a
skeptic who devoted his efforts to Manichean criteria describing the great social and
political contradictions of our time. Anarchist, Semitrotskyist in Spain, Labor in England,
free thinker, undercover anti-Semite, his real ideas reveal a kind of elitism.
He had an intense imagination but his methodology of thought was restricted,
one-sided.
No that I am aware, but, if interested, you could translate it with a translator.
Since the essay is quite long, you could translate paragraph by paragraph, then read the whol
thing once assembled.
A bit complicated, but worth the effort, the essay is a well researched work, wu¡ith
several referecnes as weel worth reading, like a disection of Orwell, his epoch and
motives.
Oh dear. Relatively prosperous middle class means descended from Earls of Westmorland, family
tree of Fanes, de Veres, Grosvenors, at a little reach basically related to the entire
peerage. True, Orwell's father was a bit of a dope, he did manage to contract a marriage to a
very wealthy woman. Jacintha Buddicom's memoir, Eric and Us, about growing up living next
door to the Blairs, will tell you what 'middle class' life was like.
Orwell maintained the friendships from St. Cyprians and Eton for life. Pretty much
everyone on the roster could be considered as spooks and agents. All of them tied to old
money, old family, government service. Government as MI6 and CIA.
I think he's a great writer. My copy of the four volumes of Collected Essays Letters &
Journalism is still right here next to the fireplace. All the rest of it around here
somewhere, even the minor novels from the 30s. But no illusions what team he is on or what
station he was born to.
Winston Smith means 'maker of Winston', as in broadcasting from Room 101 and forging the
myth of Winston Churchill. Orwell was a big boy when he did that and was far past having any
illusions. He created the myth that Room 101 of Broadcasting House was the worst place in the
world. And talked of how the war years were the best years of his life.
@Posted by: oldhippie | May 20 2020 23:13 utc | 48
I think he's a great writer
Not even so, more proper a plagiarist and propagandist at the service of Western
totalitarian imperialism.
Since we are in the task of deconstructing Orwell, let´s go to the end...
In addition to the Animal Farm , one of the works that most influenced the
construction of Western totalitarianism against the Communists was 1984 . It shows
an overview of socialism in the USSR similar to a delusional totalitarian and monstrous
drama, with a Big Brother (Stalin) who had absolute social control over the individuals
under his rule, through a sophisticated mind control mechanism. This work became a
must-read for CIA officers and a dependent body called the Council for Psychological
Strategies, in addition to the fact that NATO used the entire vocabulary of this novel
during the 1950s in its anti-communist strategy.12 It is interesting to know how He
conceived this book, since it was apparently a plagiarism Orwell did to another
disenchanted of Bolshevism, in this case a Russian writer, in the opinion of the writer
Emilio J. Corbière: "Orwell's was a conscious plagiarism, since he explained it
himself in another of his works. The plot, the main characters, the symbols and the climate
of its narration, belonged to a completely forgotten Russian writer of the beginning of the
century: Evgeny Zamyatin. In his book We , the Russian disillusioned with socialism
after the failure of the 1905 revolution, devoted his efforts to anathematizing the Social
Democratic Workers Party founded by Jorge Plejanov. When the October revolution happened -
in 1917 - Zamyatin went into exile in Paris, where he wrote his posthumous anti-communist
work"
This opinion is also shared by the historian Isaac Deutscher in his work The
Mysticism of Cruelty , an essay about 1984 , where he states that Orwell
"borrowed the idea of 1984, the plot, the main characters, the symbols and
the whole plot situation from the work We of Evgeny Zamyatin"
We see how behind the image of a great writer, lies the reality of a plagiarist of
stories, which served to elaborate theoretical and academic models on the functioning of
socialism in the Soviet Union totally adjusted to the requirements of imperialism in the
anti-communist Cold War. The impact of 1984 was tremendous among the population,
creating an atmosphere of anti-communist and anti-Soviet paranoia that was very effective
among the masses, as the disturbing personal testimony of Isaac Deutscher demonstrates:
"Have you read that book? You have to read it, sir. Then you will know why we have to drop
the atomic bomb on the Bolsheviks! With those words, a miserable blind newspaper vendor
recommended me in New York 1984 , a few weeks before Orwell's death".
H. Schmatz.
I am not a good book reader but I did read 1984 and it definitely seemed to be a veiled
critique on Communism.
However it seems the story is now more fitting to capitalism.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), happily amplified by the Public Broadcasting
System (PBS) in the United States which carries its World News, continues to pump out its
regular dreck about the alleged economic chaos in Russia and the imagined miserable state of
the Russian people.
It is all lies of course. Patrick Armstrong 's
authoritative regular updates including his reports on this website are a necessary corrective
to such crude propaganda.
But amid all their countless fiascoes and failures in every other field (including the
highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 in Europe, and one of the highest in the world) the
British remain world leaders at managing global Fake News. As long as the tone remains
restrained and dignified, literally any slander will be swallowed by the credulous and every
foul scandal and shame can be confidently covered up.
None of this would have surprised the late, great George Orwell. It is fashionable these
days to endlessly trot him out as a zombie (dead but alleged to be living – so that he
cannot set the record straight himself) critic of Russia and all the other global news outlets
outside the control of the New York and London plutocracies. And it is certainly true, that
Orwell, whose hatred and fear of communism was very real, served before his death as an
informer to MI-5, British domestic security.
But it was not the Soviet Union, Stalin's show trials or his experiences with the Trotskyite
POUM group in Barcelona and Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War that "made Orwell Orwell" as
the Anglo-America Conventional Wisdom Narrative has it. It was his visceral loathing of the
British Empire – compounded during World War II by his work for the BBC which he
eventually gave up in disgust.
And it was his BBC experiences that gave Orwell the model for his unforgettable Ministry of
Truth in his great classic "1984."
George Orwell had worked in one of the greatest of all world centers of Fake News. And he
knew it.
More profoundly, the great secret of George Orwell's life has been hiding in plain sight for
70 years since he died. Orwell became a sadistic torturer in the service of the British Empire
during his years in Burma, modern Myanmar. And as a fundamentally decent man, he was so
disgusted by what he had done that he spent the rest of his life not just atoning but slowly
and willfully committing suicide before his heartbreakingly premature death while still in his
40s.
The first important breakthrough in this fundamental reassessment of Orwell comes from one
of the best books on him. "Finding George Orwell in Burma" was published in 2005 and written by
"Emma Larkin", a pseudonym for an outstanding American journalist in Asia whose identity I have
long suspected to be an old friend and deeply respected colleague, and whose continued
anonymity I respect.
"Larkin" took the trouble to travel widely in Burma during its repressive military
dictatorship and her superb research reveals crucial truths about Orwell. According to his own
writings and his deeply autobiographical novel "Burmese Days" Orwell loathed all his time as a
British colonial policeman in Burma, modern Myanmar. The impression he systematically gives in
that novel and in his classic essay "Shooting an Elephant" is of a bitterly lonely, alienated,
deeply unhappy man, despised and even loathed by his fellow British colonialists throughout
society and a ludicrous failure at his job.
This was not, however, the reality that "Larkin" uncovered. All surviving witnesses agreed
that Orwell – Eric Blair as he then still was – remained held in high regard during
his years in the colonial police service. He was a senior and efficient officer. Indeed it was
precisely his knowledge of crime, vice, murder and the general underside of human society
during his police colonial service while still in his 20s that gave him the street smarts,
experience, and moral authority to see through all the countless lies of right and left, of
American capitalists and British imperialists as well as European totalitarians for the rest of
his life.
The second revelation to throw light on what Orwell had to do in those years comes from one
of the most famous and horrifying scenes in "1984." Indeed, almost nothing even in the memoirs
of Nazi death camp survivors has anything like it: That is the scene where "O'Brien", the
secret police officer tortures the "hero" (if he can be called that) Winston Smith by locking
his face to a cage in which a starving rat is ready to pounce and devour him if it is
opened.
I remember thinking, when I was first exposed to the power of "1984" at my outstanding
Northern Irish school, "What kind of mind could invent something as horrific as that?") The
answer was so obvious that I like everyone else missed it entirely.
Orwell did not "invent" or "come up" with the idea as a fictional plot device: It was just a
routine interrogation technique used by the British colonial police in Burma, modern Myanmar.
Orwell never "brilliantly" invented such a diabolical technique of torture as a literary
device. He did not have to imagine it. It was routinely employed by himself and his colleagues.
That was how and why the British Empire worked so well for so long. They knew what they were
doing. And what they did was not nice at all.
A final step in my enlightenment about Orwell, whose writings I have revered all my life
– and still do – was provided by our alarmingly brilliant elder daughter about a
decade ago when she too was given "1984" to read as part of her school curriculum. Discussing
it with her one day, I made some casual obvious remark that Orwell was in the novel as Winston
Smith.
My American-raised teenager then naturally corrected me. "No, Dad, " she said. "Orwell isn't
Winston, or he's not just Winston. He's O'Brien too. O'Brien actually likes Winston. He doesn't
want to torture him. He even admires him. But he does it because it's his duty."
She was right, of course.
But how could Orwell the great enemy of tyranny, lies and torture so identify with and
understand so well the torturer? It was because he himself had been one.
"Emma Larkin's" great book brings out that Orwell as a senior colonial police officer in the
1920s was a leading figure in a ruthless war waged by the British imperial authorities against
drug and human trafficking crime cartels every bit as vicious and ruthless as those in modern
Ukraine, Columbia and Mexico today. It was a "war on terror" where anything and everything was
permitted to "get the job done."
The young Eric Blair was so disgusted by the experience that when he returned home he
abandoned the respectable middle class life style he had always enjoyed and became, not just an
idealistic socialist as many in those days did, but a penniless, starving tramp. He even
abandoned his name and very identity. He suffered a radical personality collapse: He killed
Eric Blair. He became George Orwell.
Orwell's early famous book "Down and Out in London and Paris" is a testament to how much he
literally tortured and humiliated himself in those first years back from Burma. And for the
rest of his life.
He ate miserably badly, was skinny and ravaged by tuberculosis and other health problems,
smoked heavily and denied himself any decent medical care. His appearance was always
abominable. His friend, the writer Malcolm Muggeridge speculated that Orwell wanted to remake
himself as a caricature of a tramp.
The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of
empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet
and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish "1984" in
isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on
himself all his life since leaving Burma.
The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell's experiences in Spain, his
passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his
experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent
of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth
flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the
early 1940s.
George Orwell spent more than 20 years slowly committing suicide because of the terrible
crimes he committed as a torturer for the British Empire in Burma. We can therefore have no
doubt what his horror and disgust would be at what the CIA did under President George W. Bush
in its "Global War on Terror." Also, Orwell would identify at once and without hesitation the
real fake news flowing out of New York, Atlanta, Washington and London today, just as he did in
the 1930s and 1940s.
Let us therefore reclaim and embrace The Real George Orwell: The cause of fighting to
prevent a Third World War depends on it.
We are living in strange times indeed, this crisis raises many questions about the nature of
freedom and what our expectations are, or should be. Everyone has their own notions about what
freedom means and how far that should extend to oneself and indeed, to everyone else.
I want to start with a look at where we've come from before I look at where we are now, as I
feel it gives a better understanding of our definitions of freedom and a better context for
viewing where we are, at this moment in time.
Society probably started with the tribe – maybe not even having a leader if the
numbers where small enough, say 10 people. Tribes of scores or more obviously became hard to
manage and so, undoubtedly, this led to the idea of a leader or a group of leaders – a
chief, or a council of chiefs. Such a system seems to have worked well, so long as the chiefs
acted in the best interest of the tribe, and not in their own best interest. Tribes and early
kingdoms often had a mechanism for dealing with a poor leader – the symbolic marriage of
the leader to the land and the right to depose, or even execute, a leader that failed to live
up to expectations.
Such concepts of leadership are ancient but have survived in various places into the modern
era, including Ireland where I live. Although the practice associated with this custom is long
gone, knowledge of it remains vaguely in the public consciousness and more definitively in the
realms of scholarship and Celtic Neo-Paganism. However, societies across the globe began to
move beyond this cherished accountability millenia ago – with the rise of despotic
monarchy, something that still exists as an unfortunate anachronism even now.
As tribes grew into countries and countries grew into empires, monarchs became decreasingly
accountable to their citizens, or rather subjects – those who are subjugated. While many
monarchs felt an obligation, both 'divine' and moral to behave with care and responsibility,
others acted in pure self interest, free of any accountability for their actions. With the
backing a large army or, sizeable personal guard, it became increasing difficult to hold
monarchs accountable and one had to rely on goodwill in most cases, rather than
enforcement.
Of course, there have been countless deposing of monarchs, by the people or by rival
claimants, although the latter didn't always turn out to be beneficial. Probably the most
famous of these is that of Galus Julius Caesar, the Dictator for life of the final years of the
Roman Republic, who gave his name to the title Caesar, Czar and Keiser. He was brutally
murdered by Brutus (hence the word brutal) and we all know how that turned out the for Roman
Republic.
The republic itself was a form of democracy, based on an earlier model from Greece, a
civilization that had immense influence on Rome. Of course, Athenian democracy was nothing like
what we now regard as democracy. The right to decide how government was organised and what it
did fell to the hands of an elite group - demokratia , or "rule by the people" was only for
citizens and of these, only the men could vote. At the time (507 BC) this meant 40,000 men, out
of a much larger population, but in reality no more than about 5000 men could attend
assemblies, due to other commitments. Still, it was a ground-breaking step, so long as you
weren't a foreigner, criminal, woman, child or a slave.
It is from these Greek origins that we get the word democracy and the notion of rights and
freedom for all. Over time there have been variations on this model that have been tried out
– constitutional monarchies, republics, socialist states, fascist states and communist
states, which have varying levels of input for the masses. The masses might also be referred to
as 'plebeians' as the Romans liked to call ordinary folk, a corrupted form of which still
exists as a minor insult - pleb.
However, through most of recorded history, the most common system has been monarchy,
although one could hardly describe it as the most popular. Simpler than a democracy and easy to
enforce – notions such as corruption, fairness and accountability do not come into play,
as divine rule (e.g. the divine right of kings) gives the ruler carte blanche to do whatever
they god-damn like, unless their despotism provokes a revolt. Of course, revolt has happened,
from time to time, throughout history and one of the most famous ones is that of the barons in
England against king John.
The Magna Carta (Great Charter, of 1215) is considered by many as the bedrock of Western
civilization and democracy, despite the fact that it only gave limited concessions to a very
small number of nobles. It was a start at least, and perhaps enabled further inroads into the
monarchic monopoly on power. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, against Richard II of England was a
major shift. Led by a commoner (Wat Tyler) it was a great embarrassment for Richard, who did
not have a standing army on hand. He was forced to pretend to negotiate with the rebels, who
camped at Blackheath, while he secretly ordered the Mayor of London to raise an army to
disperse and execute the protestors.
There are countless other examples of rebellion against monarchs across the world, but most
of them are forgotten. Perhaps the best remembered rebellion is that of the French paupers,
against the Bourbon monarchy and the entire aristocracy of France. This violent and
bloodthirsty revolution sent shudders of terror across the monarchies of the world and
precipitated a programme of reform, based on fear of similar events occurring.
Of course, some countries carried on regardless – Russia and America being
particularly sad examples, as Russia only abolished serfdom in 1861, while USA only abolished
slavery in 1865. One could justifiably say that the lives of these ordinary people, who were
now 'citizens' hardly improved as their freedom was pretty much nominal. This, in Russia, led
to the revolution of 1917, due to the intransigence of the Czar/Tsar (Caesar) Nicholai II
Alexandrovich Romanov II. The overthrow of the Russian system, inspired by the ideas of Marx
and Engels, led to a Bolshevik government headed by Vladimir Lenin. Whatever notions the
Soviets had, Lenin was a de facto Tzar in waiting and Stalin was certainly that, if not an
uncrowned heir to Ivan The Terrible.
Post World War II, we supposedly have a new age of democracy and freedom, but that only
applies to some. In truth, almost the whole world collection of governments has learned the art
of propaganda - thanks to the astounding upskilling efforts of the National Socialists (Nazis)
of Germany, who took this to new heights (or lows rather), turning it almost into an artform.
While we have been led to believe that we are free and democratic, we have never been more
exposed to lies and propaganda than we are now. The biggest lie of all is that we live in a
democracy, when in fact we actually only get to choose a new set of corrupt and self-serving
narcissists, every 4 or 5 years.
Democracies, the world over, have been bought – lobbyists have far more power than the
electorate could ever hope to achieve. What we in fact have is the illusion of democracy
– state agencies act without oversight, individuals have no say over the manifesto and
policies of parties in power and have no mechanism to undo or prevent undesirable actions by
governments. The only mechanisms available are the occasional referenda (instigated under
pressure), protest (peaceful or otherwise) and violent overthrow.
In most cases, the effort and risk of violent overthrow is considered too much for the
majority of people – it takes dire poverty, starvation and horrific coercion before the
'plebs' are pushed to the brink. Governments are aware of this and generally apply the 'boiling
frog' method of restricting people's freedoms and the removal of privacy and general rights.
However, they do on occasion overstep the mark or fail to adequately conceal their stealthy
nefarious actions – which inevitably leads to protest or insurrection.
History has proven that violent insurrection usually fails, but it is rather foolish of
authoritarian governments to take a gamble on this not happening. What is far more effective
for us 'plebs' is non-violent insurrection, in the form of non-compliance - this worked wonders
for both Gandhi and for Martin Luther-King, two of the most inspirational leaders of the 20th
century. Nelson Mandella is another fine example of someone who led a monumental change, in
South Africa, while also avoiding a catastrophic bloodbath, again through advocating of
non-violence and showing exceptional leadership skills.
At this moment in time, we are held hostage by a virus and the fear of what it might do to
humanity. While public safety has to be a priority, one has to ask the question – what is
this really about? Is this a manufactured crisis or is it is just opportunistic governments
capitalizing on their best chance to roll out new draconian measures? Temporary emergency
powers is one thing, but if there is no rollback after the crisis is over, what then? What if
the crisis is one without end – like George Orwell's perpetual war in his novel 1984?
We have come to expect freedom, we are told that we live in the 'free world' yet we see our
rights and freedoms and privacy being eroded by government legislation, corporate invasive
technology and data collection. Where do we draw the line? When do we say enough is enough?
Strangely, the same technology that enables our surveillance monitoring is also the most
powerful tool at our disposal. Internet and telecommunications enables us to share information,
just as the 'system' collects information about all of us. For many, it has opened our eyes
about government agendas, methods and operations as we now have unprecedented access to
worldwide information, often in real-time, or within minutes and hours of events happening.
Many believe that a new era of oppression is being rolled out, right now as we sit in our
homes, enabled by the high-power, high-speed and low latency 5G network, worldwide by a hidden
agency. Conspiracies aside, there are many questions to be asked about our rights, what our
freedoms should consist of and what the limits of government and corporate actions should be.
We need to ask those questions, we need to demand answers and show the 'powers that be' that
the thirst for true democracy is still alive and kicking. If we volunteer to be imprisoned or
to become our own jailors then there is no hope for humanity. As in the past, humanity needs to
assert itself, in order to remain free of despotism and it has never been more urgent than now.
Corny as it may be, the simplest way to express this is for me to repeat the words of the late
Bob Marley - "Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!"
"... There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be in the right even if you are defeated . I would say that the decay in the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization. ..."
"... Since society is held together by this myth system – the beliefs and values people live for and live by – that sustains it, societies have always had to offer symbolic "answers" to death. For without a meaningful symbolic for coming to terms with death, human action would be stymied and people would be reduced to what the psychiatrist Allan Wheelis termed "intense, preoccupying yearning." ..."
"... When leaders speak, the children hear the inner voices of their parents telling them to be careful, be very careful, the bogeyman is everywhere, so listen and obey. Freud, the Jewish atheist, and Dostoevsky, the Russian Orthodox Christian, were in agreement about people's desire to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them within their warm embrace. ..."
"... The easiest way to do this is to convince people that death is stalking them, for the bogeyman is always death in one form or another. ..."
"... It works to get people to support the terrifying sadism of wars against fabricated "others, ..."
"... It works to get people to give up their freedoms out of fear of "terrorists," who are said to slide and hide in the interstices of everyday life, ready to pounce and kill at any moment. ..."
"... For the Grand Inquisitor represents those power elites across the world who wish to cower people into accepting their dicta on Covid-19 as truth without questioning its logic or rationale. ..."
"... The use of technology to control behaviour by denying holidays to people, denying promotions etc all based on credit scores and similar monitoring has to be seen by the wealthy as a model of what can be achieved by the combination of ruthless force and control over information. ..."
"... All are brainwashed from birth. Its not "capitalism" its is a parasitic banking cabals economy . ..."
"... When the education system has been designed to eliminate the use of critical thinking and the purveyors of propaganda control the vast majority of the MSM, academia plus the creation of a veneer of democracy, it is little wonder so many people have swallowed this lie. ..."
"... many who call themselves atheists worship science( but not science as knowledge as it originally meant) ..."
"... The cabal wants only their narrative( lies as the truth) they want the truth of who we are and that we are co creators in this world unknown to us . ..."
Since death is one idea that has no history except as an idea and not a reality any of us have experienced, it is the most frightening
idea there is and also quite simple. It is the ultimate unknown. It has always haunted human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously.
It lies at the root of war, violence, religion, art, love, and civilization. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly,
why we like to win and not lose, pass and not fail, "pass on" and not die. It is so funny and so sad. We would be lost without it,
even when we feel lost when thinking about it. And it is fundamental for understanding the action and reaction to Covid-19.
Societies have always been people banded together in the face of death. And since people are not just physical beings but symbolic
creatures who can think and imagine the past and the future, societies are necessarily mythic symbol systems whose job is not only
to protect people physically, but symbolically as well.
Sometimes, however, the protection is a protection racket with racketeers holding people hostage to fabricated fears that keep
them locked in a living-death.
Thus death, this most potent imaginative idea and reality that doesn't exist except as a mystery about which anything we say is
speculation, can be used for good and evil, depending on who controls society.
Death is the great fear, the human haunting that hangs by a thread over life like the sword of Damocles.
In 1944 in a newspaper column, George Orwell made an astute remark:
There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now
is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be in the right even if you
are defeated . I would say that the decay in the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization.
Beliefs, of course, like "personal immortality" and all others, such as the recent rise in the belief in atheism, which is as
much a belief as belief in God, are, partially at least, relative to time and place, and develop out of social storytelling. The
"hard facts" on which many feel their lives and security rest are themselves dependent upon the symbols which give them legitimacy.
Reality is indeed precarious with society suspended by a web of myths and symbols. It is through cultural and social symbol systems
that society's meaning is transmitted to individuals, and it is within the symbol systems that the control and release of action
resides.
In today's electronic mass media world, those who control the mass media that control the narrative flow – the storytelling –
control the majority's beliefs and actions.
Since society is held together by this myth system – the beliefs and values people live for and live by – that sustains it,
societies have always had to offer symbolic "answers" to death. For without a meaningful symbolic for coming to terms with death,
human action would be stymied and people would be reduced to what the psychiatrist Allan Wheelis termed "intense, preoccupying
yearning."
Today we can hear such yearning everywhere.
Shortly after Orwell made his prescient comment in The Tribune, nuclear weapons were developed and used by the United States to
kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians. With those weapons and their use, the ages-old symbolic narrative of life
and death was transformed in a flash.
"The significance of the possibility of nuclear death is that it radically affects the meaning of death, of immortality,
of life itself," wrote Hans Morgenthau.
The traditional symbolic sources that once served to allow humans to transcend death were fundamentally undercut, and the search
for new modes of death transcendence was carried on beneath the portentous covering of the nuclear umbrella.
A qualitative transformation in the meaning of human existence was thus brought about as humans, who had the weapons, replaced
the belief in God as the holder of the power over life and death, since nuclear war could result in the extinction of human life,
leaving no one left to die.
This is our world today, and it is where the Covid-19 story takes place. A world not just of nuclear fear, but a host of other
fears constantly inflamed by the mass media that hypnotize people through the conjuring of death-fear.
In his great work on group psychology, Freud showed us how it was not just mental contagion and the herd instinct that got people
to join in group behavior. People could be induced to become little children and obey their leaders because they have "an extreme
passion for authority."
When leaders speak, the children hear the inner voices of their parents telling them to be careful, be very careful, the bogeyman
is everywhere, so listen and obey. Freud, the Jewish atheist, and Dostoevsky, the Russian Orthodox Christian, were in agreement about
people's desire to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them within their warm embrace.
The easiest way to do this is to convince people that death is stalking them, for the bogeyman is always death in one form
or another.
It works to get people to support the terrifying sadism of wars against fabricated "others," who are always portrayed
as aliens who are out to kill the good people.
It works to get people to give up their freedoms out of fear of "terrorists," who are said to slide and hide in the interstices
of everyday life, ready to pounce and kill at any moment.
And it works to get people to obey orders to protect themselves from terrifying viruses that are lying in wait everywhere to strike
them dead.
In his novel The Brothers Karamazov , Dostoevsky said that people want miracles, mystery, and authority, not freedom. His
Grand Inquisitor, while a fictional creation, lives on in reality.
For the Grand Inquisitor represents those power elites across the world who wish to cower people into accepting their dicta
on Covid-19 as truth without questioning its logic or rationale.
To question has become an act of insubordination deserving death by censorship or the defiling of one's name via the term "conspiracy
theorist," a name used by the CIA to dismiss anyone questioning its murder of President Kennedy. Death comes in many forms, and the
fear of it has always been used by the powerful to render the common people speechless and obedient.
How can any thinking person, anyone not totally crippled by fear, not question what is going on with the coronavirus disaster
when reading what Peter Koenig, a thirty-year veteran economist of the World Bank and World Health Organization, writes in his article
The Farce and Diabolical Agenda
of a 'Universal Lockdown' :
The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.
There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of a worldwide monumental
historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report,
which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the "Lock Step" scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the "pandemic"
was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.
The event was sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the World
Economic Forum (WEF), the club of the rich and powerful that meets every January in Davos, Switzerland. Participating were a number
of pharmaceuticals (vaccine interest groups), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s of the US and – of
China.
One of the objectives of Event 201 was a computer simulation of a corona virus pandemic. The simulated virus was called SARS-2-nCoV,
or later 2019-nCoV. The simulation results were disastrous, killing 65 million people in 18 months and plunging the stock market
by more than 30% -- causing untold unemployment and bankruptcies. Precisely the scenario of which we are now living the beginning.
The Lock Step scenario foresees a number of ghastly and disturbing events or components of The Plan to be implemented by the so
called Agenda ID2020, a Bill Gates creation, fully integrated into the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – target date for
completion – 2030 (also called Agenda 2030, the hidden agenda unknown to most of the UN members), the same target date for completion
of the Agenda ID02020.
I ask the question but I am afraid I know the answer: miracle, mystery, and authority usually defeat evidence and simple logic.
Fear of death and free thought scare children. The Grand Inquisitor lives on:
But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having
a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it.
Death: A simple idea with such a powerful punch.
JoeC ,
It isn't just about the fear of death. It's also the fear of being responsible for the death of others. It's no accident that
they've chosen a contagion as our imaginary enemy. We become the visible enemy if we refuse to wear face masks, abide social distance,
wash our hands every 30 seconds or refuse a vaccine when it comes to it etc etc. Hence the laws that will follow. We will soon
be public enemy number one. The new terrorists. I'm not scared of dying but I'm petrified of being persecuted for not believing
this shit. What sort of life is that?
a belief. The author adds his on baggage to an otherwise lucid
article, which rather diminishes the other truths he mentions ?
BigB ,
Excellent stuff, with plenty to think about as usual. As a proviso: Ed's sociology and ethnography needs tightening up though.
The big cultural repertoire of myths and symbols has a name; several names actually nomos, Weltanschauung, Weltansicht (cosmographic
worldview or wide world sight), and *sensus communis* (the consensual common sense). Which is the consensus of views everyone
shares.
The last is from Giambattista Vico: who also said: "Verum esse ipsum factum" ("What is true is precisely what is made [up]").
Which is the verum-factum principle of worldviews. The ideal eternal cosmological history is subjectively made up, culturally
constructed, as a consensually maintained worldbuilding and world-maintaining mythological storytelling.
To which the individual is socialised not once – from birth through education – not twice – in the workforce – but continually
as a process of cultural individuality making. Which is not all one way, top-down traffic of obedience and control – but a reflexive
and causal circularity. The big bunch of historically specific myths and symbols make and maintain the person: just as the person
makes and maintains the big bunch of historically specific myths as a consensually maintained worldbuilding and world-maintaining
mythological storytelling. The individual self is itself a cultural constructivism.
It cannot be any other way: otherwise there can be no common ground for communication and there is only communication. Or participatory
sense-making: no one can have their own language or behavioural repertoire maintained far from the socially regulated consensus
and continue to make sense. Maintaining the dictionary definition of words (intension) and the encyclopaedic repertoire of social
norms and modes of behaviour is critical to the meaning of the overall order. And there is only the order. Very uneasy order.
The individual finds themselves historically situated in the ordinate nexus of thinking, speaking, and acting in a constrained,
shared, and lawfully regulated landscape of language, culture, society, state and market economy. There is no 'outside': except
for the retreat into solipsism and ahistoric flights of imagination. We make our own history: but not autonomously and not in
circumstances of our own choosing.
Cultural construction and reproduction – and the worldview maintainence of socially constructed reality – is a permanent process.
Following the basic processes of social constructivism – as laid out by Berger and Luckman. Which are: habitualisation by subjectivated
externalisation and reification by objectivated internalisation as a recurrent, resonant, and reflexive lifelong process.
We are part of the tissue and fabric of socially constructed reality. And socially constructed reality is part of the tissue
and fabric of us: the flesh of the cultural worldview.
Of course: the biggest lie of the principle of cultural constructivist storytelling is that what is told is naturally objective,
true, and real. And some of it is lawfully authoritative (like this old computer epidemiology model I had lying around). Which
is what gives the story its universal regulative ordinate control and constative overpower.
I mean, who would want to self-admit they were regurgitating institutionalised and habitualised false beliefs and mistaken
abstractive assumptions about the objective nature of things that were just a bunch of made up and recycled socialisation and
pacification rites of a cultural constructivist performance?
Truth, self, and social reality itself is constructed by such rites.
And what if the nomos – the ordered and naturalised ordinate principle – which is a cultures own talisman against chaos, indiscipline,
and made up shite about virology turns out to be chaotic, restrictive, petrifying and rapidly fossilising as a permanent order
of fascising bollox and corporatist control?
If the fossilising order is worse than the disorder it symbolically wards off and guards against: and the culturally created
fear of death worse than the natural process of dying then what?
Is it better that the institutionalised and institutionalising lawful ordering is in principle false and an unjust draconian
social realism? Or that it is objective, rational, and scientifically real? And eternally and universally valid?
What if a society had been rationalised and institutionalised into a universal analytical reasoning, an empiric objectivity,
a historically contingent subjectivity, and a nomological scientific principle that were in fact falsely constructed? And just
habitually and consensually maintained as a lawful, juridical, and regulatory idealism of an eternally natural cosmological order?
Which just happened to turn out to be totalitarian fascistic co-participatory dumbfuckerry?
That culture would find itself in a headfuck situation of a nomological breakdown of its worldview and its interwoven individual
identities most of which would want to shelter in the pretence of being ahistorically situated outside of language, culture, and
thought in a nomological no mans land. Which is exactly the abnegation of cultural creativity that precipitated the meaning crisis
and breakdown of order.
I'm so glad I do not live in such a culture. That would indeed be terrifying.
😱 😱 😱 😱 😱
aspnaz ,
An interesting article that reminds me of the difference between westerners and the mainland Chinese whom I believe are the model
that will used to create the future world.
I am not talking about communism, the Chinese gave up communism ages ago, they are now the world's premier imperialists, using
capitalism to drive their influence across the globe. But their control over people is surely the model aspired to by any person
wanting to rule the world.
The use of technology to control behaviour by denying holidays to people, denying promotions etc all based on credit scores
and similar monitoring has to be seen by the wealthy as a model of what can be achieved by the combination of ruthless force and
control over information.
The response of the Chinese to the virus – the lockdown – was seen in the west as China caring for its people, but here in
HK it is still commonly seen as China panicking because it thought that the people would be afraid and would turn on the government
for not protecting them. It was riot control, not virus control, hence the arrest of people spreading virus rumours.
tonyopmoc ,
Edward Curtin, what you wrote is completely brilliant, in the few minutes it took me to read it, you took me through the vastness
of time, and my entire physical and spiritual existence. thank you. tony
Hugh O'Neill ,
Another thought-provoking article, Ed. I was reminded of four quotes:
1. G.K. Chesterton: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing; he believes in anything"
2. On the dropping of the first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer quoted from Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds"
3. JFK's favourite poem was Alan Seeger's "I have a rendezvous with death". Seeger died in 1916
4. Whatever the merits of the poem, JFK was no stranger to death. Likewise, he had adopted Lincoln's prayer: "I know there is
a God – and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready."
Edward, how people can be so easily fooled is an age old question. One hundred years ago they queued up to be slaughtered in the
trenches. It was all so senseless it was beyond belief.
"Over the top lads, for King and Country" (the Black Adder comedy programme really captured this).
I'm not sure what else I can say about the stupidity of the human race.
We are at this point again, and people need to fecking wake-up.
Richard Le Sarc ,
People in the West are brainwashed from birth. They have NO idea that the capitalist system is incompatible with Life on Earth,
that it is a form of cancer, that the USA is the greatest force for Evil in history and that businessmen, politicians, MSM presstitutes
are psychopaths at best, dullards and ignoramuses at best. And the worst are those that deny death in belief in various 'Gods'
who all hate each other and compel them to kill and destroy in his name. The system is collapsing, and that is finally dawning
on the brain-dead 'consumers', who will now proceed to consume one another.
All are brainwashed from birth.
Its not "capitalism" its is a parasitic banking cabals economy .
Its a monopoly you've just always believed as a debt slave its capitalism and you're free.
They are resetting it, those that understand the minds of the manchild.
Good stuff Edward,
Most of the 'plan' has been on these boards for months- the one missing is Whitney Webbs latest which exposes the dumb fucks plan
to close the 'AI Gap with China'.
'THEY' have never let a good crises go to waste to further their agenda and plans.
Another old adage is about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time.
Death and politicians and media narrative control can also lose their grip. It starts by laughing at them. It's started:
THEY will not succeed this time – the narrative is a shattering mirror, that reveals their plans – the BS isn't sticking any
more.
crank ,
Confronting our exaggerated fear of dying is the only way out of this prison.
Thanks for this article Edward.
John Deehan ,
When the education system has been designed to eliminate the use of critical thinking and the purveyors of propaganda control
the vast majority of the MSM, academia plus the creation of a veneer of democracy, it is little wonder so many people have swallowed
this lie.
Doug Stillborn ,
The cabal beleives that the truth is irrelevant and that whatever appears to you as truth is what is true to you and the only truth.
This is false. The truth is not relative. Einstein knew this and said, time is an illusion albeit a persistent one. If you propagate
the idea of atheism and science what you are actually doing is you are relinquishing any responsibility/accountability.
I don't think so Doug . The ideas of " atheism and science " are out there.
But what has happened is that many who call themselves atheists worship science( but not science as knowledge as it originally
meant) so its mostly theories taken a facts, pseudoscience.
Agree though that time is an illusion.
The cabal wants only their narrative( lies as the truth) they want the truth of who we are and that we are co creators in this
world unknown to us .
1. "The US political culture is that 99.99% of Americans will believe literally ANY lie,
no matter how self-evidently stupid, about the rest of the world rather than accepting any
unpleasant truth about the US. "
2. "Eventually, and inevitably, this strategic PSYOP upped the ante and FOXnews
(logically) aired this true masterpiece: "Sen. Hawley: Let coronavirus victims sue Chinese
Communist Party". Truly, this is brilliant. "I lost my job, let the evil Chinese commies pay
me back" is music to the ears of most Americans."
This is what Anglo-Zionist religious/political culture produces. And it is not restricted
to jingoistic blaming of the peoples of other nations; it also features blaming those who are
citizens of the nation but are more outsiders to the WASP Elites that the group doing the
blaming. That pattern keeps the non-Elites from ever seeing that their enemy is the
national/imperial Elite they serve.
For example, the horrors the Brit WASP Elites and their system inflicted on Lancashire
factory workers would have made any real life Simon Legree giddy at the possibilities. And
those abused masses could be counted on at every turn to retard their own demands any time
the Elites could turn the conversation to how the Irish or Highlanders would come in and take
their jobs for even less and ruin their delightful communities. Or how the evil empires on
the Continent were causing trouble and to save lives of British soldiers the factory workers
must be reasonable.
Orwellian fiction is steeped deeply in the actual ways that WASP Empire operates to grind
its own citizens and ue them as mindless pawns to make Anglo-Zionist Elites ever richer, ever
more entrenched in power.
1984 and Animal Farm get the attention, but Homage to Catalonia - Orwell's non-fiction on
the Spanish Civil War - might be his best. Wow, did he hate reporters: "It was the first time
that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts
journalists..."
Alex Berenson 4:34 PM - 18 Apr 2020
2/ And this: "I do not suppose I should exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is
untruthful. Nearly all the newspaper accounts published at the time were manufactured by
journalists at a distance, and were not only inaccurate in their facts but intentionally
misleading..."
Alex Berenson 4:37 PM - 18 Apr 2020
3/ I guess one might say that the groupthink and lies Orwell saw in Spain *informed* his
writing in 1984 - which was published in 1949, 11 years after Homage to Catalonia. Apropos of
nothing, of course.
Okay, I'll be adding this book to my list of books to read after I graduate and take my
big exam.
B Ekdahl 5:06 PM - 18 Apr 2020
The part of that book that I've thought of
with hope during this chillling time is how Orwell noted that the Spanish were incompetent
even with fascism. Let's hope that US is even more incompetent.
R.R. Reno 5:30 PM - 18 Apr 2020
I don't think we can underestimate how many reporters have been so panicked that only a
few are outside their homes in New York reporting on what's actually happening.
1984 and Animal Farm get the attention, but Homage to Catalonia - Orwell's non-fiction on
the Spanish Civil War - might be his best. Wow, did he hate reporters: "It was the first time
that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies--unless one counts
journalists..."
Will 6:27 PM - 18 Apr 2020
If you haven't heard of Udo Ulfkotte's story, you should check it out: https://www. paulcraigroberts.org/2019/10/14/jou
rnalists-are-prostitutes/ His initiation into big time media was watching fellow
reporters pour gasoline on burnt up tanks & film it, replete w/ soldier actors, like war
was happening. Audio tracks added later.
"... This is the problem with the Democrats. You might be interested in class issues, and economic equality, and not at all interested in wokeness. But what you're going to get is wokeness, because that is what the power-holding class in the Democratic Party really cares about. As James Lindsay, the left-liberal professor who does heroic work fighting wokeness, told me in our recent interview: ..."
"... Of course [Social Justice Warriors] going to find ways to use this crisis to their advantage. They go around inventing problems or dramatically exaggerating or misinterpreting small problems to push their agenda; why wouldn't they do the same in a situation where there's so much chaos and thus so much going wrong. My experience so far is that people are really underestimating how much of this there will be and how much of it will be institutionalized while we're busy doing other things like tending to the sick and dying and trying not to lose our livelihoods and/or join them ourselves. ..."
"... It's very important to understand that "Critical Social Justice" isn't just activism and some academic theories about things. It's a way of thinking about the world, and that way is rooted in critical theory as it has been applied mostly to identity groups and identity politics ..."
Might Orwell's sensitive nose have detected a whiff of cant anywhere on the contemporary left? I suspect he would have cast
a baleful eye on identity politics. He would, I think, be dubious about "diversity." Why do every college and corporation in America
have a fleet of "diversity" officers? What is gained by ensuring -- at enormous expense -- that every student or employee is proud
of his/her culture and that every other student or employee respects it? According to Walter Benn Michaels in The Trouble with
Diversity, what is gained is the avoidance of class conflict. "The commitment to diversity is at best a distraction and at worst
an essentially reactionary position . We would much rather celebrate cultural diversity than seek to establish economic equality."
Orwell was moderately obsessed with class. He would probably have noted that the explosive growth of inequality in the United
States over the past four decades has closely paralleled the explosive growth of the diversity industry, and would have drawn
some conclusions. He might have asked: If there were two societies with the same Gini coefficient, but in one of them, the proportion
of billionaires by race and gender matched that of the general population, would that society be morally better than the other?
Or: If the ratio of CEO to median employee earnings was the same in two societies, but in one of them the proportion of CEOs by
race and gender matched that of the general population, would that society be morally better than the other? I'm pretty sure that
most diversity bureaucrats would answer "yes" to both questions, and that Orwell would have answered "no."
Orwell was fearless, so a tribute to him shouldn't pull any punches. I think he would suggest that there was something irrational
about the way we enforce our most sensitive taboo: the N-word. From the wholesale banning of Huckleberry Finn to the many times
teachers and civil servants have been censured, and in one case fired, for using the word "niggardly" (which has no etymological
relation to the N-word) to the resignation under pressure recently of a Cambridge, Massachusetts, school committeewoman for using
the N-word in a discussion of a proposed high-school course about the N-word, we have often made fools of ourselves and done disadvantaged
African Americans no good. As the school superintendent summarized the Cambridge case: the committeewoman "made a point about
racist language and used the full N-word instead of the common substitute, 'N-word.' Although said in the context of a classroom
discussion, and not directed to any student or adult present, the full pronunciation of the word was upsetting to a number of
students and adults who were present or who have since heard about the incident." No one, however, as far as I am aware, has publicly
expressed hurt feelings over the fact that the average net worth of African Americans in the Boston area is $8. (Eight, no zeros.)
As Benn Michaels observes: "As long as the left continues to worry about [respect], the right won't have to worry about inequality."
I wrote earlier today about actually existing conservatism being more of a "folk libertarianism" than anything resembling philosophical
conservatism. But what about actually existing liberalism?
The surprising triumph of Joe Biden, the most normie Democrat in America, tells us something about actually existing liberalism.
Illiberal progressivism dominates in academia, the media, and in corporate America's human resources departments. A reader sends
in this abstract from a paper published by a Penn professor at the Ivy League university's Wharton School of Business (Trump's alma
mater!) in which she argues that the state should
forbid identity-based discrimination but permit refusals of service for projects that foster hate toward protected groups,
even where the hate-based project is intimately linked to a protected characteristic (as with religious groups that mandate white
supremacy). Far from perpetuating discrimination, these refusals instead promote anti-discrimination norms, and they help realize
the vision of the morally inflected marketplace that the Article defends.
You could say that Biden's (not yet assured) victory in the Democratic primaries shows that actually existing liberalism is much
less interested in wokeness than in bread-and-butter issues. After all, the more self-consciously woke candidates in the Democratic
race didn't get anywhere. I would like to read it that way. But would Biden actually stand up to any wokeness? After all, this is
the man who tweeted:
Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to
basic human rights.
This is the problem with the Democrats. You might be interested in class issues, and economic equality, and not at all interested
in wokeness. But what you're going to get is wokeness, because that is what the power-holding class in the Democratic Party really
cares about. As James Lindsay, the left-liberal professor who does heroic work fighting wokeness, told me
in our recent interview:
Of course [Social Justice Warriors] going to find ways to use this crisis to their advantage. They go around inventing
problems or dramatically exaggerating or misinterpreting small problems to push their agenda; why wouldn't they do the same in
a situation where there's so much chaos and thus so much going wrong. My experience so far is that people are really underestimating
how much of this there will be and how much of it will be institutionalized while we're busy doing other things like tending to
the sick and dying and trying not to lose our livelihoods and/or join them ourselves.
It's very important to understand that "Critical Social Justice" isn't just activism and some academic theories about things.
It's a way of thinking about the world, and that way is rooted in critical theory as it has been applied mostly to identity groups
and identity politics. Thus, not only do they think about almost nothing except ways that "systemic power" and "dominant
groups" are creating all the problems around us, they've more or less forgotten how to think about problems in any other way.
The underlying assumption of their Theory–and that's intentionally capitalized because it means a very specific thing–is that
the very fabric of society is built out of unjust systemic power dynamics, and it is their job (as "critical theorists") to find
those, "make them visible," and then to move on to doing it with the next thing, ideally while teaching other people to do it
too. This crisis will be full of opportunities to do that, and they will do it relentlessly. So, it's not so much a matter of
them "finding a way" to use this crisis to their advantage as it is that they don't really do anything else.
To be honest, I don't have a lot of confidence in predictions about what valence wokeness (or right-wing culture war
themes) will have in this fall's election, given the economic destruction upon us now. I do have confidence, though, that if the
left gets into power, this professional class of woke activists will march triumphantly through the institutions of government,
and implement their identity-politics utopianism. Do I think that most Democratic voters do, or would, favor that? No, probably
not. I imagine they would be voting Democratic primarily to oust Trump, and secondarily because they are more interested in
income inequality...
If Orwell were alive today and writing with his superlative critical pen about them, he would struggle
to find publication in one of our major liberal journals.
UPDATE: Just now:
I'm sure Critical Social Justice isn't quietly reorganizing things that might matter because of the pandemic Or so I keep being
told. https://t.co/LEzvjqbu2B
-- James Lindsay, staying home (@ConceptualJames)
March 31, 2020
Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative . He has written and edited for the New York Post , The Dallas
Morning News , National Review , the South Florida Sun-Sentinel , the Washington Times , and the Baton Rouge Advocate . Rod's commentary
has been published in The Wall Street Journal , Commentary , the Weekly Standard , Beliefnet, and Real Simple, among other publications,
and he has appeared on NPR, ABC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the BBC. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his wife Julie
and their three children. He has also written four books, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming , Crunchy Cons , How Dante Can Save Your
Life , and The Benedict Option
We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State,[3] an urban nation constructed almost entirely of
glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W.
Taylor-style. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given
numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the
society.[4][5] The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.[6]
Francis Lee ,
Sounds very much like Yevgeny Zamyatin – We . But we never thought it would
happen!
In the case of "Brave New World", the establishment knows how to cure pretty much any
conventional disease. Then if you're in approved society you die around age 60 because of
everything that's kept you alive and looking like 40.
I just read the book last month for the first time in 30+ years. It does belong on that
diagram. And "1984" doesn't either, since it really doesn't deal with anything like
infectious diseases--reread that about 2 years ago.
I've not read the other 2 outer books ever, but the movie of "Fahrenheit 451", which I just
watched and Bradbury certainly had a hand in writing, has nothing to do with infectious
disease.
There might be something in Camus' "The Plague" though. Haven't read that since the
1980s.
There aren't food shortages so not sure about the "Soylent Green" reference, yet at least.
"Long's Run" is about killing people off at age 35, which I guess overlaps with "kill 80% of
the poor workers", something the likes of Charles Koch certainly supports. So indirectly
there could be a "Logan's Run" connection.
Gattica is just about favored people with the right genes, so an update of "Brave New
World", without the highly literate "savage" as the main character.
I don't see how "The Matrix" relates, that's more about the material world's completeness
being an illusion.
"Clockwork Orange?" A thug suppressed with mind control?
Haven't read "Lord of the Flies", but don't the kids worship a god of the island, and
justify the horrors they commit based on that conception of god or a god?
The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or
"commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.
I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like
war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under
complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
Totalitarian ideologies live by lies and contradiction. For example, the slave-state of
North Korea , ruled by
a hereditary dictatorship, proclaims itself a Democratic People's Republic when it is neither
democratic, popular, nor a republic.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four , Orwell wrote of how "the names of the
four Ministries by which [the oppressed population is] governed exhibit a sort of impudence in
their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the
Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with
starvation.
These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary
hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink ."
Defending the death-machine
You could, then, call GCHQ and the NSA part of the Ministry of Morality. While breaking laws
against surveillance and trying to destroy freedom of expression and enquiry, they pretend that
they're caring, ethical organizations who defend the oppressed and want to build a better
world. In fact, of course, GCHQ and the NSA are defending the death-machine of the military-industrial
complex , which has been wrecking nations and slaughtering civilians in
the Middle East (and elsewhere ) for
decades.
Quote: Orwell didn't foresee the celebration of homosexuality by totalitarians, but he did
explain it.
If you read Anthony Burgess' The Wanting Seed he writes about the roles of gays in
dystopia. He also talks about race, two things that Orwell and Huxley didn't. The Wanting
Seed is just as important in the world of dystopia as Brave New World or 1984.
one way George Orwell got the future completely wrong
That assumes he was writing about the future. He was mocking the Soviet "justice" system
in the recent past. The man was a satirist, after all. How did Stalin's men treat sexual
deviation?
1) The iniquities of the members of one skyfairy cult are not evidence for the virtues of
another such organisation and never will be.
2) It seems likely to me that homosexuality is a feature of overpopulation and may be a
natural population control mechanism. Experiments have shown that rats kept in overcrowded
conditions exhibit homosexual tendencies and also become more violent towards other rats. I
doubt that it is purely a coincidence that homosexuality first became notable round about the
time that humans started living in cities.
Other species have means of controlling their
populations, rabbits for example can reabsorb their embryos if the population count is too
high, seals can freeze the development of their foetuses etc.
I see no rational purpose in demonising homosexuals and I am certainly not going to let the purveyors of ancient
superstitious claptrap do my thinking for me. Cue howls of outrage from both skyfairy
cultists and from queers (if they are happy to use the word I don't see why I shouldn't)
3) It seems to me that the Zionist bankers have essentially bankrupted the western world
in an attempt to bring the rest of the world under their control, they have failed. They are
now attempting to mobilise any and all sections of the population that identify as minorities
as allies against the majorities in those countries, importing as many more as they can get
away with. What sense does it make to reinforce their narrative that it is heterosexual
whites v everyone else? because that is exactly what some people are doing. The Zionists are
making their following as broad as possible while attempting to narrow ours, why play into
their hands? Opposition to immigration for example does not have to be presented as a racial
issue, many people here in the UK were opposed to mass immigration from eastern Europe on
purely economic grounds, Poles and Lithuanians are not a different race and hardly even a
different culture. Do you really think that Blacks and Latinos that have been in the US for
generations are uniformly delighted about a new influx of cheap labour? Do you really believe
that Muslims are the natural allies of Jews or of homosexuals? If you actually put some
thought into the struggle rather than relying on superstitious claptrap and bigotry you might
be able to start pushing back.
So, Western civilization is going to collapse because of a few fairies & fag
hags?
Yes, it looks as if it will collapse. Not because the fairies and fag hags are
all-powerful, but because we have had it so good & easy for so long that we've gotten
weaker than any determined, focused fairy or hag.
Leftism in general, which I characterize as a mass adoption of a "mental map" (the gross
oversimplification of infinite reality people use to navigate their lives) highly estranged
from underlying reality, is Nature's "suicide switch" for an organism that has grossly
overgrown its ecological niche.
Today people believe palpably unreal things, in incredibly large numbers, with incredibly
deep fervor. The poster-child is the belief in the efficacy of magical incantations (statute
legislation) to change Actual Reality. If "we" want to end racism (however we define it in
the Newspeak Dictionary) then we just pass a law and "pow!" it's gone. (When that doesn't
work, we pass another law, and another and another and another, always expecting a different
result.)
Ditto the banking (and monetary) system. Money used to be basically a "receipt" for
actually having something IN HAND to take to the market and engage in trade. This was the
essence of Say's Law, "in order to consume (buy something) you must first produce."
Some clever Machiavellians figured out that if you could "complexify" and obscure the
monetary system enough, you could obtain the legal right to create from thin air the
ability to enter that market and buy something, which stripped to its essence is the crime of
fraud.
Banking has been an open fraud for a very long time, certainly since the era of naked fiat
money was introduced in the 1960's. But as long as everyone went along with the gag, and
especially once Credit Bubble Funny Money started fueling a debt orgy and rationalizing an
asset price mania, everyone thought "we could all get rich."
Today we have vast claims on real wealth (real wealth is productive land, productive plant
& equipment and capital you can hold in your hands, so to speak.) But we have uncountable
claims on each unit of real capital. The Machiavellians think that they will end up holding
title to it all, when the day comes to actually make an honest accounting. I suspect that
they lack the political power to pull that off, but only time will tell.
When this long, insane boom is reconciled, a lot of productive capital will turn out to be
nothing but vaporware and rusting steel. Entire industries arose to cater to
credit-bubble-demand, and when the bubble eventually ceases to inflate, demand in (and the
capital applied to) those industries will collapse. How many hospitals do you need when no
one has the money to pay for their services, and the tax base has burned to the ground?
Simple formula. Liberalism was the defense of the individual against the group.
All one needs to do is a simple substitution. Minorities , environment , animals etc are a
means by witch one can make individuals into the institutionalized oppressor. Even better is
the so called intersectional mini oppressions which make nearly all victims which in turns
makes all guilty. State intervention must increase .Guilty people , as all religions of the
world understand, are easily dominated and controlled.
The power the individual is destroyed by its own momentum.
@Digital Samizdat The Bolsheviks first pushed "free love" – easy divorce, abortion
and homosexuality. There even was serious discussion about whether or not to abolish
marriage. They reversed themselves and by the time WWII broke out, the official culture of
the Soviet Union was more socially conservative than that of the US. Even in the 1980s, the
Commies were tough on gays, lesbians and druggies.
The MSM is reporting the "impeachment" as if it was a serious (approved by expert
academics) endeavor. However, the veil is lifting. The revealed face of the ruling class is
Neo-Orwellian.
"Nadler's committee will likely vote to impeach Trump. In a report defining what it
considers impeachable offenses, the committee states that even if Trump did not actually
break any laws in his supposed "quid pro quo" dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky, he can still be impeached for his unstated motives.
"The question is not whether the president's conduct could have resulted from
permissible motives. It is whether the president's real reasons, the ones in his mind at the
time, were legitimate, " it stated."
"... Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe," Rudyard Kipling once observed. ..."
"... The struggle to remain true to one's self was also felt by Orwell, who wrote about "the smelly little orthodoxies" that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a "power of facing unpleasant facts" -- something of a rarity in humans -- even though it often hurt him in British society. ..."
"... In a sense, 1984 is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power. ..."
"... The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in 1984 , but the next generation will have to decide if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE's Dan Sanchez recently observed that many people today feel like they're "walking on eggshells" and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation. ..."
"... When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi , East Germany's secret police, had a full-time staff of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what's frightening is that the organization had almost double that in informants, including children. And it wasn't just children reporting on parents; sometimes it was the other way around." ..."
"... Movies like the Matrix actually helped people to question everything. What is real and not. Who is the enemy, and can we be sure. And when Conspiracy theories become fact, people learn. The problem is in later generations who get indoctrinated at school and college to not think, not question. Rational examination is forbidden. ..."
There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 . Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory
Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith's varicose ulcer,
apparently a symbol of his humanity (or something),
which always seems to be "throbbing." Gross.
None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it's not the worst thing in 1984 . To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn't
keep Big Brother out of your head.
Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in 1984 aren't that interested in controlling behavior or speech.
They do, of course, but it's only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.
"When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will," O'Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith
near the end of the book.
We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture
his inner mind, we reshape him.
Big Brother's tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved
thoughts. We see how this works when Winston's neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police
by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.
"It was my little daughter," Parsons tells Winston when asked who it was who denounced him.
"She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a
nipper of seven, eh?"
Who Are These Thought Police?
We don't know a lot about the Thought Police, and some of what we think we know may actually not be true since some of what Winston
learns comes from the Inner Party, and they lie.
What we know is this: The Thought Police are secret police of
Oceania -- the fictional land
of 1984 that probably consists of the UK, the Americas, and parts of Africa -- who use surveillance and informants to monitor the
thoughts of citizens. The Thought Police also use psychological warfare and false-flag operations to entrap free thinkers or nonconformists.
Those who stray from Party orthodoxy are punished but not killed. The Thought Police don't want to kill nonconformists so much
as break them. This happens in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are re-educated through degradation and torture.
(Funny sidebar: the name Room 101
apparently was inspired by a conference room at the BBC in which Orwell was forced to endure tediously long meetings.)
The Origins of the Thought Police
Orwell didn't create the Thought Police out of thin air. They were inspired to at least some degree by
his experiences in
the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a complicated and
confusing affair. What you really need to know is that there were no good guys, and it ended with left-leaning anarchists and Republicans
in Spain crushed by their Communist overlords, which helped the fascists win.
Orwell, an idealistic 33-year-old socialist when the conflict started, supported the anarchists and loyalists fighting for the
left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, which received most of its support from the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin. (That might sound
bad, but keep in mind that the Nazis were on the other side.) Orwell described the atmosphere in Barcelona in December 1936 when
everything seemed to be going well for his side.
The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing ... It was the first time
that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle,
he wrote in Homage to Catalonia.
[E]very wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle ... every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized.
That all changed pretty fast. Stalin, a rather paranoid fellow, was bent on making Republican Spain loyal to him . Factions and
leaders perceived as loyal to his exiled Communist rival, Leon
Trotsky , were liquidated. Loyal Communists found themselves denounced as fascists. Nonconformists and "uncontrollables" were
disappeared.
Orwell never forgot the
purges or the steady stream of lies and propaganda churned out from Communist papers during the conflict. (To be fair, their Nationalist
opponents also used propaganda
and lies .) Stalin's NKVD was not exactly like the Thought Police
-- the NKVD showed less patience with its victims --
but they certainly helped inspire Orwell's secret police.
The Thought Police were not all propaganda and torture, though. They also stem from Orwell's ideas on truth. During his time in
Spain, he saw how power could corrupt truth, and he shared these reflections in his work
George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943 .
...I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary
lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed.
I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the
heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional
superstructures over events that had never happened.
In short, Orwell's brush with totalitarianism left him
worried that "the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world."
This scared him. A lot. He actually wrote, "This kind of thing is frightening to me."
Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. "The individual
has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe," Rudyard Kipling once observed.
The struggle to remain true to one's self was also felt by Orwell, who
wrote about "the smelly little orthodoxies" that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a "power of facing unpleasant
facts" -- something of a rarity in humans -- even though it often hurt him in British society.
In a sense, 1984 is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power.
It might be tempting to dismiss Orwell's book as a figment of dystopian literature. Unfortunately, that's not as easy as it sounds.
Modern history shows he was onto something.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, had a full-time
staff of 91,000.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that
the Stasi , East Germany's secret police, had a full-time staff
of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what's frightening is that the organization had almost double that in informants,
including children. And it wasn't just children reporting on parents;
sometimes
it was the other way around.
Nor did the use of state spies to prosecute thoughtcrimes end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, it's still
happening today. The New York Times recently ran
a report featuring one Peng
Wei, a 21-year-old Chinese chemistry major. He is one of the thousands of "student information officers" China uses to root out professors
who show signs of disloyalty to President Xi Jinping or the Communist Party.
The New Thought Police?
The First Amendment of the US Constitution, fortunately, largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found
in 1984 , East Germany, and China; but the rise of "cancel culture" shows the pressure to conform to all sorts of orthodoxies (smelly
or not) remains strong.
The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in 1984 , but the next generation will have to decide if seeking
conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE's Dan Sanchez
recently observed
that many people today feel like they're "walking on eggshells" and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation.
That's a lot of pressure, especially for people still learning the acceptable boundaries of a new moral code that is constantly
evolving. Most people, if the pressure is sufficient, will eventually say "2+2=5" just to escape punishment. That's exactly what
Winston Smith does at the end of 1984 , after all. Yet Orwell also leaves readers with a glimmer of hope.
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad," Orwell wrote.
"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
In other words, the world may be mad, but that doesn't mean you have to be.
" When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, had a full-time
staff of 91,000.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that
the Stasi , East Germany's secret police, had a full-time staff
of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what's frightening is that the organization had almost double that in
informants,
including children. And it wasn't just children reporting on parents;
sometimes
it was the other way around."
Confidential informants should be illegal.
How many people are employed by the various Federal intelligence agencies, of which there are 17 the last time I heard. Hundreds
of thousands of Federal employees, protected by strong government employee unions.
When this shitshow goes live, it will only take a small team to shut off the water that is necessary to keep the NSA servers
cool in Utah.
Movies like the Matrix actually helped people to question everything. What is real and not. Who is the enemy, and can we be sure. And when Conspiracy theories become fact, people learn. The problem is in later generations who get indoctrinated at school and college to not think, not question.
Rational examination
is forbidden.
"... This is the direction in which the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary world situation. ..."
"... Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist communities by the necessity to prepare for total war with the U.S.S.R. and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and the most publicized. But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours. ..."
"... Two of the principal super states will obviously be the Anglo-American world and Eurasia. If these two great blocks line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents and will not dramatize themselves on the scene of history as Communists. Thus they will have to find a new name for themselves. The name suggested in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase "Americanism" or "hundred per cent Americanism" is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish. ..."
"... Pretty much explains the SDP and NuLabourInc and his name sake Blair and our political landscape of the last 50 years, don't you think? ..."
"... Also pay attention to the 'parody phrase. ' ..."
Because i feel that some agenda is at play. I'm not going to accuse you of trolling, or even a bit of gas lighting, but
it seems like a slide into classic red scaring and recasting of Eric Blair
By way of explaining my emotion and since you mention Warburg, here is an example of Orwellian post humous attribution.
He never said "imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."
'from a post-publication press release directed by publisher Fredric Warburg toward readers who "had misinterpreted [Orwell's]
aim, taking the novel as a criticism of the current British Labour Party, or of contemporary socialism in general." The quotation
from the press release was "soon given the status of a last statement or deathbed appeal, given that Orwell was hospitalized
at the time and dead six months later."
You can read more at georgeorwellnovels.com, which provides a great deal of context on this press release, which runs, in
full, as follows:
It has been suggested by some of the reviewers of Nineteen Eighty-Four that it is the author's view that this, or something
like this, is what will happen inside the next forty years in the Western world. This is not correct. I think that, allowing
for the book being after all a parody, something like Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen. This is the direction in which
the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary
world situation.
Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist communities by the necessity
to prepare for total war with the U.S.S.R. and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and
the most publicized. But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours.
The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you.
George Orwell assumes that if such societies as he describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four come into being there will be several
super states. This is fully dealt with in the relevant chapters of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is also discussed from a different
angle by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution. These super states will naturally be in opposition to each other or (a
novel point) will pretend to be much more in opposition than in fact they are.
Two of the principal super states will obviously be the Anglo-American world and Eurasia. If these two great blocks
line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents and will not dramatize
themselves on the scene of history as Communists. Thus they will have to find a new name for themselves. The name suggested
in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase "Americanism"
or "hundred per cent Americanism" is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish.
If there is a failure of nerve and the Labour party breaks down in its attempt to deal with the hard problems with which
it will be faced, tougher types than the present Labour leaders will inevitably take over, drawn probably from the ranks of
the Left, but not sharing the Liberal aspirations of those now in power. Members of the present British government, from Mr.
Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps down to Aneurin Bevan will never willingly sell the pass to the enemy, and in general the older
men, nurtured in a Liberal tradition, are safe, but the younger generation is suspect and the seeds of totalitarian thought
are probably widespread among them. It is invidious to mention names, but everyone could without difficulty think for himself
of prominent English and American personalities whom the cap would fit.' http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/george-orwells-final-warning.html
-- -- -- -
Pretty much explains the SDP and NuLabourInc and his name sake Blair and our political landscape of the last 50 years, don't
you think?
Also pay attention to the 'parody phrase. '
'
As i wrote earlier, perhaps Blair of Eton ultimately saw how clearly hist talents had been misused by the 'totalitarians' before
he died.
I understand that some of his works are still censored and others never published. As are his state employment in propaganda
on which he probably based his 'parody' on.
The Iron Heel is a dystopian[1] novel by American writer Jack London, first published in
1908.[2] Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern dystopian" fiction,[3] it
chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States.
In The Iron Heel, Jack London's socialist views are explicitly on display. A forerunner of
soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and '70s, the book stresses future changes
in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.
The novel is based on the fictional "Everhard Manuscript" written by Avis Everhard... The
Manuscript itself covers the years 1912 through 1932 in which the Oligarchy (or "Iron Heel") arose in the United
States. In Asia, Japan conquered East Asia and created its own empire, India gained independence,
and Europe became socialist. Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own Oligarchies and were
aligned with the U.S. (London remains silent as to the fates of South America, Africa, and the
Middle East.)
In North America, the Oligarchy maintains power for three centuries until the Revolution
succeeds and ushers in the Brotherhood of Man. During the years of the novel, the First Revolt is
described and preparations for the Second Revolt are discussed. From the perspective of Everhard,
the imminent Second Revolt is sure to succeed but from Meredith's frame story , the reader knows that Ernest
Everhard's hopes would go unfulfilled until centuries after his death.
The Oligarchy is the largest monopoly of trusts (or robber barons ) who manage to
squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as
well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom . This Oligarchy maintains power through a
"labor caste " and the
Mercenaries . Laborers in
essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and
education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his
contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and
side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are
officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs.
Jack London ambitiously predicted a breakdown of the US republic starting a few years past
1908, but various events have caused his predicted future to diverge from actual history. Most
crucially, though London placed quite accurately the time when international tensions will reach
their peak (1913 in "The Iron Heel", 1914 in actual history ), he (like many others at
the time) predicted that when this moment came, labor solidarity would prevent a war that would
include the US, Germany and other nations.
The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell 's biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced
Orwell's most famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four .
[4] Orwell himself
described London as having made "a very remarkable prophecy of the rise of Fascism ", in the book and believed that
London's understanding of the primitive had made him a better prophet "than many better-informed
and more logical thinkers." [5] ( The Iron Heel - Wikipedia )
As writer or thinker, Jack London can't touch George Orwell, but he's nearly the Brit's
equal when it comes to describing society's bottom. To both, being a writer is as much a
physical as an intellectual endeavor. Wading into everything, they braved all discomforts and
dangers. This attitude has become very rare, and not just among writers. Trapped in intensely
mediated lives, we all think we know more as we experience less and less.
At age 14, London worked in a salmon cannery. At 16, he was an oyster pirate. At 17, he was
a sailor on a sealing schooner that reached Japan. At 18, London crossed the country as a hobo
and, near Buffalo, was jailed for 30 days for vagrancy. At 21, he prospected for gold in the
Klondike. London was also a newsboy, longshoreman, roustabout, window washer, jute mill grunt,
carpet cleaner and electrician, so he had many incidents, mishaps and ordeals to draw from, and
countless characters to portray.
London's The Road chronicles his hobo and prison misadventure. Condemned to hard labor, the
teenager nearly starved, "While we got plenty of water, we did not get enough of the bread. A
ration of bread was about the size of one's two fists, and three rations a day were given to
each prisoner. There was one good thing, I must say, about the water -- it was hot. In the
morning it was called 'coffee,' at noon it was dignified as 'soup,' and at night it masqueraded
as 'tea.' But it was the same old water all the time."
London quickly worked his way up the clink's hierarchy, to become one of 13 enforcers for
the guards. This experience alone should have taught him that in all situations, not just dire
ones, each man will prioritize his own interest and survival, and that there's no solidarity
among the "downtrodden" or whatever. Orwell's Animal Farm is a parable about this. Since man is
an egoist, power lust lurks everywhere.
During the Russo-Japanese War a decade later, London would approvingly quote a letter from
Japanese socialists to their Russian comrades, but this pacific gesture was nothing compared to
the nationalistic fervor engulfing both countries. Like racism, nationalism is but self love.
Though clearly madness if overblown, it's unextinguishable.
Jailed, London the future socialist stood by as his gang disciplined a naïf, "I
remember a handsome young mulatto of about twenty who got the insane idea into his head that he
should stand for his rights. And he did have the right of it, too; but that didn't help him
any. He lived on the topmost gallery. Eight hall-men took the conceit out of him in just about
a minute and a half -- for that was the length of time required to travel along his gallery to
the end and down five flights of steel stairs. He travelled the whole distance on every portion
of his anatomy except his feet, and the eight hall-men were not idle. The mulatto struck the
pavement where I was standing watching it all. He regained his feet and stood upright for a
moment. In that moment he threw his arms wide apart and omitted an awful scream of terror and
pain and heartbreak. At the same instant, as in a transformation scene, the shreds of his stout
prison clothes fell from him, leaving him wholly naked and streaming blood from every portion
of the surface of his body. Then he collapsed in a heap, unconscious. He had learned his
lesson, and every convict within those walls who heard him scream had learned a lesson. So had
I learned mine. It is not a nice thing to see a man's heart broken in a minute and a half."
Jailed, you immediately recover your racial consciousness, but London apparently missed
this. In any case, a lesser writer or man wouldn't confess to such complicity with power.
Elsewhere, London admits to much hustling and lying, and even claims these practices made him a
writer, "I have often thought that to this training of my tramp days is due much of my success
as a story-writer. In order to get the food whereby I lived, I was compelled to tell tales that
rang true [ ] Also, I quite believe it was my tramp-apprenticeship that made a realist out of
me. Realism constitutes the only goods one can exchange at the kitchen door for grub."
Informed by hard-earned, bitter experience, London's accounts resonate and convince, even
when outlandish, for they are essentially true about the human condition.
London on a fellow prisoner, "He was a huge, illiterate brute, an
ex-Chesapeake-Bay-oyster-pirate, an 'ex-con' who had done five years in Sing Sing, and a
general all-around stupidly carnivorous beast. He used to trap sparrows that flew into our hall
through the open bars. When he made a capture, he hurried away with it into his cell, where I
have seen him crunching bones and spitting out feathers as he bolted it raw."
Though London often uses "beast" or "beastly" to describe how humans are treated, this
fellow appears to be congenitally bestial, with his all-around stupidity. As for the other
prisoners, "Our hall was a common stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the scum and
dregs, of society -- hereditary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled
intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity." Though
many are wrecked, others are born deficient, addled or weak, but in our retarded days, morons
must be smart in other ways, and raging monsters are merely oppressed into mayhem or
murder.
ORDER IT NOW
But of course, society does oppress, then and now. Remember that an 18-year-old London was
sentenced to 30 days of hard labor for merely being in a strange city without a hotel
reservation. Another inmate was doing 60 for eating from a trash can, "He had strayed out to
the circus ground, and, being hungry, had made his way to the barrel that contained the refuse
from the table of the circus people. 'And it was good bread,' he often assured me; 'and the
meat was out of sight.' A policeman had seen him and arrested him, and there he was." Well, at
least Americans are no longer locked up for dumpster diving, so there's progress for you, but
then many must still feed from the garbage, with that number rapidly rising.
Though London was a worldwide celebrity at his death in 1916, his fame faded so fast that
Orwell could comment in 1944, "Jack London is one of those border-line writers whose works
might be forgotten altogether unless somebody takes the trouble to revive them."
London's most enduring book may turn out to be The People of the Abyss, his 1903
investigation into the abjectly impoverished of London's East End.
Dressed accordingly, London joined its homeless to see how they survived. With a 58-year-old
carter and a 65-year-old carpenter, London wandered the cold streets, "From the slimy,
spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape
stems, and, they were eating them. The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth
for the kernels inside. They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores so
black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took
into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o'clock
in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest,
and most powerful empire the world has ever seen."
Having mingled with many homeless in cities across America, I can attest that the food
situation is not as bad in that unraveling empire, but the squalor is just as appalling, if not
worse. A Wall Street Journal headline, "California's Biggest Cities Confront a 'Defecation
Crisis'." There's no need to import public shitting from shitholes, since there's already
plenty of it, homegrown and well-fertilized with smirkingly cynical policies.
Trump, "We can't let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves
by allowing what's happening," but he's only talking about the unsightliness of it all, not its
root cause, which is a deliberately wrecked economy that, over decades, has fabulously enriched
his and our masters. This, too, is a controlled demolition.
Ensconced in some leafy suburb, you might be missing this beastly, raving, zonked out and
shitty transformation. Jack London, though, never recoiled from society's diarrhea. My favorite
passage of The People of the Abyss is his account of bathing, so to speak, in a workhouse:
We stripped our clothes, wrapping them up in our coats and buckling our belts about them,
and deposited them in a heaped rack and on the floor -- a beautiful scheme for the spread of
vermin. Then, two by two, we entered the bathroom. There were two ordinary tubs, and this I
know: the two men preceding had washed in that water, we washed in the same water, and it was
not changed for the two men that followed us. This I know; but I am also certain that the
twenty-two of us washed in the same water.
I did no more than make a show of splashing some of this dubious liquid at myself, while I
hastily brushed it off with a towel wet from the bodies of other men. My equanimity was not
restored by seeing the back of one poor wretch a mass of blood from attacks of vermin and
retaliatory scratching.
If other men had to endure that, why shouldn't London, especially since he was trying to
understand these wretches?
Many moons, suns and saturns ago, I taught a writing course at UPenn, and for one
assignment, I asked students to take the subway to a strange stop, get off, walk around and
observe, but don't do it in the dark, I did warn them. Frightened, one girl couldn't get off,
so simply wrote about her very first ride. At least she got a taste of an entirely alien world
beyond campus. Considering that her parents had to cough up over 60 grands annually to consign
her to the Ivy League, they'd probably want to murder me for subjecting their precious to such
needless anxieties.
Cocooned, Americans are oblivious to their own destruction. Screwed, they're fixated by
Pornhub.
London insisted a worldwide class revolution was the answer. A century and several gory
nightmares later, there are those who still cling to this faith, but only in the West. In the
East, even the most ignorant know the survival of his identity and dignity is conterminous with
his nation's. Orwell understood this well. It is the biggest crime to wreck anyone's heritage
in a flash.
In each society, you can begin to right the ship by prosecuting the biggest criminals, with
existing laws, but first, you must have the clarity and courage to identify them.
In the US, at least, this shouldn't be too complicated, for their crimes are mostly out in
the open, and their enforcers appear nightly in your living room, not unlike 1984. As you
watch, they cheerfully lie, silence witnesses, mass murder, squander your last cent and
dismantle, brick by brick, the house your forefathers built and died defending. Even if all
they saw was its basement, it was still their everything.
Lexicologically, Jack London far surpasses Orwell. He mixes erudite and argot. Stylistically
London far surpassed anything Orwell ever came up with. Orwell is a man of unum librum.
Nor would I say Orwell was a better thinker than London. 1984 is partly inspired by the
Iron Heel, an image coined by London in a namesake book.
Reducing London to being a mere "socialist" is moronic.
London is one of those authors whom aesthetes despise, but who- against all odds- stubbornly
refuse to go away. When he wrote about "serious" topics, London was a failure (Burning
Daylight, Martin Eden, ); on the other hand, when he wrote about animals, primitives,
mentally impaired, (white) underclass & quasi-fascist-Darwinian fantasies (most stories
& short novels) -he was an unavoidable writer, one that will be read long after most
canonized authors are just a footnote.
By the way, he was extremely popular even in Czarist Russia, something along the lines of
American vitalism & energy.
Jack London's "The Iron Heel" is another of his fictional stories about the working classes
and in the book he attacks capitalism and promotes socialism while presenting the story of
the US turned into an oligarchy in 1913 (the book was written in 1907). What's interesting
about "The Iron Heel" is that by 1900 it must have been quite obvious as to how the world's
more powerful nations were planning on parceling up the world, and London makes reference to
this in his novel about the future military campaigns that will take place in the book's
dystopian future, and his fiction was not far wrong from what actually transpired in WW1 and
WW2.
After Jack London gained fame he did not work alone, he hired aspiring writers to
"fill-in" his fiction, much like famous painters painting large commissions would hire
subordinates to "fill-in" their canvas after the outline was drawn. The plot and subplots
would come from London, but his underlings would write the stories. At this point in time I
can't remember the names but as I recall a few famous authors got their start working for
Jack London.
London was also cursed with the writer's nemesis, he was an alcoholic, and his
autobiographical novel "John Barleycorn" treats the "demon drink" as one of the world's great
ills. The book being published in 1913, it is noteworthy that the eighteenth amendment
banning alcohol was passed by congress a few years later in 1919, so it could be that London
was at least a minor fulcrum in giving a push to the moral crusade against alcohol being sold
in the US.
Much of Jack London's work is classic like his short story fiction placed in Alaska, "To
Start a Fire" about a man exposed to the elements and slowly freezing to death, or his
fictional tales about being a constable sailing a schooner chasing pirates off the coast of
California. Also unique and thrilling is the short story "A Piece of Steak" about an aging
boxer hoping to win one last fight. These were tough and gritty stories about men at their
extremity, and not tales for children.
London wrote a good tale and he understood human nature, and perhaps that's what motivated
him to become an alcoholic socialist.
@Bardon
Kaldian I enjoyed much of London's works. Although I read many of his books when
young,and I don't remember them too much, they helped inspire me to head north in the very
backyard of Burning Daylight, a best seller in it's day. His portrayal of characters of the
North seem quite believable and his description of the land and it's peculiar traits are also
accurate. The short story 'All Gold Canyon' is spot on for how a prospector prospects.
I read the Jack London Reader (for sale in Chicken, ak) a few years ago and enjoyed it
immensely as I did the Sea Wolf.
Martin Eden is a depressing read. I have only read Animal Farm so I really can't compare.
Depends how much one 'likes' to get disgruntled.
Cocooned, Americans are oblivious to their own destruction. Screwed, they're fixated by
Pornhub.
Funny, all I ever read on the Internet these days are articles about America's
destruction. This article's another one. Yet according to some pouty guy on the other side of
the planet, we're oblivious.
And Pornhub is #32 according to Alexa. That's really high, but 31 websites precede it.
I've never visited Pornhub, and I'd bet neither have 9 out of 10 Americans. Eliminate kids
under 10, adults over 80, most women, and all those without Internet access, and you're left
with a core of certain primetime lusty guys who are comfortable with pornography. Couldn't be
more than 10%.
It'd be wonderful if we could have a single calendar day, say October 21, when everyone
declares a moratorium on blithely shitting on America. Or is this part of the Jewish strategy
to keep us divided and unhappy?
"London was also a newsboy, longshoreman, roustabout, window washer, jute mill grunt, carpet
cleaner and electrician" and – not least – SPORTSWRITER!John Griffith Chaney
packed a lot of experience into his short forty year span on this wretched earth but his
stint on the Oakland Herald & later sports writing – especially about surfing
– are some of his best & consistent with his own fiery enjoyment of active outdoor
sports. Perhaps best summed up in his aphorism:"I would rather be ashes than dust." London
was not known for being a soccer fan but nonetheless, he would probably still be pleased to
know that there is in his hometown today a very large & thriving Jack London Youth Soccer
League. Anybody's guess how long it will be before the Woke Folk in town try to shut it down
for being named after a 'white supremacist'.
Eric Arthur Blair had a similarly short stay in this world – only seven more years than
London – but didn't much share his enthusiasm for the sporting life. Orwell was quite
candid in his rejection of the world's favorite past time, explaining in an essay: "I loathed
the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me
to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of
kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting." Orwell was even more pointed in a London
Tribune op-ed during his early newspaper days, commenting on a recent series of matches
between a Russian & English clubs, " the games cult did not start till the later part of
the last century. Dr Arnold, generally regarded as the founder of the modern public school,
looked on games as simply a waste of time. Then, chiefly in England and the United States,
games were built up into a heavily-financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and
rousing savage passions, and the infection spread from country to country. It is the most
violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be
much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism -- that is, with the
lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in
terms of competitive prestige."
"Orwell understood this well. It is the biggest crime to wreck anyone's heritage in a
flash."
Or beat their national team. Go Golden Dragons!
When I read about a woman dying from a rooster attack, or people falling to their death to
take selfies, or the growing number of hikers who venture out into semi- wilderness with
their cell phones but not adequate water, I always think of London's "To Build a Fire."
If London observed man's diminished capacity to measure and survive nature in his era,
what would he make of any airport or street today? Like the parasite creature in "Alien",
phones are stuck to every face encountered. Most people are not "present" in any sense when
in the public sphere now, let alone taking note of the world around them.
Great essay. I made it a point to visit Jack London's ranch on a California visit. The ranch
was a huge unfulfilled project with the sad burnt out ruins of his dream house reminding us
of his grand plans. The condition of his grown-over untended grave startled me. I find it
interesting that many men of that time viewed socialism as a panacea; however, the intellect,
ambition and energy of a man like Jack London would never have survived the ideology he
espoused.
@Paul Did
you see the "Trotsky" miniseries on Netflix? It was in Russian with English subtitles, but I
enjoyed reading them all and found it riveting. It appeared to be historically accurate to
someone like me who knows little of Russian history. Trotsky (born Lev Bronstein) was a
Ukrainian Jew who cared little for how many Russians he killed. I guess Ukies hated Russians
even back then.
In each society, you can begin to right the ship by prosecuting the biggest criminals,
with existing laws, but first, you must have the clarity and courage to identify them.
This is why I don't get your disgust at President Trump. He has the will and the position
to do just as you recommend and he would do it if the ruling class weren't trying to cut him
off at the knees 24-7. Trump is the people's first successful attempt to drive the destroyers
from the forum. I fear for coming generations if he doesn't.
@simple_pseudonymic_handle
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Walt Whitman
Mark Twain
Stephen Crane
T.S. Eliot
Henry James
Tennessee Williams
Saul Bellow
John Updike
I wish the author would have done an analysis of London's "Iron Heel." I just read it for
the first time, and what he was writing about 100 years ago on the dominance of the
"oligarchs", i.e., the "iron heel" rings as true today as it did back then.
Curious also how he died so suddenly. There is a YouTube video of him at his ranch looking
as healthy as can be only a couple of days before he mysteriously died.
@AaronB
An empire exploits and abuses all natives, including those of its host nation. Just think of
how they must send these natives to foreign lands, not just to kill, but die. It's better to
be a house slave than a field one, however, so many far flung subjects of the empire will try
to sneak into the house. It's also safer there, generally. Except for rare instances, as in
9/11, the empire won't blow up natives inside its borders.
World War II ended nearly three generations ago, and few of its adult survivors still walk
the earth. From one perspective the true facts of that conflict and whether or not they
actually contradict our traditional beliefs might appear rather irrelevant. Tearing down the
statues of some long-dead historical figures and replacing them with the statues of others
hardly seems of much practical value.
But if we gradually conclude that the story that all of us have been told during our entire
lifetimes is substantially false and perhaps largely inverted, the implications for our
understanding of the world are enormous. Most of the surprising material presented here is
hardly hidden or kept under lock-and-key. Nearly all the books are easily available at Amazon
or even freely readable on the Internet, many of the authors have received critical and
scholarly acclaim, and in some cases their works have sold in the millions.
Yet this important material has been almost entirely ignored or dismissed by the popular
media that shapes the common beliefs of our society. So we must necessarily begin to wonder
what other massive falsehoods may have been similarly promoted by that media, perhaps involving
incidents of the recent past or even the present day. And those latter events do have enormous
practical significance. As I pointed out several years ago in my original American Pravda article :
Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the
news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately
over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of
information available to us in that latter category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the
unorthodox claims provided by such non-traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at least
there now exists the possibility of extracting vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains of
falsehood.
We must also recognize that many of the fundamental ideas that dominate our present-day
world were founded upon a particular understanding of that wartime history, and if there seems
good reason to believe that narrative is substantially false, perhaps we should begin
questioning the framework of beliefs erected upon it.
ORDER IT NOW
George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s and discovered that the true
facts in Spain were radically different from what he had been led to believe by the British
media of his day. In 1948 these past experiences together with the rapidly congealing "official
history" of the Second World War may have been uppermost in his mind when he published his
classic novel 1984, which famously declared that "Who controls the past controls the future;
who controls the present controls the past."
Great article, thank you. The WWII legend is sacrosanct because it is the founding myth of
the empire that replaced our republic, just as the Founders predicted would be the result of
choosing sides in foreign conflicts. Is seems credible to think that FDR enabled Churchill's
blood lust because encouraging the seriously weakened British empire to finish committing
suicide by engaging in another ground war in Europe would clear the way for the US to finally
replace the hated mother country as the world's great power- just as another faction of the
Founders dreamed. The motto on our National Seal "Novus Ordo Seclorum" is quoted from
Virgil's Eclogues, where it is the prophecy of the Cumaean Sybil that Rome was destined to
rule the world.
Historian Murray Rothbard best described the impact of the war in this obituary he wrote
for fellow popular historian Harry Elmer Barnes, "Our entry into World War II was the crucial
act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the
country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent
system of conscription. It was the crucial act in expanding the United States from a republic
into an Empire, and in spreading that Empire throughout the world, replacing the sagging
British Empire in the process. It was the crucial act in creating a Mixed Economy run by Big
Government, a system of State-Monopoly-Capitalism run by the central government in
collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism. It was the crucial act in elevating
Presidential power, particularly in foreign affairs, to the role of single most despotic
person in the history of the world. And, finally, World War II is the last war-myth left, the
myth that the Old Left clings to in pure desperation: the myth that here, at least, was a
good war, here was a war in which America was in the right. World War II is the war thrown
into our faces by the war-making Establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to
wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II."
For those who lack the time to read these books, or even this great essay, here is a
13-minute video summary. For those shocked by this information, return and read this entire
essay, then the books if you still fail to understand that history has been distorted.
"Although Saddam Hussein clearly had no connection to the attacks, his status as a
possible regional rival to Israel had established him as their top target, and they soon
began beating the drums for war, with America finally launching its disastrous invasion in
February 2003."
I agree that replacing a progressive Arab leader with an Anglo-American puppet government
was an important factor, but the return of Iraqi oil fields to Anglo-American control was the
main objective. Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total, and British Petroleum are now the biggest
producers of Iraqi oil.:
Thank You to Mr. Unz for mentioning the long-forgotten hero of the America First Committee,
John T. Flynn.
His biography, by Michele Stenehjem Gerber, is called An American First: John T. Flynn
and the America First Committee and has not yet been banned on Amazon:
Nonetheless I read it years ago, and it confirmed my suspicion that Lillian Gish,
pioneering film actress, was on a blacklist of some sort, and indeed she was. And this was
years before her name was removed from a college building here in Ohio. It is short, not hard
to read, less a full biography of Flynn than an interesting look at that filthy period in US
history when non-interventionists were slimed as "isolationists" and had their reputations
ruined. Or at least dinged quite a bit.
From an Amazon review:
This book inspires the broadening of the America First discussion, making references to
Lillian Gish, who proved she was blacklisted , Charlie Chaplin, whose The Great
Dictator was itself attacked as propaganda, and the charges of anti-Semitism from some
names not already researched, like Brooklyn Dodgers' president Larry MacPhail, S. H. Hauk,
Laura Ingalls, and Wilhelm Kunze of the German-American Bund (but still no Walt Disney
I went to Cambridge University in 1966 to study history. Two things I recall very distinctly:
the powerful impression Taylor's books made on me; and the very subtle but unmistakable
deprecation my tutors and lecturers applied to him and his work.
Taylor was certainly very talented, they said, but prone to "bees in his bonnet";
over-enthusiastic; sometimes unreliable.
Looking back, I can see how very effective this treatment was. As a rebellious and
iconoclastic 18-year-old, if I had been told that Taylor was wicked and wrong and I must
ignore his books, I would have hurried to study them deeply. But since I was cleverly
informed that he was just mildly eccentric and prone to unjustified speculation, I neglected
him in order to concentrate on the many other writers we had to read.
Most of the surprising material presented here is hardly hidden or kept under
lock-and-key. Nearly all the books are easily available at Amazon or even freely readable
on the Internet, many of the authors have received critical and scholarly acclaim, and in
some cases their works have sold in the millions. Yet this important material has been
almost entirely ignored or dismissed by the popular media that shapes the common beliefs of
our society. So we must necessarily begin to wonder what other massive falsehoods may have
been similarly promoted by that media, perhaps involving incidents of the recent past or
even the present day. And those latter events do have enormous practical significance.
Being the Guardian, of course, their prescription is that people should make a more
sincere effort to support the Reporters of Truth, such as the Guardian. In their retrograde
Left vs Right world, it's still up to the 'goodthinkers' to preserve our liberties from the
Boris Johnsons and Donald Trumps of the world. Never in a million years would they entertain
the possibility that Johnsons and Trumps come about because the Establishment–most
certainly including its MSM lackeys–is corrupt to its core.
As the Washington Post has it, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" -- neglecting to add, "We
supply the Darkness."
So now, instead of now [erroneously] believing, as we were all , er, "taught", that the
allies were the good guys of WW2, and that the Japs and Germans were the bad guys, we are now
supposed to believe the exact opposite, right, Mr Unz ? Jap and German governments now"good"-
WW2 allies governments now "bad"?
Reality fact: before, during and after WW2 and all the way up to this present
moment in time, the US, Soviet, French , Polish, Brit [etc. etc. ad infinitum] governments
lied; the German government lied, the Jap government lied. They ALL lied [and lie]!
Reality fact: It [lying] is what all governments everywhere all do – , all of
the time!
Reality fact: It's what they _must_ do to maintain power over their slave
populations [ see the Bernays quote below].
Regarding the fundamental nature of all governments, past, present, or future – this
"just" in :
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and
counterfeiting [via central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very
cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed","improved", nor "limited" in
scope, simply because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree
" The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,
largely by men we have never heard of." Edward Bernays http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Bernays_Propaganda_in_english_.pdf
"The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their
power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must
be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of
the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan." ~ Adolf Hitler
"My first rule- I don't believe anything the government tells me- nothing!- ZERO!" George
Carlin
@Tom67
Thank God we American's were pillars morality. LOL
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the
American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi,
"the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose
progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his
race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."
Those measures are nothing special. They are typical for any war or any coup d'état to install totalitarian regime in the
country. Fritened people are easily manipulated. . The only question against whom the war was launched and what was real origin of
9/11. Here 1984 instantly comes to mind.
Next week will be the
18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that
carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every person like a
terrorist suspect.
Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow
forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer
Edward Snowden and a host of activists and freedom fighters, the government continues ravaging
American privacy.
Two of the largest leaps towards "1984" began in 2002.
Though neither the
Justice Department's Operation TIPS nor the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program was
brought to completion, parcels and precedents from each program have profoundly influenced
subsequent federal policies.
In July 2002, the Justice Department unveiled plans for Operation TIPS -- the Terrorism
Information and Prevention System.
According to the Justice Department website, TIPS would
be "a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors,
ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity."
TIPSters would be people who, "in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve
as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement." The feds aimed to recruit people in jobs that "make
them uniquely well positioned to understand the ordinary course of business in the area they serve,
and to identify things that are out of the ordinary." Homeland Security director Tom Ridge said
that observers in certain occupations "might pick up a break in the certain rhythm or pattern of a
community." The feds planned to enlist as many as 10 million people to watch other people's
"rhythms."
The Justice Department provided no definition of "suspicious behavior" to guide
vigilantes.
As
the public began to focus on the program's sweep, opposition surfaced; even the U.S. Postal Service
briefly balked at participating in the program. Director Ridge insisted that TIPS "is not a
government intrusion." He declared, "The last thing we want is Americans spying on Americans.
That's just not what the president is all about, and not what the TIPS program is all about."
Apparently, as long as the Bush administration did not announce plans to compel people to testify
about the peccadilloes of their neighbors and customers, TIPS was a certified freedom-friendly
program.
When Attorney General John Ashcroft was cross-examined by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on TIPS at
a Judiciary Committee hearing on July 25, he insisted that
"the TIPS program is
something requested by industry to allow them to talk about anomalies that they encounter."
But, when George W. Bush first announced the program, he portrayed it as an administration
initiative. Did thousands of Teamsters Union members petition 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over
"anomalies"? Senator Leahy asked whether reports to the TIPS hotline would become part of a federal
database with millions of unsubstantiated allegations against American citizens.
Ashcroft told Leahy, "I have recommended that there would be none, and I've been given assurance
that the TIPS program would not maintain a database." But Ashcroft could not reveal which federal
official had given him the assurance.
The ACLU's Laura Murphy observed,
"This is a program where people's activities,
statements, posters in their windows or on their walls, nationality, and religious practices will
be reported by untrained individuals without any relationship to criminal activity."
San Diego law professor Marjorie Cohn observed, "Operation TIPS will encourage neighbors to
snitch on neighbors and won't distinguish between real and fabricated tips. Anyone with a grudge or
vendetta against another can provide false information to the government, which will then enter the
national database."
On August 9, the Justice Department announced it was fine-tuning TIPS, abandoning any "plan to
ask thousands of mail carriers, utility workers, and others with access to private homes to report
suspected terrorist activity," the
Washington Post
reported. People who had enlisted to be
TIPSters received an email notice from Uncle Sam that "only those who work in the trucking,
maritime, shipping, and mass transit industries will be eligible to participate in this information
referral service." But the Justice Department continued refusing to disclose to the Senate
Judiciary Committee who would have access to the TIPS reports.
After the proposal created a fierce backlash across the political board, Congress passed
an amendment blocking its creation.
House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.) attached
an amendment to homeland security legislation that declared, "Any and all activities of the federal
government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS
are hereby prohibited." But the Bush administration and later the Obama administration pursued the
same information roundup with federally funded fusion centers that encouraged people to file
"suspicious activity reports" for a wide array of innocuous behavior -- reports that are dumped into
secret federal databases that can vex innocent citizens in perpetuity.
Operation TIPS illustrated how the momentum of intrusion spurred government to propose
programs that it never would have attempted before 9/11.
If Bush had proposed in August
2001 to recruit 10 million Americans to report any of their neighbors they suspected of acting
unusual or being potential troublemakers, the public might have concluded the president had gone
berserk.
Total Information Awareness: 300 million dossiers
The USA PATRIOT Act created a new Information Office in the Pentagon's Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
In January 2002, the White House chose retired admiral
John Poindexter to head the new office. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explained, "Admiral
Poindexter is somebody who this administration thinks is an outstanding American, an outstanding
citizen, who has done a very good job in what he has done for our country, serving the military."
Cynics kvetched about Poindexter's five felony convictions for false testimony to Congress
and destruction of evidence during the investigation of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages exchange.
Poindexter's convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court, which cited the immunity
Congress granted his testimony.
Poindexter committed the new Pentagon office to achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA).
TIA's mission is "to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists -- and decipher their plans --
and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist
acts,"
according to DARPA. According to Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge, TIA would
seek to discover "connections between transactions -- such as passports; visas; work permits;
driver's licenses; credit cards; airline tickets; rental cars; gun purchases; chemical purchases --
and events -- such as arrests or suspicious activities and so forth." Aldridge agreed that every
phone call a person made or received could be entered into the database. With "voice recognition"
software, the actual text of the call could also go onto a permanent record.
TIA would also strive to achieve "Human Identification at a Distance" (HumanID),
including "Face Recognition," "Iris Recognition," and "Gait Recognition."
The Pentagon
issued a request for proposals to develop an "odor recognition" surveillance system that would help
the feds identify people by their sweat or urine -- potentially creating a wealth of new job
opportunities for deviants.
TIA's goal was to stockpile as much information as possible about everyone on Earth -- thereby
allowing government to protect everyone from everything.
New York Times
columnist William
Safire captured the sweep of the new surveillance system: "Every purchase you make with a credit
card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you
visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you
make, every trip you book, and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications
will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.'"
Columnist Ted Rall noted that the feds would even scan "veterinary records. The TIA believes that
knowing if and when Fluffy got spayed -- and whether your son stopped torturing Fluffy after you put
him on Ritalin -- will help the military stop terrorists before they strike."
Phil Kent, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based public-interest law
firm, warned that TIA was "the most sweeping threat to civil liberties since the Japanese-American
internment." The ACLU's Jay Stanley labeled TIA "the mother of all privacy invasions. It would
amount to a picture of your life so complete, it's equivalent to somebody following you around all
day with a video camera." A coalition of civil-liberties groups protested to Senate leaders, "There
are no systems of oversight or accountability contemplated in the TIA project. DARPA itself has
resisted lawful requests for information about the Program pursuant to the Freedom of Information
Act."
Bush administration officials were outraged by such criticisms.
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, "The hype and alarm approach is a disservice to the public . I
would recommend people take a nice deep breath. Nothing terrible is going to happen." Poindexter
promised that TIA would be designed so as to "preserve rights and protect people's privacy while
helping to make us all safer." (Poindexter was not under oath at the time of his statement.) The
TIA was defended on the basis that "nobody has been searched" until the feds decide to have him
arrested on the basis of data the feds snared. Undersecretary Aldridge declared, "It is absurd to
think that DARPA is somehow trying to become another police agency. DARPA's purpose is to
demonstrate the feasibility of this technology. If it proves useful, TIA will then be turned over
to the intelligence, counterintelligence, and law-enforcement communities as a tool to help them in
their battle against domestic terrorism." In January 2003, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) learned
that the FBI was working on a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon "for possible
experimentation" with TIA. Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Security Paul McHale confirmed,
in March 2003 testimony to Congress, that the Pentagon would turn TIA over to law-enforcement
agencies once the system was ready to roll.
DARPA responded to the surge of criticism by removing the Information Awareness Office
logo from the website.
The logo showed a giant green eye atop a pyramid, covering half the
globe with a peculiar yellow haze, accompanied by the motto "Scientia est Potentia" (Knowledge is
Power).
Shortly after DARPA completed a key research benchmark for TIA, Lt. Col. Doug Dyer, a DARPA
program manager, publicly announced in April 2003 that Americans are obliged to sacrifice some
privacy in the name of security:
"When you consider the potential effect of a terrorist
attack against the privacy of an entire population, there has to be some trade-off."
But nothing in the U.S. Constitution entitles the Defense Department to decide how much privacy or
liberty American citizens deserve.
In September 2003, Congress passed an amendment abolishing the Pentagon's Information Office and
ending TIA funding. But by that point, DARPA had already awarded 26 contracts for dozens of private
research projects to develop components for TIA. Salon.com reported,
"According to
people with knowledge of the program, TIA has now advanced to the point where it's much more than a
mere 'research project.' There is a working prototype of the system, and federal agencies outside
the Defense Department have expressed interest in it."
The U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol is already using facial recognition systems at 20 airports and the Transportation Security
Administration is expected to quickly follow suit.
Two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo sent a secret memo
to the White House declaring that the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches was null
and void:
"If the government's heightened interest in self-defense justifies the use of
deadly force, then it also certainly would justify warrantless searches."
That memo
helped set federal policy until it was publicly revealed after Barack Obama took office in 2009.
Unfortunately, that anti-Constitution, anti-privacy mindset unleashed many federal intrusions that
continue to this day, from the TSA to the National Security Agency to the FBI and Department of
Homeland Security.
In our time, we are endlessly brainwashed to love all the things that we can buy.
Meanwhile, people are being bombed, terrorized, sanctioned, etc. across the world ... We
can't complain since we got lots of toys to play with.
And here I think one has an enormous area in which the ultimate revolution could
function very well indeed, an area in which a great deal of control could be used by not
through terror, but by making life seem much more enjoyable than it normally does.
Enjoyable to the point, where as I said before, Human beings come to love a state of things
by which any reasonable and decent human standard they ought not to love and this I think
is perfectly possible.
"Happiness" with our toys is being used to keep us quiet.
"The dictatorships of tomorrow will deprive men of their freedom, but will give them in
exchange a happiness none the less real, as a subjective experience, for being chemically
induced. The pursuit of happiness is one of the traditional rights of man; unfortunately,
the achievement of happiness may turn out to be incompatible with another of man's rights
-- namely, liberty."
...press has complete control to filter everything to look rosey for them, demonize any
dissidents, and the masses fall for it. Why? They do not allow any counter arguments...
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive
of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not
have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
...bread and circus propaganda. They want to keep that way. Any one who dissents is a
"hater".
What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people
contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the
past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with
bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and
propaganda.
...Pleasure trick keeps one from looking at what our rulers are doing.
As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends correspondingly to
increase. And the dictator will do well to encourage that freedom it will help to reconcile
his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
...using their MSM to make massive herds of humans all over the earth to love their
servitude to Zion uber alles.
The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but
rather, how to make them love their servitude
At TruePublica we have written endlessly about the continued slow strangulation of civil liberties and human rights in Britain.
We have warned about the rise of a
techno-Stasi-state
where technology is harnessed and used against civilians without any debate or indeed any real legal framework. We have alerted the
public on the illegal mass data collections by the government and
subsequent loss of much it by MI5 who should not have had it all in the first place. We warned against '
digital strip
searches ' – an activity of the police of the victims in rape cases, and the fact that Britain is becoming a
database state . At TruePublica
we have tried to press home the story that surveillance by the state on such a scale, described as the most intrusive in the Western
world – is not just illegal, it's immoral and dangerous. (see our surveillance database
HERE ).
Here is more evidence of just how dangerous and out of hand this creeping surveillance architecture is becoming. An investigation
by Big Brother Watch has uncovered a facial recognition 'epidemic'
across privately owned sites in the UK. The civil liberties campaign group has found major property developers, shopping centres,
museums, conference centres and casinos using the technology in the UK.
Millions of shoppers scanned
Their investigation uncovered the use of live facial recognition in Sheffield's Meadowhall , one of the biggest shopping
centres in the North of England, in secret police trials that took place last year. The trial could have scanned the faces of
over 2 million visitors.
The shopping centre is owned by British Land, which owns large areas within London including parts of Paddington, Broadgate,
Canada Water and Ealing Broadway. Each site's privacy policy says facial recognition may be in use, although British Land insists
only Meadowhall has used the surveillance so far.
Last week, the Financial Times revealed that the privately owned Kings Cross estate in London was using facial recognition,
whilst Canary Wharf is considering following suit. The expose prompted widespread concerns and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan,
to write to the estate to express his concerns. The Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has launched an investigation.
Last year, the Trafford Centre in Manchester was pressured to stop using live facial recognition surveillance following an
intervention by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner. It was estimated that up to 15 million people were scanned during the operation.
" Dark irony" of China exhibition visitors scanned
Big Brother Watch's investigation has also revealed that Liverpool's World Museum scanned visitors with facial recognition
surveillance during its exhibition, "China's First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors" in 2018. Director of Big Brother Watch
Silkie Carlo described it as "dark irony" noting that "this authoritarian surveillance tool is rarely seen outside of China" and
warning that "many of those scanned will have been school children".
The museum is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, which also includes the International Slavery Museum, the
Museum of Liverpool and other museums and art galleries. The museum group said it is "currently testing the feasibility of using
similar technology in the future".
" Eroding freedom of association"
Big Brother Watch's investigation also found that the Millennium Point conference centre in Birmingham uses facial recognition
surveillance "at the request of law enforcement", according to its privacy policy. In recent years, the area surrounding the conference
centre has been used for demonstrations by trade unionists, football fans and anti-racism campaigners. The centre refused to give
further information about its past or present uses of facial recognition surveillance. Millennium Point is soon to host a 'hackathon'.
A number of casinos and betting shops also have policies that refer to their use of facial recognition technology including
Ladbrokes, Coral and Hippodrome Casino London.
Director of Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, said:
There is an epidemic of facial recognition in the UK.
The collusion between police and private companies in building these surveillance nets around popular spaces is deeply
disturbing. Facial recognition is the perfect tool of oppression and the widespread use we've found indicates we're facing
a privacy emergency.
We now know that many millions of innocent people will have had their faces scanned with this surveillance without knowing
about it, whether by police or by private companies.
The idea of a British museum secretly scanning the faces of children visiting an exhibition on the first emperor of China
is chilling. There is a dark irony that this authoritarian surveillance tool is rarely seen outside of China.
Facial recognition surveillance risks making privacy in Britain extinct.
Parliament must follow in the footsteps of legislators in the US and urgently ban this authoritarian surveillance from
public spaces.
"... Today, it might be argued, Americans have been plunged into our own bizarre version of 1984 . In our world, Donald Trump has, in some sense, absorbed into his own person more or less everything dystopian in the vicinity. ..."
"... In some strange fashion, he and his administration already seem like a combination of the Ministry of Truth (a ministry of eternal lies ), the memory hole (down which the past, especially the Obama legacy and the president's own discarded statements , disappear daily), the two-minutes-hate sessions and hate week that are the essence of any of his rallies ("lock her up!," " send her back! "), and recently the "hate" slaughter of Mexicans and Hispanics in El Paso, Texas, by a gunman with a Trumpian "Hispanic invasion of Texas" engraved in his brain. And don't forget Big Brother. ..."
"... In some sense, President Trump might be thought of as Big Brother flipped. In The Donald's version of Orwell's novel, he isn't watching us every moment of the day and night, it's we who are watching him in an historically unprecedented way. ..."
"... In his book, he created a nightmare vision of something like the Communist Party of the Stalin-era Soviet Union perpetuating itself into eternity by constantly regenerating and reinforcing a present-moment of ultimate power. For him, dystopia was an accentuated version of just such a forever, a "huge, accurately planned effort to freeze history at a particular moment of time," as a document in the book puts it, to "arrest the course of history" for "thousands of years." ..."
"... In other words, with the American president lending a significant hand, we may make it to 2084 far sooner than anyone expected. With that in mind, let's return for a moment to 1984 . As no one who has read Orwell's book is likely to forget, its mildly dissident anti-hero, Winston Smith, is finally brought into the Ministry of Love by the Thought Police to have his consciousness retuned to the needs of the Party. In the process, he's brutally tortured until he can truly agree that 2 + 2 = 5. Only when he thinks he's readjusted his mind to fit the Party's version of the world does he discover that his travails are anything but over. ..."
I, Winston Smith I mean, Tom Engelhardt have not just been reading a dystopian novel, but,
it seems, living one -- and I suspect I've been living one all my life.
Yes, I recently reread George Orwell's classic 1949 novel, 1984 . In it, Winston Smith, a secret opponent of the totalitarian world of Oceania,
one of three great imperial superpowers left on planet Earth, goes down for the count at the
hands of Big Brother. It was perhaps my third time reading it in my 75 years on this
planet.
Since I was a kid, I've always had a certain fascination for dystopian fiction. It started,
I think, with War of the
Worlds , that ur-alien-invasion-from-outer-space novel in which Martians land in
southern England and begin tearing London apart. Its author, H.G. Wells, wrote it at the end of
the nineteenth century, evidently to give his English readers a sense of what it might have
felt like to be living in Tasmania, the island off the coast of Australia, and have the
equivalent of Martians -- the British, as it happened -- appear in your world and begin to
destroy it (and your culture with it).
I can remember, at perhaps age 13, reading that book under the covers by flashlight when I
was supposed to be asleep; I can remember, that is, being all alone, chilled (and thrilled) to
the bone by Wells' grim vision of civilizational destruction. To put this in context: in 1957,
I would already have known that I was living in a world of potential civilizational destruction
and that the Martians were here. They were then called the Russians, the Ruskies, the Commies,
the Reds. I would only later grasp that we (or we, too) were Martians on this planet.
The world I inhabited was, of course, a post- Hiroshima , post-
Nagasaki one. I was born on July 20, 1944, just a year and a few days before my country
dropped atomic bombs on those two Japanese cities, devastating them in blasts of a kind never
before experienced and killing more
than 200,000 people. Thirteen years later, I had already become inured to scenarios of the
most dystopian kinds of global destruction -- of a sort that would have turned those Martians
into pikers -- as the U.S. and the Soviet Union (in a distant second place) built up their
nuclear arsenals at a staggering pace.
Nuclear obliteration had, by then, become part of our everyday way of life. After all, what
American of a certain age who lived in a major city can't remember, on some otherwise perfectly
normal day, air-raid sirens suddenly beginning to howl outside your classroom window as the
streets emptied? They instantly called up a vision of a world in ashes. Of course, we children
had only a vague idea of what had happened under those mushroom clouds that rose over Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. As we huddled under our desks, hands over heads, " ducking
and covering " like Bert the Turtle while a radio on the
teacher's desk blared Conelrad
warnings , we knew enough, however, to realize that those desks and hands were unlikely to
save us from the world's most powerful weaponry. The message being delivered wasn't one of
safety but of ultimate vulnerability to Russian nukes. After such tests, as historian Stephen
Weart recalled in his book Nuclear Fear ,
"The press reported with ghoulish precision how many millions of Americans 'died' in each mock
attack."
If those drills didn't add up to living an everyday vision of the apocalypse as a child,
what would? I grew up, in other words, with a new reality: for the first time in history,
humanity had in its hands Armageddon-like possibilities of a sort
previously left to the gods. Consider
, for instance, the U.S. military's Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) of 1960 for a
massive nuclear
strike on the Communist world. It was, we now know, meant to deliver more than 3,200
nuclear weapons to 1,060 targets, including at least 130 cities. Official, if then secret,
estimates of casualties ran to 285 million dead and 40 million injured (and probably
underestimated the longer term effects of radiation).
In the early 1960s, a commonplace on the streets of New York where I lived was the
symbol for "fallout
shelters" (as they were then called), the places you would head for during just such an
impending global conflagration. I still remember how visions of nuclear destruction populated
my dreams (or rather nightmares) and those of my friends, as some would later admit to me. To
this day, I can recall the feeling of sudden heat on one side of my body as a nuclear bomb went
off on the distant horizon of one of those dreams. Similarly, I recall sneaking into a Broadway
movie theater to see On the
Beach with two friends -- kids of our age weren't allowed into such films without
parents -- and so getting a glimpse, popcorn in hand, of what a devastated, nuclearized San
Francisco might look like. That afternoon at that film, I also lived through a
post-nuclear-holocaust world's end in Australia with no less than Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and
Fred Astaire for company.
An All-American Hate Week
So my life -- and undoubtedly yours, too -- has been lived, at least in part, as if in a
dystopian novel. And certainly since November 2016 -- since, that is, the election of Donald
Trump -- the feeling (for me, at least) of being in just such a world, has only grown stronger.
Worse yet, there's nothing under the covers by flashlight about The Donald or his invasive
vision of our American future. And this time around, as a non-member of his "base," it's been
anything but thrilling to the bone.
It was with such a feeling growing in me that, all these years later, I once again picked up
Orwell's classic novel and soon began wondering whether Donald Trump wasn't our very own
idiosyncratic version of Big Brother. If you remember, when Orwell finished the book in 1948
(he seems to have flipped that year for the title), he imagined an England, which was part of
Oceania, one of the three superpowers left on the planet. The other two were Eurasia
(essentially the old Soviet Union) and Eastasia (think: a much-expanded China). In the book,
the three of them are constantly at war with each other on their borderlands (mostly in South
Asia and Africa), a war that is never meant to be either decisive or to end.
In Oceania's Airstrip One (the former England), where Winston Smith is a minor functionary
in the Ministry of Truth (a ministry of lies, of course), the Party rules eternally in a world
in which -- a classic Orwellian formulation -- "WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS
STRENGTH." It's a world of "inner" Party members (with great privilege), an outer circle like
Smith who get by, and below them a vast population of impoverished "proles."
It's also a world in which the present is always both the future and the past, while every
document, every newspaper, every bit of history is constantly being rewritten -- Smith's job --
to make it so. At the same time, documentation of the actual past is tossed down "the memory
hole" and incinerated. It's a world in which a "telescreen" is in every room, invariably
announcing splendid news (that might have been terrible news in another time). That screen can
also spy on you at just about any moment of your life. In that, Orwell, who lived at a time
when TV was just arriving, caught something essential about the future worlds of surveillance
and social media.
In his dystopian world, English itself is being reformulated into something called Newspeak,
so that, in a distant future, it will be impossible for anyone to express a non-Party-approved
thought. Meanwhile, whichever of those other two superpowers Oceania is at war with at a given
moment, as well as a possibly mythical local opposition to the Party, are regularly subjected
to a mass daily "two minutes hate" session and periodic "hate weeks." Above all, it's a world
in which, on those telescreens and posters everywhere, the mustachioed face of Big Brother, the
official leader of the Party -- "Big Brother is watching you!" -- hovers over everything,
backed up by a Ministry of Love (of, that is, imprisonment, reeducation, torture, pain, and
death).
That was Orwell's image of a kind of Stalinist Soviet Union perfected for a future of
everlasting horror. Today, it might be argued, Americans have been plunged into our own bizarre
version of 1984 . In our world, Donald Trump has, in some sense, absorbed into his own
person more or less everything dystopian in the vicinity.
In some strange fashion, he and his
administration already seem like a combination of the Ministry of Truth (a ministry of
eternal lies ), the memory hole (down which the past, especially the
Obama legacy and the president's own
discarded statements , disappear daily), the two-minutes-hate sessions and hate week that
are the essence of any of his rallies ("lock her up!," " send her
back! "), and recently the "hate" slaughter of
Mexicans and Hispanics in El Paso, Texas, by a gunman with a Trumpian
"Hispanic invasion of Texas" engraved in his brain. And don't forget Big Brother.
In some sense, President Trump might be thought of as Big Brother flipped. In The Donald's
version of Orwell's novel, he isn't watching us every moment of the day and night, it's we who
are watching him in an historically unprecedented way. In what I've called the
White Ford Bronco presidency , nothing faintly like the media's 24/7 focus on him has ever
been matched. No human being has ever been attended to, watched, or discussed this way -- his
every gesture, tweet, passing comment, half-verbalized thought, slogan, plan, angry outburst,
you name it. In the past, such coverage only went with, say, a presidential assassination, not
everyday life in the White House (or at
Bedminster , Mar-a-Lago, his rallies, on Air Force One, wherever).
Room 101 (in 2019)
Think of Donald Trump's America as, in some sense, a satirical version of 1984 in
crazed formation. Not surprisingly, however, Orwell, remarkable as he was, fell short, as we
all do, in imagining the future. What he didn't see as he rushed to finish that
novel before his own life ended makes the Trumpian present far more potentially dystopian than
even he might have imagined. In his book, he created a nightmare vision of something like the
Communist Party of the Stalin-era Soviet Union perpetuating itself into eternity by constantly
regenerating and reinforcing a present-moment of ultimate power. For him, dystopia was an
accentuated version of just such a forever, a "huge, accurately planned effort to freeze
history at a particular moment of time," as a document in the book puts it, to "arrest the
course of history" for "thousands of years."
Yes, in 1948, Orwell obviously knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the weaponry that went
with them. (In 1984 , he even mentions the use of such weaponry in the then-future
1950s.) What he didn't imagine in his book was a dystopian world not of the grimmest kind of
ongoingness but of endings, of ultimate destruction. He didn't conjure up a nuclear apocalypse
set off by one of his three superpowers and, of course, he had no way of imagining another kind
of potential apocalypse that has become increasingly familiar to us all: climate change.
Unfortunately, on both counts Donald Trump is proving dystopian indeed. He is, after all,
the president who threatened
to unleash "fire and fury like the world has never seen" on North Korea (before
falling in love with its dictator). He only recently claimed he could
achieve victory in the almost 18-year-old Afghan War "in a week" by wiping that country "off
the face of the Earth" and killing "10 million people." For the first time, his generals
used
the "Mother of all Bombs," the most powerful weapon in the U.S. conventional arsenal (with a
mushroom cloud that, in a test at least, could be seen for 20 miles), in that same country,
clearly to impress him.
More recently,
beginning with its withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, his
administration has started trashing the Cold War-era nuclear architecture of restraint that
kept the great-power arsenals under some control. In the process, it's clearly helping to
launch a
wildly expensive new nuclear arms race on Planet Earth. And keep in mind that this is happening
at a time when we know that a relatively localized nuclear war between regional powers like
India
and Pakistan (whose politicians are once again at each other's throats
over Kashmir ) could create a global nuclear winter and
starve to death up to a
billion people.
... ... ...
And keep in mind as well that our own twisted version of Big Brother, that guy with the
orange hair instead of the mustache, could be around to be watched for significantly longer,
should he win the election of 2020. (His polling numbers have, on the whole, been slowly rising ,
not falling in these years.)
In other words, with the American president lending a significant hand, we may make it to
2084 far sooner than anyone expected. With that in mind, let's return for a moment to
1984 . As no one who has read Orwell's book is likely to forget, its mildly dissident
anti-hero, Winston Smith, is finally brought into the Ministry of Love by the Thought Police to
have his consciousness retuned to the needs of the Party. In the process, he's brutally
tortured until he can truly agree that 2 + 2 = 5. Only when he thinks he's readjusted his mind
to fit the Party's version of the world does he discover that his travails are anything but
over.
He still has to visit Room 101. As his interrogator tells him, "You asked me once what was
in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is
in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world." And that "worst thing" is always adjusted to the
specific terrors of the specific prisoner.
So here's one way to think of where we are at this moment on Planet Earth: Americans -- all
of humanity, in fact -- may already be in Room 101, whether we know it or not, and the truth
is, by this steaming summer, that most of us should know it.
It's obviously time to act on a global scale. Tell that to Big Brother.
tomdispatch.com The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of
the Strategic Culture Foundation. Tags: Big BrotherOrwell
"... I favor the notion that the Internet's gift of vastly more accessible information and greater and less expensive communication is exposing more of corruption in government that continues an ancient trend, this web site being a sterling example. ..."
Quite a few people couldn't help but notice that the country was shifting into a
dis-informational mode several years ago. So much for the Information Age, the Internet and
hand held ( communication ) devices to increase awareness. It was noticed by some folks even
here at CN that tendencies had come ito play that were reminiscent of Orwell's dystopian yet
fictional accounts in the novel 1984. This entire Russiagate episode could just as easily
have come from 1984's Ministry of Information as our own Intelligence Services and might have
been just as boring if it had . Meanwhile us , prols, just go with the flow and don't really
care. Are things that much different than they have ever been? I rem,ember the Waterdate
hearings and the Iran-Contra Hearings, Ken Starr's Investigation. I'm a little to young to
remember the Warren Commission or Senator Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare but I do remember
the 9/11 Commission and WMGs in Iraq.. I remember wrote a paper on Propaganda films in WW II.
Is this episode really all that different?
@ "Quite a few people couldn't help but notice that the country was shifting into a
dis-informational mode several years ago. So much for the Information Age, the Internet and
hand held ( communication ) devices to increase awareness. "
You address a topic I've pondered long and hard. Although I can cite scant evidence, I
can't help but wonder: Are we instead only noticing -- because of the far wider availability
of information via the Internet -- a disinformation phenomenon that is perhaps centuries old
if not still older?
Huxley's Brave New World was published in 1931, Orwell's 1984 in 1949. Dickens' Bleakhouse
was serialized in 1852-53. All can be fairly said to deal with a perception that those who
control government are dishonest and corrupt, based on then-current norms. E.g., Dickens
noted in the preface of his first edition that his fictional Jarndyce and Jarndyce largely
paralleled the sadly real Thellusson v Woodford. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thellusson_v_Woodford
Such precedents argue against the "disinformational mode" being of recent origin.
I favor the notion that the Internet's gift of vastly more accessible information and
greater and less expensive communication is exposing more of corruption in government that
continues an ancient trend, this web site being a sterling example.
While email and web activity of employees is definitely monitored, all other monitoring
usually is pretty fragmentary. Often on a corporate smartphone there are two zones -- secure zone
where you access corporate network and email and private zone where you have access to the
internet via you provider and traffic is not monitored other then for the volume.
Keeping track of all those details (and some of them will be wrong) is just too expensive and
few corporation outside FIRE sector so that.
In short anything that opens company to a lawsuit will be monitored, but outside of that
companies actually are not interested in the information collection as it opens them to
additional liability in save of suicides and such.
Mining data from social media is a different complex topic and requires a separate
article.
Notable quotes:
"... From there, the company even sees as Chet logs onto the guest Wi-Fi connections at places like the coffee shop in the morning. Many companies require additional authentication when they try to access company information from unsecure Wi-Fi networks. ..."
"... Then, as Chet gets to his desk, his web browsing is tracked along with his email. New software breaks down how workers interact with email and how quickly colleagues reply in an attempt to see which employees are most influential . Some software on company computers even snaps screenshots every 30 seconds to evaluate productivity and hours worked. ..."
"... Even Chet's phone conversations can be recorded, transcribed and monitored. Companies use this information to find subject matter experts and measure productivity. Even conference room discussions and meetings can now be recorded and analyzed by software. ..."
Orwell, Inc.: How Your Employer Spies On You From When You Wake Up Until You Go To Bed
An increasing number of large companies are using data from employees' electronic devices to
track such personal details like when you they wake up, where they go for coffee in the
morning, their whereabouts throughout the entire day, and what time they go to bed according to
a new Wall
Street Journal article. What's the company explanation for this type of spying?
"An increasing number of companies are keeping track of such information to flag
potentially suspicious activity and measure work-life balance," the article claims.
The article walks through the day in the life of a fictional worker, Chet. It starts by
noting that his employer logs the time and his location when he first wakes up to check his
e-mail in the morning.
From there, the company even sees as Chet logs onto the guest Wi-Fi connections at
places like the coffee shop in the morning. Many companies require additional authentication
when they try to access company information from unsecure Wi-Fi networks.
Then, a Bluetooth device and his ID badge mark what time he arrives at the office while
tracking his movement around the building. These technologies are supposedly used to see what
teams collaborate frequently and to make sure that employees aren't accessing unauthorized
areas.
Then, as Chet gets to his desk, his web browsing is tracked along with his email. New
software breaks down how workers interact with email and how quickly colleagues reply in an
attempt to see which employees are most influential . Some software on company computers even
snaps screenshots every 30 seconds to evaluate productivity and hours worked.
Even Chet's phone conversations can be recorded, transcribed and monitored. Companies
use this information to find subject matter experts and measure productivity. Even conference
room discussions and meetings can now be recorded and analyzed by software.
At the end of the day, if Chet goes to the gym or for a run, the company will know that too
and just how many calories he has burned: his fitness tracker logs how many steps he takes and
what exercise, if any, he is doing. Companies then use that information to determine how
frequently employees are exercising and whether or not they should be paying for health and
fitness services.
They retain firms that track us on our social media accounts. Supposedly to defend against
workplace violence threats. And then there are the cameras. We never really know. Just do my
job and keep personal use of company resources to a minimum.
The operation known as "LifeLog" was replaced the very day that Face Book came into
being?
Life Log : The objective of the LifeLog concept was "to be able to trace the 'threads' of
an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships", and it has the ability
to "take in all of a subject's experience, from phone numbers dialed and e-mail messages
viewed to every breath taken, step made and place gone". [1]
My takeaway from all this is that many, perhaps most, human institutions are corrupt and
that there is no basis from which most people are able to discern truth from lies or right
from wrong. This explains the ability of the Power Elite to easily divide people against each
other. For example, you cannot debate a Liberal because they have their basis for truth on
their personal feeling or emotions. Many conservatives do as well, but they are closer in
their thingking to the foundation from which truth sits upon.
Edward Snowden, former NSA employee. Snowden is an absolute supporter of encryption of all
stored and transmitted content. Now there are many applications that have encryption
features. And among them there are common and well-known messengers, such as, for example,
WhatsApp, Telegram and others.
The former NSA agent also advises to secure his computer, in particular, the hard drive.
On the Internet you can find instructions on how to do this. Usually used special software.
For example, for Windows, there is a program preinstalled in advanced versions of the OS --
BitLocker, for Mac -- FileVault. Thus, if the computer is stolen, the attacker will not be
able to read your data.
Password Managers A useful thing that most people do not even think about. Such programs
allow you to keep your passwords in order - to create unique keys and store them. According
to Snowden, one of the most common problems with online privacy is leaks.
Tor. The former NSA official calls the anonymous Tor network "the most important
technological project to ensure the confidentiality of those currently used." He stated that
he uses it on a daily basis. Tor allows you to "cover up traces" on the Internet, that is, it
provides anonymity, making it difficult to determine the person's IP address and
location.
Also, Snowden told how to avoid total surveillance. For example, special services that can
remotely turn on a microphone or camera on a smartphone and start listening. The answer is
simple - pull out the microphone and camera modules from the device. Instead, it is proposed
to use an external accessory and disconnect from the selfie and never use it.
The only safe way is to abstain as much as possible, which is now next to impossible.
Security is only as protected as the weakest link. Consider a person who uses their smart
phone giving Google or Apple the permissions needed to use their OS's and apps; we do not
even know exactly how much info we agreed to give away. Consider all the contact info that
your friends, relatives, work or other organizations you associate with have on their devices
and how vulnerable they make it; they are not as cautious as you and some people using these
things do not even think about security; it never occurs to them.. .. just some musing on my
part.
Jeez, I used to sign a quarterly affirmation that I complied with all of the companies
electronic communication monitoring policies...and they made us sign that we understood that
they had climbed up our *** and pitched a tent.
One of the reasons they had to find a replacement for me when I quit.
If you're using your employer's devices, facilities, or networks, you should assume they
are tracking what you're doing, and they have every right to do so. When I buy your company's
products or services, I don't want to have to pay for your time spent messing around at
work.
I can't read the article since it's behind a paywall, but I don't see how your waking and
sleeping time and "work life balance" could be tracked unless you are using your employer's
devices or networks outside of work. Which is friggin stupid if you do it.
Actually it doesnt work like that... Chet isn't informed of this happening. The fact that
the company does this is buried in vague language in the 500 page employee handbook that Chet
has to sign when he is hired. Chet is just like anyone else with a company provided
electronic device. All companies monitor and track everything they can with the electronic
devices they provide. If you have one and th think your company doesnt do it... you are
naive.
Chet has the ability to determine when and where he uses the work-provided devices. And
why does work have access to his fitness tracker? Supplied by his employer too? Really, Chet
had options
Not with me... I have a personal phone and when I am not at work I keep my work phone at
home turned off. My emails are forwarded to my personal device and any voicemail I get also
gets forwarded to my personal device. I never place personal calls with my work phone and I
turn it off the second I leave work to go home.
What a waste of resources. If you want to see what I do, just ask. I'll show you how I
accomplish my work-related duties. How I manage my time at work. Where I go to cry and regret
my life choices.
"... Huxley died at 5:20pm, London time, on 22 November 1963. About ten minutes later, CS Lewis died. Just under an hour after that, of course, JFK was shot and killed in Dallas. There may never have been a deadlier 70 minutes for celebrity ..."
"... Fifty years ago, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. In 1982, philosophy professor Peter Kreeft imagined the three of them in conversation after their deaths. ..."
"... I think there's a good deal to be said for this this point of view in in regard to the permanence of any dictatorship. " ..."
Poor old Aldous Huxley. In other circumstances, his name would be all over the place today, the 50th anniversary of his death.
Yet, just moments after his demise, the Brave New World author had the misfortune, if that's the right word, of becoming a key
member of the "eclipsed celebrity death club".
Huxley died at 5:20pm, London time, on 22 November 1963. About ten minutes later, CS Lewis died. Just under an hour after that,
of course, JFK was shot and killed in Dallas. There may never have been a deadlier 70 minutes for celebrity
A book has been written about these three deaths on the same day by Peter Kreeft. He imagines them talking together in the heavens.
Fifty years ago, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. In
1982, philosophy professor Peter Kreeft imagined the three of them in conversation after their deaths.
Positioning Lewis as a proponent of ancient Western theism, Kennedy as a modern Western humanist, and Huxley as an ancient Eastern
pantheist, Kreeft wrote a conversational book entitled Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F.
Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley. "
Aldous Huxley said something that points exactly what happening in the world now. We are lead by a wild species. The Zios don't
want to be domesticated by freedom of speech. Spare the rod ( of freedom of speech) spoil the child. The Zios want to be wild forever.
They want to do whatever they want on earth with no scolding feedback.
This question and answer talk was at Berkeley Univ. on March
20 1962. This fear of being domesticated is why the ADL went crazy on 6/6/19, closing down websites and videos all over the internet.
Another point which was made by Sir Charles Darwin in his book "The Next Million Years" which I think was one would with
in different terms .
I envisaged in brave new world .I mean here
he points out that the human species is still a wild species, it has never been domesticated .
I mean domesticated species is
one which has been tamed by another species. Well, until we get an invasion from Mars we shall not be tamed by another species.
All we can do is to try to tame ourselves.
An oligarchy tries to tame ourselves but the oligarchy still remains wild. I mean
however much it succeeded in taming the domesticating the rest of the race it from it must remain wild. And this was the part
of the fable the dramatic part of the fable of brave new world is that the people in the upper hierarchy who were not ruthlessly
conditioned could break down.
I mean this Charles Darwin insists that because man is wild he can never expect to domesticate
himself because the people on top would always be undomesticated sooner or later always run wild. I think there's a good deal
to be said for this this point of view in in regard to the permanence of any dictatorship. "
1984, Brave New World, and Idiocracy look more and more like Documentaries now.
Notable quotes:
"... Describing the protagonist Winston Smith's frugal London flat, he mentions an instrument called a 'telescreen', which sounds strikingly similar to the handheld 'smartphone' that is enthusiastically used by billions of people around the world today. ..."
"... At the same time, the denizens of 1984 were never allowed to forget they were living in a totalitarian surveillance state, under the control of the much-feared Thought Police. Massive posters with the slogan 'Big Brother is Watching You' were as prevalent as our modern-day advertising billboards. Today, however, such polite warnings about surveillance would seem redundant, as reports of unauthorized spying still gets the occasional lazy nod in the media now and then. ..."
"... In fact, just in time for 1984's anniversary, it has been reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) has once again been illicitly collecting records on telephone calls and text messages placed by US citizens. ..."
"... Another method of control alluded to in 1984 fell under a system of speech known as 'Newspeak', which attempted to reduce the language to 'doublethink', with the ulterior motive of controlling ideas and thoughts. ..."
"... Another Newspeak term, known as 'facecrime', provides yet another striking parallel to our modern situation. Defined as "to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense." It would be difficult for the modern reader to hear the term 'facecrime' and not connect it with 'Facebook', the social media platform that regularly censors content creators for expressing thoughts it finds 'hateful' or inappropriate. ..."
"... 'Hate speech' is precisely one of those delightfully vague, subjective terms with no real meaning that one would expect to find in the Newspeak style guide. Short of threatening the life of a person or persons, individuals should be free to criticize others without fear of reprisal, least of all from the state, which should be in the business of protecting free speech at all cost. ..."
"... Another modern phenomenon that would be right at home in Orwell's Oceania is the obsession with political correctness, which is defined as "the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against." But since so many people today identify with some marginalized group, this has made the intelligent discussion of controversial ideas – not least of all on US college campuses , of all places – exceedingly difficult, if not downright dangerous. Orwell must be looking down on all of this madness with much surprise, since he provided the world with the best possible warning to prevent it. ..."
70 years ago, the British writer George Orwell captured the essence of technology in its ability to shape our destinies in his
seminal work, 1984. The tragedy of our times is that we have failed to heed his warning.
No matter how many times I read 1984, the feeling of total helplessness and despair that weaves itself throughout Orwell's masterpiece
never fails to take me by surprise. Although usually referred to as a 'dystopian futuristic novel', it is actually a horror story
on a scale far greater than anything that has emerged from the minds of prolific writers like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. The reason
is simple. The nightmare world that the protagonist Winston Smith inhabits, a place called Oceania, is all too easily imaginable.
Man, as opposed to some imaginary clown or demon, is the evil monster.
In the very first pages of the book, Orwell demonstrates an uncanny ability to foresee future trends in technology. Describing
the protagonist Winston Smith's frugal London flat, he mentions an instrument called a 'telescreen', which sounds strikingly similar
to the handheld 'smartphone' that is enthusiastically used by billions of people around the world today.
Orwell describes the ubiquitous device as an "oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror" affixed to the wall that "could be dimmed,
but there was no way of shutting it off completely." Sound familiar?
It is through this gadget that the rulers of Oceania are able
to monitor the actions of its citizens every minute of every day.
At the same time, the denizens of 1984 were never allowed to forget
they were living in a totalitarian surveillance state, under the control of the much-feared Thought Police. Massive posters with
the slogan 'Big Brother is Watching You' were as prevalent as our modern-day advertising billboards. Today, however, such polite
warnings about surveillance would seem redundant, as reports of unauthorized spying still gets the occasional lazy nod in the media
now and then.
In fact, just in time for 1984's anniversary, it has been
reported that the National Security
Agency (NSA) has once again been illicitly collecting records on telephone calls and text messages placed by US citizens. This latest
invasion
of privacy has been casually dismissed as an "error" after an unnamed telecommunications firm handed over call records the NSA
allegedly "hadn't requested" and "weren't approved" by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2013, former CIA employee
Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA's intrusive surveillance operations, yet somehow the government agency is able to continue
– with the help of the corporate sector – vacuuming up the private information of regular citizens.
Another method of control alluded to in 1984 fell under a system of speech known as 'Newspeak', which attempted to reduce the
language to 'doublethink', with the ulterior motive of controlling ideas and thoughts. For example, the term 'joycamp', a truncated
term every bit as euphemistic as the 'PATRIOT Act', was used to describe a forced labor camp, whereas a 'doubleplusgood duckspeaker'
was used to praise an orator who 'quacked' correctly with regards to the political situation.
Another Newspeak term, known as 'facecrime', provides yet another striking parallel to our modern situation. Defined as "to wear
an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense."
It would be difficult for the modern reader to hear the term 'facecrime' and not connect it with 'Facebook', the social media platform
that regularly censors content creators
for expressing thoughts it finds 'hateful' or inappropriate. What social media users need is an Orwellian lesson in 'crimestop',
which Orwell defined as "the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought." Those
so-called unacceptable 'dangerous thoughts' were determined not by the will of the people, of course, but by their rulers.
And yes, it gets worse. Just this week, Mark Zuckerberg's 'private company'
agreed to give French authorities the "identification
data" of Facebook users suspected of spreading 'hate speech' on the platform, in what would be an unprecedented move on the part
of Silicon Valley.
'Hate speech' is precisely one of those delightfully vague, subjective terms with no real meaning that one would expect to find
in the Newspeak style guide. Short of threatening the life of a person or persons, individuals should be free to criticize others
without fear of reprisal, least of all from the state, which should be in the business of protecting free speech at all cost.
Another modern phenomenon that would be right at home in Orwell's Oceania is the obsession with political correctness, which is
defined as "the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people
who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against." But since so many people today identify with some marginalized group, this
has made the intelligent discussion of controversial ideas – not least of all on US college
campuses , of all places – exceedingly difficult,
if not downright dangerous. Orwell must be looking down on all of this madness with much surprise, since he provided the world with
the best possible warning to prevent it.
For anyone who entertains expectations for a happy ending in 1984, be prepared for serious disappointment (spoiler alert, for
the few who have somehow not read this book). Although Winston Smith manages to finally experience love, the brief romance – like
a delicate flower that was able to take root amid a field of asphalt – is crushed by the authorities with shocking brutality. Not
satisfied with merely destroying the relationship, however, Smith is forced to betray his 'Julia' after undergoing the worst imaginable
torture at the 'Ministry of Love'.
The book ends with the words, "He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." Will we too declare, like Winston Smith,
our love for 'Big Brother' above all else, or will we emerge victorious against the forces of a technological tyranny that appears
to be just over the horizon? Or is Orwell's 1984 just really good fiction and not the instruction manual for tyrants many have come
to fear it is?
An awful lot is riding on our answers to those questions, and time is running out.
"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."
Who could have predicted that 70 years after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, "He loved Big Brother," we would
fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone
-- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the
age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings!"
-- George Orwell
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree
with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven
society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes.
The government, or "Party," is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: "Big Brother is watching you."
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers
as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
―George Orwell
Much like Orwell's Big Brother in 1984 , the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley's
A Brave New World , we are churning out a society of watchers who "have their liberties taken away from them, but rather enjoy
it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing." Much like Atwood's
The Handmaid's Tale , the
populace is now taught to "know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up
to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that
they will
accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away ."
And in keeping with Philip K. Dick's darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state -- which became the basis for
Steven
Spielberg's futuristic thriller Minority Report -- we are now trapped in a world in which the government is all-seeing,
all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few
skulls to bring the populace under control.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike -- facial recognition,
iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on -- are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network
aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the
dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming
our reality .
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
―George Orwell
The courts have
shredded the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, SWAT teams battering down doors
without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences in contemporary
America. And bodily privacy and integrity have been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have no rights over what
happens to their bodies during an encounter with government officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe,
pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible
to say which was which."
We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state.
What many fail to realize is that the government is not operating alone. It cannot. The government requires an accomplice. Thus,
the increasingly complex security needs of the massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data
management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds
the growth of governmental overreach.
In fact, Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother, and we are now ruled by the Corporate Elite whose tentacles
have spread worldwide. For example, USA Today reports that five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the homeland security
business was booming to such an extent that it
eclipsed mature
enterprises like movie-making and the music industry in annual revenue. This security spending to private corporations such as
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others is
forecast to exceed
$1 trillion in the near future.
The government now has at its disposal technological arsenals so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections
null and void. Spearheaded by the NSA, which has shown itself to care little to nothing for constitutional limits or privacy, the
"security/industrial complex" -- a marriage of government, military and corporate interests aimed at keeping Americans under constant
surveillance -- has come to dominate the government and our lives. At three times the size of the CIA, constituting one third of
the intelligence budget and with its own global spy network to boot, the NSA has a long history of spying on Americans, whether or
not it has always had the authorization to do so.
Money, power, control. There is no shortage of motives fueling the convergence of mega-corporations and government. But who is
paying the price? The American people, of course.
Orwell understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan flag-waving, are still struggling to come to terms with: that
there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people. Even the best intentions among those in government inevitably
give way to the desire to maintain power and control over the citizenry at all costs. As Orwell explains:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power,
pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know
what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian
Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended,
perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there
lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention
of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution;
one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture
is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it."
― George Orwell
How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.
In totalitarian regimes -- a.k.a. police states -- where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the
government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises
itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.
Dystopian literature shows what happens when the populace is transformed into mindless automatons. In
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
, reading is banned and books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize
the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled.
In Huxley's Brave New World
, serious literature, scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through
the use of conditioning, social taboos and inferior education. Likewise, expressions of individuality, independence and morality
are viewed as vulgar and abnormal.
And in Orwell's 1984
, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history
and punish "thoughtcrimes." In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother,
while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation),
the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment,
education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
All three -- Bradbury, Huxley and Orwell -- had an uncanny knack for realizing the future, yet it is Orwell who best understood
the power of language to manipulate the masses. Orwell's Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such
words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary. To give a
single example, as psychologist Erich Fromm illustrates in his afterword to 1984 :
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice" or
"This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political
and intellectual freedom no longer existed as concepts .
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where
only that which is "safe" and "accepted" by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will
pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
"Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."
-- George Orwell
Americans have been
conditioned to accept routine incursions on their privacy rights . In fact, the addiction to screen devices -- especially cell
phones -- has created a hive effect where the populace not only watched but is controlled by AI bots. However, at one time, the idea
of a total surveillance state tracking one's every move would have been abhorrent to most Americans. That all changed with the 9/11
attacks. As professor Jeffrey Rosen observes, "Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives
under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and
stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable,
a dystopian fantasy of a society that
had surrendered privacy and anonymity ."
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry -- mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the
face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield,
and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all -- we have nowhere left to go.
We have, so to speak, gone from being a nation where privacy is king to one where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government.
In search of so-called terrorists and extremists hiding amongst us -- the proverbial "needle in a haystack," as one official termed
it -- the Corporate State has taken to monitoring all aspects of our lives, from cell phone calls and emails to Internet activity
and credit card transactions. Much of this data is being fed through
fusion centers across the
country, which work with the Department of Homeland Security to make threat assessments on every citizen, including school children.
These are state and regional intelligence centers that collect data on you.
"Big Brother is Watching You."
―George Orwell
Wherever you go and whatever you do, you are now being watched, especially if you leave behind an electronic footprint. When you
use your cell phone, you leave a record of when the call was placed, who you called, how long it lasted and even where you were at
the time. When you use your ATM card, you leave a record of where and when you used the card. There is even a video camera at most
locations equipped with facial recognition software. When you use a cell phone or drive a car enabled with GPS, you can be tracked
by satellite. Such information is shared with government agents, including local police. And all of this once-private information
about your consumer habits, your whereabouts and your activities is now being fed to the U.S. government.
The government has nearly inexhaustible resources when it comes to tracking our movements, from electronic wiretapping devices,
traffic cameras and biometrics to radio-frequency identification cards, satellites and Internet surveillance.
Speech recognition technology now makes it possible for the government to carry out massive eavesdropping by way of sophisticated
computer systems. Phone calls can be monitored, the audio converted to text files and stored in computer databases indefinitely.
And if any "threatening" words are detected -- no matter how inane or silly -- the record can be flagged and assigned to a government
agent for further investigation. Federal and state governments, again working with private corporations, monitor your Internet content.
Users are profiled and tracked in order to identify, target and even prosecute them.
In such a climate, everyone is a suspect. And you're guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. To underscore this shift in
how the government now views its citizens, the FBI uses its wide-ranging authority to investigate individuals or groups, regardless
of whether they are suspected of criminal activity.
"Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull."
― George Orwell
Here's what a lot of people fail to understand, however: it's not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you
think that is being tracked and targeted. We've already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime
legislation that cracks down on so-called "hateful" thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on
various subject matter.
Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State, as omnipresent as God, is used by the government to predict and, more importantly,
control the populace, and it's not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA is now designing an artificial intelligence
system that is designed to anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA will feed vast amounts of the information it collects
to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym
stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer can then use to detect patterns and predict behavior.
No information is sacred or spared.
Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking
sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared
freely with its agents in crime: the CIA, FBI and DHS. One NSA researcher actually quit the Aquaint program, "citing concerns over
the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability."
Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised
of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).
Clearly, the age of privacy in America is at an end.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
-- Orwell
So where does that leave us?
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not
to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us
on a daily basis.
It won't be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we
wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored
by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police
with their army of futuristic technologies.
To be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government's roaming
eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.
Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw.
So how do you survive in the American surveillance state?
We're running out of options.
As I make clear in my book
Battlefield
America: The War on the American People , we'll soon have to choose between self-indulgence (the bread-and-circus distractions
offered up by the news media, politicians, sports conglomerates, entertainment industry, etc.) and self-preservation in the form
of renewed vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance.
Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in
Brave New World Revisited
: "Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern
themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot,
not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology
and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it."
"... America just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. ..."
"... And after all our idiotic overcomplicated plots and schemes, they are but to mask simple truths ..."
"... What is more compelling than the average person captured in a truthful narrative, as counterpoint to a society that delves into the celebrity, the spectacle, the idiocy as Jason puts forth in his piece, "The Idiot." ..."
"... Yet, my friend, Joe the Farmer from Merced, hits the nail on the head by providing his own retort to example after example of the cruelty of capitalism and the US of I -- United States of Idiots? ..."
"... What in the fuck is wrong with this country? The republicans enact cruel legislation to protect criminal enterprises, slash taxes for the obscenely rich, while removing any social or environmental protections for the population, (the Flint Michigan water system for example). ..."
"... The democrats response to Trump is to promote Joe Biden, a compilation of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Strom Thurman and just about every other corporate whore they could steal parts off of to make their democratic very own version of Donald Trump. ..."
"... As if there were no real journalists working on all the pre-September 11 illegalities of the republican party and then the post-September 11 evisceration of the few rights the people of the world and USA had before full spectrum war on our planet. ..."
"... As if journalists hadn't cracked open the Koch brothers, the fake think tanks, all the pre-Truman/post-Truman lies of empire, from Roy Cohen, through to the rigged systems of oppression. Way before any trivial Hollywood wannabe open her eyes. ..."
"... Entertainment and a few laughs at the expense of millions of bombed-dead people, millions more suffering-a-lingering-death daily because of Hollywood and USA policies and the evangelicals and the Crypto-Christo-Zionists bombing "the other" back to the stone age. The movie, Vice. ..."
"... What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies , the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy . ..."
"... As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984 , Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World , they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us. ..."
"... The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. ..."
"... Huxley was right -- " Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced." Brave New World , "Chapter 4" ..."
America just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing
anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the
extraordinary, the only home.
I'm digging the DV piece, " The Idiot " by
Jason Holland, since in a critical mass sort of black hole kind of way, his main thesis is reflective of the experiences many of
us in the bloody trenches of dying capitalism see/feel/believe minute by minute.
And after all our idiotic overcomplicated plots and schemes, they are but to mask simple truths the idiot facade tries so desperately
to avoid; the inner torments of being afraid of not being good enough, not measuring up to our peers, not meeting arbitrary expectations
we either accept from others or set for ourselves, or quite simply feeling like we are not worthy of love. So we play these pointless
high stakes games which have a rewards as meaningless and worthless as a plastic trophy just to prove our worth. The idiot is
a temporal state of being, although many are finer long term examples of displaying the behaviors of the idiot; however none of
us are the perfect idiot. To avoid the affectations of being in an idiotic state it takes conscious effort to live our lives moment
to moment with authenticity, to be in a state of awareness of our actions, to always be willing to suffer for something worthwhile
and to be consistently well reasoned examiners of what constitutes something worthwhile.
That authenticity, moment to moment existence -- and it should be a reveling of life -- is good, but there is a bifurcating of
sorts when many of us are still subject to the masters of Big Brother and Big Business. We are suffering the dualism of the Century,
and the more we know, the more we seek and the more we grapple, well, the more emancipated we are, but in that freedom comes some
pretty harsh treatment by the masters and their sub-masters and all the Little Eichmann's that keep the Capitalist's trains moving
like clockwork toward the global demise set in their plastic worlds!
And some of us think Dachau and Auschwitz were bad! We have already seen a hundred of them since 1945.
For me, I have the benefit of being a writer, and at this time, I have this new gig I created myself to bring to the Oregon Coast
a sense of the people who are here living or who come here to set down their own stories . . . people who do things to make this
world better and themselves better. Something in the draw that brings my subjects for my pieces here to the coast of Oregon. These
are people, and they are not perfections or cut-outs or pulverized remnants of humanity that Capitalism mostly demands in it shark
tank of inane media manipulation and marketing.
I crack open humanity and get people's contexts -- entire stories upon stories laid down, strata by strata, and cover their own
formula for the art of living in harmony in a world of disharmony. Reading my stuff, I hope, will allow readers of this rag, Oregon
Coast Today , and its on-line version a better sense of authenticity via people they may or may not even run across in their
own lives of being the consummate busy tourist and consumer.
A few of the pieces will be worthy of DV display, and I hope that my attempt at drilling down and "getting people" for
who they are and how they got here will better the world, in some small shape. Really small, but small wonders sometimes are the
ionic glue of a bettering world.
What is more compelling than the average person captured in a truthful narrative, as counterpoint to a society that delves into
the celebrity, the spectacle, the idiocy as Jason puts forth in his piece, "The Idiot."
In many ways, talking to people who have lived authentic (albeit struggle-prone) lives, or who are just embarking on a nascent
stage of multiple iterations of living, I get my sense of grounding in a very flummoxed world of inanity and crass disassociation,
as in the disease of pushing away humanity and pushing away the natural world to hitch oneself to the perversions of the billionaire
class.
Time and time again, daily, my friends who are still in struggle -- still trying to make sense of the perverted world of idiots
controlling the message, the economy, the environment, the culture, and the mental-physical-spiritual health of the world, as if
this is it, Trump 2.0 -- give me news feed after news feed of the quickening of not only idiocy that capitalism and consumerism and
war engender in our species, but also examples of the inhumanity driving the agendas of the Fortune 500 Class, the Davos crowd, the
Aspen Institute gatherings, et al .
Yet, my friend, Joe the Farmer from Merced, hits the nail on the head by providing his own retort to example after example of
the cruelty of capitalism and the US of I -- United States of Idiots?
If this doesn't slap the Hell out of you and rub your nose into the proverbial dog shit of what a criminally insane, inhumane,
cruel and thuggish enterprise our government has become, then there is absolutely no hope for your soul. The truth tellers like
Manning, Assange, Snowden and others, the brave young guys like Tim DeChristopher that monkey wrenched the sale of oil leases
to public lands to try and protect the environment, this fellow that is showing his human side by providing water and aid for
those dying in the desert sun, are all facing prison terms or maybe even the death penalty. Their crime? Being a compassionate
human being.
What in the fuck is wrong with this country? The republicans enact cruel legislation to protect criminal enterprises, slash
taxes for the obscenely rich, while removing any social or environmental protections for the population, (the Flint Michigan water
system for example).
The republicans are ruthlessly attacking the environment and endangered species, turning their backs on infrastructure that
is endangering peoples lives, while the spineless democrats sit idly by, wringing their hands. The democrats won't take action
against the most openly corrupt president we have ever had, that is daily destroying everything in this country as well as the
rest of the world with his insane military budgets, trade wars and climate policies. The democrats response to Trump is to promote
Joe Biden, a compilation of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Strom Thurman and just about every other corporate whore they
could steal parts off of to make their democratic very own version of Donald Trump.
Both the republicans and the democrats promote austerity for the working people and the poor, while stuffing the oligarchs
pockets with gold. Both political Parties support endless war and war profiteers but slash budgets for schools, infrastructure,
health care and the elderly. Both political Parties shower money on the police state and a corrupt system of justice and private
prisons. Both political Parties are turning their heads to what the oil industry is doing to our water and air with fracking and
are in fact have promoted legislation to let the oil industry off the hook when it causes unbelievable environmental damage. Both
political Parties are doing nothing to check the nuclear industry that is a environmental time bomb waiting to go off and have
promoted legislation to limit the industries liability when it does.
What is wrong with the American people that they sit on their collective asses and do nothing while all this is happening?
Are they that fucking stupid? Are they that lacking in human decency? Are they that politically dumbed-down that they won't even
fight for their own interests?
The fact that this government corruption has been allowed to go on for years evidently proves that Americans are that stupid
and lacking of compassion and politically dumbed-down. Thank God for guys like Dr. Warren the others that are trying to slap some
sense into the American public to show us what courage and being humane is all about. Dr. Warren and company shouldn't be put
in jail but our so called leaders sure as Hell should be for their crimes against humanity.
He's talking about a desert saint of sorts, Scott Warren, who has the power of his call to duty to give water in milk cartons
to anyone crossing the Arizona desert. Now that is a hero, yet, he is facing decades in prison. America!
The charges against Warren "are an unjust criminalization of direct humanitarian assistance" and "appear to constitute a politically
motivated violation of his protected rights as a Human Rights Defender," states Amnesty International's Americas regional director
Erika Guevara-Rosas .
"Providing humanitarian aid is never a crime," Guevara-Rosas added in a statement last week. "If Dr. Warren were convicted
and imprisoned on these absurd charges, he would be a prisoner of conscience, detained for his volunteer activities motivated
by humanitarian principles and his religious beliefs."
Yet how many humans in this crime country even give a rat's ass about one man who is doing the good that all men and women should
be doing?
So, here, whatever will come of my new column, "Deep Dive: Go Below the Surface with Paul Haeder," starting June 7, well, I hope
people reading this rag -- 18,000 and counting and as they are compelled to hit each longer version of each of my profiles on line,
Oregon Coast Today -- will understand that
life is the sum total of one's search for meaning and worthy work and community involvement.
Maybe this compulsion toward narrative has always been inside me during my early root setting living in Canada, Maryland, Paris,
Edinburgh, Arizona . . . then on that walkabout throughout Latin America, Europe, Vietnam, USA, Central America!
When times get tough, the storyteller gets writing. Ha. Believe you me, the stories we all have collected in this Marquis de Sade
world of capital and artery-clogging entertainment and constant death spiral the elites have banked as their Appian Way to Complete
Dominance, they make for so much more validation of humanity than anything Hollywood could make.
Point of fact -- I attempted to watch the film, Vice, about Dick Cheney, his perverse family, the perversity of neocons
fornicating with neoliberalism. It was one of Hollywood's "cutting edge" dramas. Written and directed by a Saturday Night Live
writer. All the usual suspects with Hollywood multi-millions stuffed in their jowls -- Christian Bale, Amy Adams, et al .
It wasn't that good, but I sensed that the filmmakers were all about trying to make something that was "different." I didn't nod
off during the viewing. But, I unfortunately had the DVD so I went to the extras section, and then, the behind-the-scenes of the
making of Vice . This is when things went south real quickly with neoliberal, Democrat-leaning Hollywood creeps. We get every
goofy platitude about each and every department's genius in making this film. Every actor fawns the other actor for his or her amazing
performance.
Then the Limey, Christian Bale, yammers on and on about he was all about making Dick Cheney human, going into his good side, being
cognizant of Cheney, the human. Rubbish and this is the quality of men, adults, in our society -- multimillionaires with gobs of
limelight and credit and awards and houses and yachts thrown at them, and they can't even begin to attack the cause -- capitalism,
rampant competitiveness, droll I-got-mine-too-bad-you-can't-get-yours thinking. Hollywood is the anti-culture, the flagging bumbling
money changers, the money makers, the money grubbers, and well, everything is about the pockets and the suits and the "executive
producers," i.e. Bankers.
Oh god, what a trip going into these Hollywood people's hot yoga, macrobiotic diet, four-hour-a-day workout minds. The director,
McKay, actually thinks this drama -- make-believe -- has given the world new stuff, new insights, new news about the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush-Reagan-Bush
world of prostitute politics.
As if there were no real journalists working on all the pre-September 11 illegalities of the republican party and then the post-September
11 evisceration of the few rights the people of the world and USA had before full spectrum war on our planet.
As if journalists hadn't cracked open the Koch brothers, the fake think tanks, all the pre-Truman/post-Truman lies of empire,
from Roy Cohen, through to the rigged systems of oppression. Way before any trivial Hollywood wannabe open her eyes.
Entertainment and a few laughs at the expense of millions of bombed-dead people, millions more suffering-a-lingering-death daily
because of Hollywood and USA policies and the evangelicals and the Crypto-Christo-Zionists bombing "the other" back to the stone
age. The movie, Vice.
Racists, misogynists, misanthropes, one and all. Yet, we gotta love these democrat-leaning guys and gals making films, having
millions stuffed up every possible orifice until their brains gel.
Insight into the flippancy that is Hollywood the Power Broker! Watching people like Amy Adams and Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell
play this soft-shoe goofball show, and then in the little "Making of the Movie Vice" documentary (sic-infomercial) blathering
on and on about the greatness of the script and every cog of the machine that churns out this pabulum, well, it steels me to continue
my small-time, no-fame, big-effing-deal gig writing people profiles to bring some sense to a world captured by capital . . . idiocy!
Oh, how we fall in line. Over at
Counterpunch
, that cloistered world of writers has the countdown for 2018 -- Best Films of the Year, as in the most conscious, socially (give
me a effing break!) that is. Nothing in American society once it floats on the offal barrel is sacred, socialist, communist.
Peak TV is creating more opportunities for independent film directors, and for new stories to be told. More films from around
the world are released on streaming every day, and Netflix spent an estimated 13 billion dollars on content just this year. More
cash available can sometimes mean more stories by and about communities of color, women, transgender and gender nonconforming
people, and other communities Hollywood has long ignored. But the movie industry is still primarily about making profit, and it's
main business is reinforcing the status quo, including churning out films that glorify capitalism, war, and policing.
Below are 2018's top ten conscious films that made it through these barriers, plus twenty more released this year that you
may want to check out.
[ ]
Hollywood doesn't have a great record in covering presidential politics (remember Kevin Costner in Swing Vote ?).
Vice , comedy director Adam McKay's follow up to The Big Short , explores the Bush/Cheney presidency, attempting to
make history and polemic accessible to a wide audience. It's not as effective as his previous film, but it's a good history, especially
for those less familiar with the ins and outs of the early 2000s corporate power grab.
Lighten up already , many a friend and acquaintance tell me. "You are going to burn out like one of the bulbs you use underwater
to do your night dives. Way too much shining the hoary light onto the more hoary caverns of American society. Let things go."
Ha, well, how can we? We are entertained to death, as
Neil Postman
states:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for
there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those
who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed
from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies , the orgy porgy, and
the centrifugal bumblepuppy .
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert
to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984 , Orwell added,
people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World , they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short,
Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book [ Amusing Ourselves to Death ] is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
And so it goes, as I trail the acrid dust devil of injustice -- my own and the veterans' and families' I helped just months ago
in Portland as a social worker for, drum roll, homeless veterans (and some came with families, including babies and service dogs).
I've written about it here and elsewhere -- the Starvation Army. The deceitful, unethical, possibly murderous Starvation Army.
You see, where I worked, I had these insane Nurse Ratched's lording over grown men and women treating them like criminals, and infantiles,
and the constant berating and recriminations. It was anything but social work 101. Anything but trauma-informed care. Anything but
caring people, enlightened helpers; instead, think mean, warped people who within their own broken self's, do all the wrong things
for veterans.
I decided to jump ship, and, alas, a few lawyers advised me I couldn't get far with a hostile workplace complaint until I went
through the state of Oregon's, Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) quasi-judicial pathway.
There was great harm put upon the veterans, great harm put upon the staff, because a director was all into herself and her self-described
Jesus Saves bullshit, yammering on about her former cocaine addiction and booze abuse and 350 pounds of flesh, as well as her own
failings as a mother. This place has 100 people living in it temporarily, while Starvation Army receives taxpayer money, all part
of the poverty pimping Starvation/Salvation Army's SOP.
In the end, relying on idiots in any state bureaucracy to carry forth an investigation was not my idea of justice. I did my due
diligence and filed grievances, first with the Starvation Army, and, then with BOLI. I contacted VA officials, state politicians,
and the media. To no avail. They too are accomplices!
To make a long and stupid Byzantine story short, my prediction of zero assistance and zero admonishing from the state to the executive
director and the higher ups of the Starvation Army played out. BOLI is a toothless and empty-hearted agency, staffed by soulless
Little Eichmann's counting their paychecks and amassing points to their state sourced pension fund.
I have moved on, as usual, and the injustice perpetrated upon me is minor in the scheme of things. The veterans, however, already
foisted with trauma, PTSD, administrative rape, etc., are still vulnerable to the Nurse Ratched's of the inhumane social services
that serves (sic) non-profits and religious crime syndicates like the Starvation Army.
Here , "How the Salvation Army Lives Off (and thrives with) a Special Brand of Poverty Pimping"
Here , "Alcohol, Atheism, Anarchy: The Triple A Threat to the Pro-Capitalist Salvation Army"
I have since my departure been in contact with a few veterans, and talked a few off the proverbial ledge -- several that wanted
to off themselves because of the Nurse Ratched's they encounter at the Starvation Army, in the VA, and in non-profits. This is the
reality, and it's sick, in real perverted American time -- "Hundreds witness veteran shoot and kill himself in VA waiting room"
In December, Marine Col. Jim Turner, 55, put his service uniform on, drove to the Bay Pines Department of Veterans Affairs,
and shot himself outside the medical center, leaving a note next to his body. "I bet if you look at the 22 suicides a day you
will see VA screwed up in 90 percent,"
it read.
This is Trump, this is Biden, this is Clinton, this is the lot of them, callous and broken capitalists, who have sold their souls
to the devil and brains to Jeff Bezos, et al . And it ain't going to get fixed until we cut away the cancer. Really cut away,
daily, in small acts of defiance, great collective acts of beating the system. Not sure what that great director Ava Duvernay says
about more and more movies like her 13th or this new Netflix mini-series on the
Central Park Five , When They See Us will do to eventually get enough Americans (70 percent are racist to the core) to
demand change in the criminal injustice system of private prisons, Incarceration Complex, Profitable Prosecutions. That all those
cops, dailies, elites, deplorables, Trumpies, and Trump said terrible terrible things about these 5 juveniles, calling them animals,
or super predators like the Clinton Klan, well, imagine, an insane 2016 runner for the highest crime lord position of the land, POTUS,
Donald Trump, after these five men were released after all the evidence found them innocent, sputtering with his big fat billionaire's
fourth grader's words that the Central Park Five are guilty, guilty, guilty.
The press coverage was biased. There was a study done by Natalie Byfield, one of the journalists at the time for the New York
papers who later wrote a book about covering the case, and it saw that a little more than 89 percent of the press coverage at
the time didn't use the word "alleged," that we had irresponsibility in the press corps at the time not to ask second questions
and literally take police and prosecutor talking points and turn those into articles that people read as fact, and proceeded to
shape their opinions about this case that essentially spoils the jury pool, so that these boys were never given a chance.
Trump's comments in his ads that he took out in 1989 were taken out just two weeks after the crime was announced -- they hadn't
even gone to trial, so it was impossible for them to have an impartial jury pool. The printing of their names in the papers for
minors, and where they lived, was a jaw-dropper. All of this was done by "reputable" papers in New York that we still read, so
I'm curious how these papers take responsibility for their part in this, and also possibly use this to review the part they play
in other cases that may not be as famous as this.
Thus, she makes my case -- the callous and racist and sexist and xenophobic US Press, and here we are today, 2019, enter Amusing
Ourselves to Death and a Brave New World .
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is
truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World , "Preface"
Alas, though, we have to keep those words coming, even sent to the great gray hearts and souls populating those state agencies
whose workers are supposed to investigate the workplace safety concerns of workers, and are supposed to prevent workplace harassment.
I write to break through the fog, and to envelop a new way of seeing my world, for me and for the few readers that dabble in even
attempting to start, let alone finish, these missives.
Huxley was right -- " Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced."
Brave New World , "Chapter 4"
Paul Kirk Haeder has been a journalist since 1977. He's covered police, environment, planning and zoning, county and city politics,
as well as working in true small town/community journalism situations in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mexico and beyond. He's been
a part-time faculty since 1983, and as such has worked in prisons, gang-influenced programs, universities, colleges, alternative
high schools, language schools, as a private contractor-writing instructor for US military in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Washington.
He organized Part-time faulty in Washington State. His book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at
10 years of his writing at Dissident Voice . Read his autobiography, weekly or bi-weekly musings and hard hitting work in
chapter installments, at LA Progressive
. He blogs from Otis, Oregon. Read other articles by Paul
, or visit Paul's website .
"... Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness -- a philosophy that discourages diversity -- has become a guiding principle of modern society. ..."
"... We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state. ..."
"... What many fail to realize is that the government is not operating alone. It cannot. The government requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of the massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental overreach. ..."
"... In fact, Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother, and we are now ruled by the Corporate Elite whose tentacles have spread worldwide. For example, USA Today reports that five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the homeland security business was booming to such an extent that it eclipsed mature enterprises like movie-making and the music industry in annual revenue. This security spending to private corporations such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others is forecast to exceed $1 trillion in the near future. ..."
"... Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared freely with its agents in crime: the CIA, FBI and DHS. One NSA researcher actually quit the Aquaint program, "citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability." ..."
"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." -- George Orwell, 1984
Who could have predicted that 70 years after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, "He loved Big Brother," we would
fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone
-- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the
age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings!" -- George Orwell
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree
with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven
society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes.
The government, or "Party," is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: "Big Brother is watching
you."
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers
as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."―George Orwell
Much like Orwell's Big Brother in 1984 , the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley's
A Brave New World , we are churning out a society of watchers who "have their liberties taken away from them, but rather enjoy
it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing." Much like Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
, the populace is now taught to "know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected
up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that
they will
accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away ."
And in keeping with Philip K. Dick's darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state -- which became the basis for
Steven
Spielberg's futuristic thriller Minority Report -- we are now trapped in a world in which the government is all-seeing,
all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few
skulls to bring the populace under control.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike -- facial recognition,
iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on -- are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network
aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the
dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming
our reality .
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."―George
Orwell
The courts have
shredded the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, SWAT teams battering down doors
without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences in contemporary
America. And bodily privacy and integrity have been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have no rights over what
happens to their bodies during an encounter with government officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe,
pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible
to say which was which."―George Orwell, Animal Farm
We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state.
What many fail to realize is that the government is not operating alone. It cannot. The government requires an accomplice.
Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of the massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance
and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on
and feeds the growth of governmental overreach.
In fact, Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother, and we are now ruled by the Corporate Elite whose tentacles
have spread worldwide. For example, USA Today reports that five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the homeland security
business was booming to such an extent that it
eclipsed mature
enterprises like movie-making and the music industry in annual revenue. This security spending to private corporations such as
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others is
forecast to exceed
$1 trillion in the near future.
The government now has at its disposal technological arsenals so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections
null and void. Spearheaded by the NSA, which has shown itself to care little to nothing for constitutional limits or privacy, the
"security/industrial complex" -- a marriage of government, military and corporate interests aimed at keeping Americans under constant
surveillance -- has come to dominate the government and our lives. At three times the size of the CIA, constituting one third of
the intelligence budget and with its own global spy network to boot, the NSA has a long history of spying on Americans, whether or
not it has always had the authorization to do so.
Money, power, control. There is no shortage of motives fueling the convergence of mega-corporations and government. But who is
paying the price? The American people, of course.
Orwell understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan flag-waving, are still struggling to come to terms with: that
there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people. Even the best intentions among those in government inevitably
give way to the desire to maintain power and control over the citizenry at all costs. As Orwell explains:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power,
pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know
what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian
Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended,
perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there
lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention
of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution;
one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture
is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." ― George Orwell
How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.
In totalitarian regimes -- a.k.a. police states -- where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the
government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises
itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.
Dystopian literature shows what happens when the populace is transformed into mindless automatons. In
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , reading is banned
and books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and
render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled.
In Huxley's Brave New World , serious literature,
scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through the use of conditioning,
social taboos and inferior education. Likewise, expressions of individuality, independence and morality are viewed as vulgar and
abnormal.
And in Orwell's 1984 , Big Brother does
away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish "thoughtcrimes."
In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace
deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals
with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).
The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
All three -- Bradbury, Huxley and Orwell -- had an uncanny knack for realizing the future, yet it is Orwell who best understood
the power of language to manipulate the masses. Orwell's Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such
words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary. To give a
single example, as psychologist Erich Fromm illustrates in his afterword to 1984 :
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice" or
"This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political
and intellectual freedom no longer existed as concepts .
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where
only that which is "safe" and "accepted" by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will
pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
"Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." --
George Orwell
Americans have been
conditioned to accept routine incursions on their privacy rights . In fact, the addiction to screen devices -- especially cell
phones -- has created a hive effect where the populace not only watched but is controlled by AI bots. However, at one time, the idea
of a total surveillance state tracking one's every move would have been abhorrent to most Americans. That all changed with the 9/11
attacks. As professor Jeffrey Rosen observes, "Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives
under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and
stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable,
a dystopian fantasy of a society that
had surrendered privacy and anonymity ."
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry -- mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the
face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield,
and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all -- we have nowhere left to go.
We have, so to speak, gone from being a nation where privacy is king to one where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government.
In search of so-called terrorists and extremists hiding amongst us -- the proverbial "needle in a haystack," as one official termed
it -- the Corporate State has taken to monitoring all aspects of our lives, from cell phone calls and emails to Internet activity
and credit card transactions. Much of this data is being fed through
fusion centers across the
country, which work with the Department of Homeland Security to make threat assessments on every citizen, including school children.
These are state and regional intelligence centers that collect data on you.
"Big Brother is Watching You."―George Orwell
Wherever you go and whatever you do, you are now being watched, especially if you leave behind an electronic footprint. When you
use your cell phone, you leave a record of when the call was placed, who you called, how long it lasted and even where you were at
the time. When you use your ATM card, you leave a record of where and when you used the card. There is even a video camera at most
locations equipped with facial recognition software. When you use a cell phone or drive a car enabled with GPS, you can be tracked
by satellite. Such information is shared with government agents, including local police. And all of this once-private information
about your consumer habits, your whereabouts and your activities is now being fed to the U.S. government.
The government has nearly inexhaustible resources when it comes to tracking our movements, from electronic wiretapping devices,
traffic cameras and biometrics to radio-frequency identification cards, satellites and Internet surveillance.
Speech recognition technology now makes it possible for the government to carry out massive eavesdropping by way of sophisticated
computer systems. Phone calls can be monitored, the audio converted to text files and stored in computer databases indefinitely.
And if any "threatening" words are detected -- no matter how inane or silly -- the record can be flagged and assigned to a government
agent for further investigation. Federal and state governments, again working with private corporations, monitor your Internet content.
Users are profiled and tracked in order to identify, target and even prosecute them.
In such a climate, everyone is a suspect. And you're guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. To underscore this shift in
how the government now views its citizens, the FBI uses its wide-ranging authority to investigate individuals or groups, regardless
of whether they are suspected of criminal activity.
"Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull." ― George Orwell
Here's what a lot of people fail to understand, however: it's not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you
think that is being tracked and targeted. We've already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime
legislation that cracks down on so-called "hateful" thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on
various subject matter.
Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State, as omnipresent as God, is used by the government to predict and, more importantly,
control the populace, and it's not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA is now designing an artificial intelligence
system that is designed to anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA will feed vast amounts of the information it collects
to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym
stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer can then use to detect patterns and predict behavior.
No information is sacred or spared.
Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking
sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared
freely with its agents in crime: the CIA, FBI and DHS. One NSA researcher actually quit the Aquaint program, "citing concerns over
the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability."
Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised
of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).
Clearly, the age of privacy in America is at an end.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." -- Orwell
So where does that leave us?
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not
to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us
on a daily basis.
It won't be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we
wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored
by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police
with their army of futuristic technologies.
To be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government's roaming
eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.
Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw.
So how do you survive in the American surveillance state?
We're running out of options
As I make clear in my book
Battlefield America: The
War on the American People , we'll soon have to choose between self-indulgence (the bread-and-circus distractions offered
up by the news media, politicians, sports conglomerates, entertainment industry, etc.) and self-preservation in the form of renewed
vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance.
Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in Brave New World Revisited : "Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only
those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society,
most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere
else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist
the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it."
-----------------------------------------------------
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media
does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please
keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn - PO Box 1520
Every hour taxpayers in the United States are paying $32,077,626 for
Total Cost of Wars Since 2001.
I'm going through a Department of Defense background check right now and it's not so bad. The thing is they already know everything
damn there is to know about me. How do I know this ? Because I can pull up on their computers what they already know. It's to
help guys like me pass or at least that's what they say.
They got us by the balls now . How can you fight something like this Unless you take down the whole electric grid. Only God knows
the horror that would bring.
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." – Orwell
Galatians 4:16 KJB "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" – Paul
Boat Guy
It is serious concern the move from a free republic to a corporate state with armed government badge wearing just doing my
job minions existing in comfort thanks to the confiscatory tax and asset forfeiture programs in play by the circle jerk of Wall
Street to K-Street to Capitol Street .
Sadly the people of honor and integrity that could initiate a Nuremberg style justice system upon those in power and control will
quickly be stricken down by minions unaccountable thanks to nonsense like the patriot act and FISA courts . So much for the bill
of Rights that is supposed to be the impenetrable shield protecting Americans from government . Our alleged honor and oath bound
representatives have been able to turn it into Swiss cheese !
Refuse & Resist , Forget Me Not !
"... In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four , there is an all-encompassing surveillance state that keeps a watchful eye on everyone, in search of possible rebels and points of resistance. ..."
"... Censorship is the norm in this world, and is so extreme that individuals can become "unpersons" who are essentially deleted from society because their ideas were considered dangerous by the establishment. This is an idea that is very familiar to activists and independent journalists who are being removed from the public conversation for speaking out about government and corporate corruption on social media. ..."
"... Orwell is famous for coining the term "double-speak," which is a way to describe the euphemistic language that government uses to whitewash their most dirty deeds. For example, in Orwell's story, the ministry of propaganda was called the Ministry of Truth, just as today the government agency that was once known as "The Department of War," is now called the "Department of Defense." ..."
"... "Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells." ..."
"... Unfortunately, just like in Orwell's book, people in the modern world are so distracted by entertainment and the divided by politics that they have no idea they are living in a tyrannical police state. ..."
"... "We are not at war with Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party." -Emmanuel Goldstein ..."
This month, George Orwell's legendary novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four turns
70 years old, and the warnings contained within the story are now more relevant than ever. Orwell's predictions were so spot on that
it almost seems like it was used as some type of accidental instruction manual for would-be tyrants.
In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four , there is an all-encompassing surveillance state that keeps a watchful eye on everyone,
in search of possible rebels and points of resistance.
Censorship is the norm in this world, and is so extreme that individuals can become "unpersons" who are essentially deleted
from society because their ideas were considered dangerous by the establishment. This is an idea that is very familiar to activists
and independent journalists who are being removed from the public conversation for speaking out about government and corporate corruption
on social media.
Orwell is famous for coining the term "double-speak," which is a way to describe the euphemistic language that government
uses to whitewash their most dirty deeds. For example, in Orwell's story, the ministry of propaganda was called the Ministry of Truth,
just as today the government agency that was once known as "The Department of War," is now called the "Department of Defense."
There was also never-ending war in Orwell's story, the conditions of which would change on a regular basis, keeping the general
population confused about conflicts so they give up on trying to understand what is actually going on. Some of these predictions
were merely recognitions of patterns in human history, since the idea of "unpersons" and war propaganda is nothing new. However,
Orwell had an incredible understanding of how technology was going to progress over the 20th century, and he was able to envision
how technology would be used by those in power to control the masses.
The technological predictions made in the book were truly uncanny, as they give a fairly accurate description of our modern world.
Orwell described "telescreens," which acted as both an entertainment device and a two-way communication device. This type of technology
was predicted by many futurists at the time, but Orwell's prediction was unique because he suggested that these devices would be
used by the government to spy on people, through microphones and cameras built into the devices.
Unfortunately, just like in Orwell's book, people in the modern world are so distracted by entertainment and the divided by politics
that they have no idea they are living in a tyrannical police state. This police state was also a strong deterrent in the world of
Nineteen Eighty-Four , because although many of the citizens in the book had a positive opinion of "big brother," it was still something
that they feared, and it was a force that kept them in control. Of course, this is not much different from the attitude that the
average American or European has when confronted with police brutality and government corruption.
Many of the ideas about power and authority that were expressed in Orwell's classic are timeless and as old as recorded history
; but his analysis of how technology would amplify the destructive nature of power was incredibly unique, especially for his time.
Not to stray too far, I always liked the part in Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes":
"Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin.
There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time
he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes,
sizes, colors, and smells."
The laugh shouter is one of those government or corporate chuckle-heads that goes along, gets along, and usually spends less
than an hour a day actually doing his job. You see them on TV and in every office. Everything out of their mouths has to be punctuated
with a chuckle.
The thing I remember from the novel was the "versificator" which was a typewriter-like device that allowed historical events
to be changed as needed . . . very much like the networked computer.
Facebook recently made me an UnPerson, not joking. I had deleted my acct some years ago, re-registered to man a business page
and...haha they rejected me, recent photo and all.
There are a few other books and booklets and letters that also seem eerily prescient. Following modern-day protocols, however,
it's best not to mention them in polite company. ;-)
Unfortunately, just like in Orwell's book, people in the modern world are so distracted by entertainment and the divided
by politics that they have no idea they are living in a tyrannical police state.
Exactly...
"We are not at war with Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party." -Emmanuel Goldstein
I plan on voting in the local elections, especially for Sheriff and the bond issues. Also, I still think that voting for the
quality Libertarian candidates is a better option than not voting, but I do understand your point. But when all else fails, you
better be prepared to vote from the rooftops...
"... In Orwell's imagination, society was ruled in the future by Big Brother. It wasn't a computer, but rather the collective expression of the Party. But not like the Republicans; this Party was an autonomous bureaucracy and advanced surveillance state interested only in perpetuating itself as a hierarchy. In this dystopia, "the people" had become insignificant, without the power of "grasping that the world could be other than it is." ..."
"... Concepts like freedom were perverted by a ruthless Newspeakperpetuated by the Party through the media. A Goodthinker was someone who followed orders without thinking. Crimestop was the instinctual avoidance of any dangerous thought, and Doublethink was the constant distortion of reality to maintain the Party's image of infallibility. ..."
"... Writing in 1948, Orwell was projecting what could happen in just a few decades. By most measures, even 70 years later we're not quite there yet. But we do face the real danger that freedom and equality will be seriously distorted by a new form of Newspeak, a Trumpian version promoted by the administration and its allies through their media. We already have Trumpian Goodthinkers -- the sychophantic surrogates who follow his lead without thinking, along with Crimestop -- the instinctual avoidance of "disloyal" thought, and Doublethink -- the constant distortion of reality to maintain Trump's insatiable ego and image of infallibility. Orwellian ideas are simply resurfacing in a post-modern/reality TV form. ..."
"... As community life unravels and more institutions fall into disrepute, media have become among of the few remaining that can potentially facilitate some social cohesion. Yet instead they fuel conflict and crisis. It's not quite Crimestop, but does often appeal to some of the basest instincts and produce even more alienation and division. ..."
"... In 1980, Ralph Nader called the race for president at that time -- between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan -- a choice between mediocrity and menace. It was funny then, but now we can see what real menace looks like. Is Trump-ism what Orwell warned us about? Not quite, though there are similarities. Like Trump, you can't talk to Big Brother. And he rarely gives you the truth, only doublespeak. But Trump is no Big Brother. More like a Drunk Uncle with nukes. ..."
"... Security is tight and hard to avoid, on or offline. There are cameras everywhere, and every purchase and move most people make is tracked by the state. Still, there are four bombings in the first week of the Games. There is also another kind of human tragedy. Four runners collapse during preliminary rounds as a result of a toxic mix -- heat and pollution. ..."
"... Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of Dons of Time, Uneasy Empire, Spirits of Desire, Big Lies, and The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. ..."
"... This article was originally published by Greg Guma: For Preservation & Change . ..."
More people are becoming alienated, cynical, resentful or resigned, while too much of
mass and social media reinforces less-than-helpful narratives and tendencies. The frog's in the
frying pan and the heat is rising.
On the big screens above us beautiful young people demonstrated their prowess. We were
sitting in the communications center, waiting for print outs to tell us what they'd done before
organizing the material for mass consumption. Outside, people were freezing in the snow as they
waited for buses. Their only choice was to attend another event or attempt to get home.
The area was known as the Competition Zone, a corporate state created for the sole purpose
of showcasing these gorgeous competitors. Freedom was a foreign idea here; no one was more free
than the laminated identification card hanging around your neck allowed.
Visitors were more restricted than anyone. They saw only what they paid for, and had to wait
in long lines for food, transport, or tickets to more events. They were often uncomfortable,
yet they felt privileged to be admitted to the Zone. Citizens were categorized by their
function within the Organizing Committee's bureaucracy. Those who merely served -- in jobs like
cooking, driving and cleaning -- wore green and brown tags. They could travel between their
homes and work, but were rarely permitted into events. Their contact with visitors was also
limited. To visit them from outside the Zone, their friends and family had to be screened.
Most citizens knew little about how the Zone was actually run, about the "inner community"
of diplomats, competitors and corporate officials they served. Yet each night they watched the
exploits of this same elite on television.
The Zone, a closed and classified place where most bad news went unreported and a tiny elite
called the shots through mass media and computers, was no futuristic fantasy. It was Lake
Placid for several weeks in early 1980 -- a full four years before 1984.
In a once sleepy little community covered with artificial snow, the Olympics had brought a
temporary society into being. Two thousand athletes and their entourage were its royalty, role
models for the throngs of spectators, townspeople and journalists. This convergence resulted in
an ad hoc police state, managed by public and private forces and a political elite that
combined local business honchos with an international governing committee. They dominated a
population all too willing to submit to arbitrary authority.
Even back then, Lake Placid's Olympic "village" felt like a preview of things to come. Not
quite George Orwell's dark vision, but uncomfortably close.
In Orwell's imagination, society was ruled in the future by Big Brother. It wasn't a
computer, but rather the collective expression of the Party. But not like the Republicans; this
Party was an autonomous bureaucracy and advanced surveillance state interested only in
perpetuating itself as a hierarchy. In this dystopia, "the people" had become insignificant,
without the power of "grasping that the world could be other than it is."
Concepts like freedom were perverted by a ruthless Newspeakperpetuated by the Party through
the media. A Goodthinker was someone who followed orders without thinking. Crimestop was the
instinctual avoidance of any dangerous thought, and Doublethink was the constant distortion of
reality to maintain the Party's image of infallibility.
Writing in 1948, Orwell was projecting what could happen in just a few decades. By most
measures, even 70 years later we're not quite there yet. But we do face the real danger that
freedom and equality will be seriously distorted by a new form of Newspeak, a Trumpian version
promoted by the administration and its allies through their media. We already have Trumpian
Goodthinkers -- the sychophantic surrogates who follow his lead without thinking, along with
Crimestop -- the instinctual avoidance of "disloyal" thought, and Doublethink -- the constant
distortion of reality to maintain Trump's insatiable ego and image of infallibility. Orwellian
ideas are simply resurfacing in a post-modern/reality TV form.
Our fast food culture is also taking a long-term toll. More and more people are becoming
alienated, cynical, resentful or resigned, while too much of mass and social media reinforces
less-than-helpful narratives and tendencies. The frog's in the frying pan and the heat is
rising.
Much of what penetrates and goes viral further fragments culture and thought, promoting a
cynicism that reinforces both rage and inaction. Rather than true diversity, we have the mass
illusion that a choice between polarized opinions, shaped and curated by editors and networks,
is the essence of free speech and democracy. In reality, original ideas are so constrained and
self-censored that what's left is usually as diverse as brands of peppermint toothpaste.
When the Bill of Rights was ratified, the notion that freedom of speech and the press should
be protected meant that the personal right of self-expression should not be repressed by the
government. James Madison, author of the First Amendment, warned that the greatest danger to
liberty was that a majority would use its power to repress everyone else. Yet the evolution of
mass media and the corporate domination of economic life have made these "choicest privileges"
almost obsolete.
As community life unravels and more institutions fall into disrepute, media have become
among of the few remaining that can potentially facilitate some social cohesion. Yet instead
they fuel conflict and crisis. It's not quite Crimestop, but does often appeal to some of the
basest instincts and produce even more alienation and division.
In general terms, what most mass media bring the public is a series of images and anecdotes
that cumulatively define a way of life. Both news and entertainment contribute to the illusion
that competing, consuming and accumulating are at the core of our aspirations. Each day we are
repeatedly shown and told that culture and politics are corrupt, that war is imminent or
escalating somewhere, that violence is random and pervasive, and yet also that the latest
"experts" have the answers. Countless programs meanwhile celebrate youth, violence, frustrated
sexuality, and the lives of celebrities.
Between the official program content are a series of intensely packaged sales pitches. These
commercial messages wash over us, as if we are wandering in an endless virtual mall, searching
in vain for fulfillment as society crumbles.
In 1980, Ralph Nader called the race for president at that time -- between Jimmy Carter and
Ronald Reagan -- a choice between mediocrity and menace. It was funny then, but now we can see
what real menace looks like. Is Trump-ism what Orwell warned us about? Not quite, though there
are similarities. Like Trump, you can't talk to Big Brother. And he rarely gives you the truth,
only doublespeak. But Trump is no Big Brother. More like a Drunk Uncle with nukes.
So, is it too late for a rescue? Will menace win this time? Or can we still save the
environment, reclaim self-government, restore communities and protect human rights? What does
the future hold?
It could be summer in Los Angeles in 2024, the end of Donald Trump's second term. The
freeways are slow-moving parking lots for the Olympics. Millions of people hike around in the
heat, or use bikes and cycles to get to work. It's difficult with all the checkpoints, not to
mention the extra-high security at the airports. Thousands of police, not to mention the
military, are on the lookout for terrorists, smugglers, protesters, cultists, gangs, thieves,
and anyone who doesn't have money to burn or a ticket to the Games.
Cash isn't much good, and gas has become so expensive that suburban highways are almost
empty.
Security is tight and hard to avoid, on or offline. There are cameras everywhere, and every
purchase and move most people make is tracked by the state. Still, there are four bombings in
the first week of the Games. There is also another kind of human tragedy. Four runners collapse
during preliminary rounds as a result of a toxic mix -- heat and pollution.
... ... ...
Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of Dons of Time, Uneasy Empire, Spirits of Desire,
Big Lies, and The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution.
"Sometimes [two and two are four], Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are
three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become
sane."
One of the key themes from George Orwell's dystopic novel 1984 is that the Party can do and
say whatever it wants.
And more importantly, you must believe it, with all your heart. No matter how absurd.
That's doublethink . It is impossible for two plus two to equal three, four, and five
simultaneously. But if the Party says it is so, it is so.
If you can't make yourself believe two contradictory facts simultaneously, that makes you a
thought criminal– an enemy of the Party.
Thoughtcrime is thinking any thought that contradicts the Party.
Facecrime is when you have the wrong expression on your face. For instance, if captured
enemy soldiers are being paraded through the streets, looking sympathetic is a facecrime.
Newspeak is the language of the Party–one that has painstakingly been removed of
unnecessary words, or words that might contradict the Party's ideals.
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end
we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to
express it."
During daily two minutes hate , citizens shout and curse whatever enemies the Party shows
them.
And the face of the Party, Big Brother , is watching you. He helps you be a better
citizen.
This isn't just some random literature lesson. Understanding Orwell's 1984 will help you
understand 2019 America.
For instance, one California state senator is working on her own version of Newspeak.
She has banned the members of her committee from using gender pronouns, such as he, she,
her, and him. Instead they must use "they and them" to respect non-binary gender choices.
So Billy Joel's famous song "She's always a woman" would become "They're always a non-binary
gender. . ." Somehow that just doesn't ring with the same sweetness.
Last month a high school student famously committed a facecrime when he stood, apparently
smirking, while a Native American activist beat a drum in his face.
The 16-year-old was then subjected to "two minutes hate" by the entire nation. The Party
labeled him an enemy, and Twitter obliged.
Of course when I reference the 'Party', I don't mean to imply that all these Orwellian
developments are coming from a single political party.
They've ALL done their parts to advance Orwellian dystopia and make it a reality.
Senators Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders want to
limit corporate stock buybacks and share payouts. But the tax code already has the
accumulated profits tax, which punishes corporations for NOT engaging in stock buybacks and
share payouts
It's like doublethink you have to simultaneously pay and not pay out dividends.
When Matt Damon pointed out that we should not conflate a pat on the butt with rape, he was
met with "two minutes hate" for expressing the wrong opinion.
"Emmanuel Goldstein is a fictional character in George Orwell's dystopian novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the principal enemy of the state according to the Party of the
totalitarian Oceania. He is depicted as the head of a mysterious (and possibly fictitious)
dissident organization called "The Brotherhood" and as having written the book The Theory and
Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. He is only seen and heard on telescreen, and he may be a
fabrication of the Ministry of Truth, the State's propaganda department." (from
Wikipedia)
Yet Orwell wrote the following words in The Road to Wigan Pier :
"there is the horrible -- the really disquieting -- prevalence of cranks wherever
Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words
'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker,
nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in
England."
And:
"The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of the proletariat, if you offer it
tactfully; offer him a dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight."
In the first of these excerpts, we see a perfect delineation of today's "Cultural
Marxism," and in the second, a perfect explanation of the support for Donald Trump. The
"deplorables" are those who resent and fight the dictatorship of the prigs. I'm somewhat
surprised that no one has written a history of the rise and advance of political correctness
in American public life and entitled it "The Dictatorship of the Prigs." I hope someone
does.
Brave New World has had a funny way of growing more interesting with age. Lenina
Crowne, the vacuous Future Woman, has leaped out of the pages of Huxley's novel and into our
real lives. Just give Lenina some tattoos and piercings, dye her hair an unnatural color and
put a smart phone on her fashionable Malthusian belt, and she would fit right into our world.
I think the author a little unfair to Huxley when he criticises him for no sense of social
"Class". The issue here is that class, in BNW, has been hard wired into each grouping (ie
deltas etc). Genetic engineering has predetermined all class AND individual desires &
interests. The sophistications of language, mind control etc in Orwell are thus unnecessary
& superseded.
The distinction between the inner party, outer party and proles does seem to be absolutely
crucial to Orwell (at least in 1984) and is often neglected by people debating Orwell vs
Huxley. Still, I tend to agree with those dissidents who have observed that there really is
no inner party. It is outer party buffoons all the way up.
George Orwell also beat his coolies "in moments of rage" as he put it in his autobiography.
He had first-hand experience as a repressive British colonial police officer in Burma,
1922-1927. He knew the autocratic mindset well, because he had lived it.
" Trump is the only non-establishment candidate to get elected President since Andrew Jackson
and therefore almost the exact opposite of the idea of top-down tyranny"
That was good for a laugh. What's the difference between governed from the top by liberal
slime career opportunist and governed from the top by the moron womanizer opportunist
comparable to the governor played by Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles? The difference is top
down slime versus top down idiocy.
There is a misapprehension at the core of this article; Huxley wrote from a liberal
'anything goes' perspective of morality, comparable to today's 'it's all about me' MTV
generation. A deeper understanding of Huxley's profound distaste and preoccupation with this
is afforded in his novel 'Point, Counter Point.' Orwell, on the other hand, aptly projects a
future social conservatism that is better compared to the extremes of a cloistered and
tightly policed ultra religious right.
It's not a matter of who was more 'right.' They are describing separate trajectories of
human social phenomena we see playing out today. The two were peering down different avenues
into the future.
But, despite this, this debate exists not only on the Dissident Right but further
afield. Believe it or not, even Left-wingers and Liberals debate this question, as if they
too are under the heel of the oppressor's jackboot.
Some left-wingers are. Think of poor Julian Assange!
'All of a sudden, as many commentators have pointed out, there were almost daily
echoes of Orwell in the news The most obvious connection to Orwell was the new
president's repeated insistence that even his most pointless and transparent lies were in
fact true, and then his adviser Kellyanne Conway's explanation that these statements were
not really falsehoods but, rather, "alternative facts."'
The counter to this is that Trump is the only non-establishment candidate to get elected
President since Andrew Jackson and therefore almost the exact opposite of the idea of
top-down tyranny.
Exactly. In 1984, 'Big Brother' actually controlled the media; Trump clearly doesn't, so
he is not Big Brother. He is Emmanuel Goldstein: a leader of the resistance but alas,
probably not real.
Oh dear no, big mistake -- it's Two Minutes Hate, not three as stated here. Orwell is
superior by far, since he was serious and more humane in his understanding of the effects of
totalitarianism on human psychology. But as a Morrissey song puts it, "I know you love one
person, so why can't you love two?"
@George F.
Held Goldstein isn't Orwell's hero. There is nothing in the book to show that Goldstein
even exists. All he could be is a propaganda construct (as I believe ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al
Baghdadi is in real life). And Goldstein's Jewishness, apart from his name, is non-existent.
When I read 1984 for the first time (in 1986, as it happens), I didn't realise that he was
even meant to be a Jew.
Lots of Jews are against the racist apartheid colonial settler zionazi pseudostate in
Occupied Palestine and its financial backers in New York, but we wouldn't want to disturb you
with facts, would we now.
Orwell, who finished his 1984 shortly after the liquidation of Palestine in 1947,
[1st printing was 1950], never saw the Elephant (Zionist Elephant). No one is perfect.
Orwell, who during WW II, was an employee for Churchill's Government, and labored in
Churchill's Propaganda Department (different official title), loyally reflected (most of)
that propaganda.
Few visionaries in 1947, understood or opposed the imperialist Oligarchs (financial
banking power), who supported the establishment of a so-called Jewish Nation – in
someone else's Nation. (The Balfour Declaration was issued during WW I and the liquidation of
one of the Peoples of the Middle East was in the planning stages). The Palestinians became
the – final victims of World War II.
The Palestinian General Strike (for independence) of 1936 , followed by an
insurrection was brutally suppressed by King George (the British Empire Oligarchs – who
had long (at least since 1815), become the Minions of the Zionist Bankers.
After WW II, Orwell, chose to ignore the crimes against the Palestinians, and possibly, to
get his books published/circulated. Who controls Hollywood-and the Mainstream Media?
For this anarchist, Orwell remains a visionary, a courageous soldier who served in
army of the POUM (Partido Obrero Unida Marxista -Trotskyist), and was wounded while defending
the same Spanish Republic as Durruti's Anarchists. Orwell's wife served as a Nurse in
Spain.
Recommend Orwell's fine book, His HISTORY, " Homage to Catalonia ."
Orwell had courage.
We American Citizen Patriots must display the same courage – as we Restore Our
Republic.
@Justsaying
" In fact, control by proxy seems to have generated a two-tiered control phenomenon where the
leaders are the puppets of puppeteers of a Zionist entity. "
Indeed my idea: Morgenthau Wilson, Baruch FDR, Bilderberg conferences, Soros Brussels,
Merkel, with whom exactly I do know, but it does not matter, Macron Rothschild, Tony Blair
Murdoch.
The catholic countries resist: Poland, Hungary, etc., maybe S Germany and Austria in this
respect also can be seen as catholic.
Trump, put your money where your mouth is, Soros, the Koch brothers, they did, but money
seeems to have failed in the last USA elections.
Must have been a shock, Solsjenytsyn writes that each jewish community in tsarist Russia
always had money for bribes.
@Durruti
Palestine and the Balfour declaration was a bit more complicated, the British saw an
opportunity to keep France, that had Syria and Lebanon, away from Egypt.
Mandate of course was just a fig leaf for colonialism.
@Ronald Thomas
West " What's the difference between governed from the top "
Possibly what is the theory of prof Laslo Maracs, UVA univrsity Amsterdam, that eight years
Obama have driven China and Russia so together that Khazakstan now is the economic centre of
the world, and that the present USA president understand this.
Khazakstan has the land port for trains to and from St Petersburg Peking.
Four days travel.
Do not hope this railway will have the same effect as the Berlin Bagdad: WWI.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist This isn't a top-ten contest. The reality we find ourselves in
seems to consist largely of billion-shades-of-grey continuums, not black-and-white absolutes.
Full-frontal assault (Orwell's state brutality) generally stimulates defensive action.
Tangential, obtuse assault (Huxley's anaesthetising hedonia) doesn't alert the defensive
posture, the immune response. Tipping points, inflection points, exist, but stealthy wolves
in sheeps' clothing, are more effective. The Venus fly trap, the carrion flower, convince
prey to approach trustingly. Brave New World's disguised depredation – the
nanny/welfare state, etc. – paves the way for Orwell's naked totalitarianism. It's the
friendly inmate offering the scared, lonely new prisoner a Snicker's bar and a smoke.
Why limit Orwell to "1984"? His "Animal Farm" is a great work, too. Although much shorter, it
captured the essence of all totalitarian societies even better. "All animals are equal, but
some animals are more equal than others" expresses the "democratic" rule of the 1% better
than anything.
Sail-Dog's favorite movie, Idiocracy is pretty good prescient too; especially the part about
president Camacho, who, by the way, and rather incredibly, most of you voted for two years
ago.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist Consider these excerpts:
1.All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.
Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and of the others, a few had simply
disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which
they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones,
Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested.
2. 'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You will have read about it in
books, no doubt. Not much of it gets to the Outer Party, I am afraid.' His face grew solemn
again, and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we should begin by drinking a
health. To our Leader: To Emmanuel Goldstein.'
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine was a thing he had read and dreamed
about. . . . The truth was that after years of gin-drinking he could barely taste it. He set
down the empty glass.
'Then there is such a person as Goldstein?' he said.
'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do not know.'
'And the conspiracy -- the organization? Is it real? It is not simply an invention of the
Thought Police?'
'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never learn much more about the
Brotherhood than that it exists and that you belong to it. I will come back to that
presently.'
Whether Goldstein exists is an issue raised in the novel itself, but that he (obviously
Jewish like another member of the Brotherhood, Aaronson) is presented sympathetically as a
libertarian enemy of the oppressive government is certain. Orwell's novel presents Jews
sympathetically as liberators of themselves and others.
And that presentation is historically false: Jews throughout history are the oppressors, not
the oppressed.
It is interesting to note that today's voice activated computer interfaces (Alexa, etc.) are
equivalent to Orwell's "telescreens" that monitor all activity within a household. Add to
that, the present push to implement "chipping"–the implantation of microchips into
humans, ostensibly for "convenience" and identification that cannot be lost–the "mark
of the beast" in biblical parlance.
The sad part is that much of the population is openly embracing these technologies instead of
being wary (and aware) that these are monitoring technologies which will lead to no good.
@Che Guava
The woman truck driver was the protagonist's love object and inspired what little plot
exists. He was supposed to save her, or so he thought. Everything else was window-dressing
(albeit quite imaginative), possibly the product of his growing insanity
"One of the frequent comparisons that comes up in the Dissident Right is who was more
correct or prescient, Orwell or Huxley".
This is the first lie by this author trying to co-opt both these writers for his agenda.
Orwell was an anti-imperialist and thats evident if you read 'Down and out in Paris or
London' or the 'Road to Wigan Pier'.
Burgess' politics and views can readily be known by reading 'Clockwork Orange' or 'The brave
New World'.
The world today is topsy turvy and what was the left then is now the right but both were anti
fascists.
If the comment posted is wrong , it's because the first paragraph was blatantly misleading
and stopped me from going any further.
One thing that most people in America leave out of consideration is the reality and power of
secret societies. Recently Freemasonry celebrated its 300th anniversary with a big bash in
England. In Europe, the Catholics are aware of its power and effectiveness. Democracy is a
total illusion anyway; oligarchs always rule.
Another good one was Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It also has Alexa-type screens that allow the
viewer to participate, feel like a "star" and acquire instant fame. Firemen start fires
instead of putting them out. Books (good books anyway) cause people to discover and share
another more meaningful world. Ergo, old books must be rooted out and destroyed. The war on
whiteness and patriarchy in today's parlance.
Nineteen Eighty-Four should be required reading in high schools. One of the most
creative and prophetic novels of all time. EN LEAVES, etc. But because of its socio-political
themes, BNW became part of high school canon. In contrast, 1984 maybe Orwell's greatest work.
It's like Anthony Burgess often said A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is the least of his works, but it's
his most famous novel because it was made into a classic movie and dealt with relevant social
themes of crime and psychology.
Still, even though 1984 has stuff about control of the populace through drugs and
pornography, the vision of BNW is closer to our world in this sense. We live in a world of
plenty than scarcity. So, whereas vice is allowed by the state in 1984 as an outlet for a
bored and tired public, vice is at the center of life in BNW. The world of 1984 allows some
kind of vice but is nevertheless essentially a puritanical, spartan, and moralistic state.
Also, vice, even if legal and state-sanctioned, is to be enjoyed behind closed doors. In
contrast, the world of BNW has vice of sex and drugs all over the place. Indeed, it is so
pervasive that it's not even regarded as vice but the New Virtue. And in this, our world is
like BNW. Gambling was once a vice but now a virtue. We are told it is fun, it offers
reparations to Indians, and creates jobs. And Las Vegas is like Disneyland for the entire
family. Disney Corp has turned into a Brothel, but it's still promoted as Family
Entertainment. Trashy celebs who indulge in hedonism and market excessive behavior are held
up as role models. Whether it's Hillary with Miley Cyrus or Trump with Kanye, it seems Vice
is the new Virtue. (I finally heard a Kanye album on youtube, and it began with a song along
the lines of 'suck my dic*'.)
Orwell was insightful about the power of language, but he thought that the totalitarian
state would simplify language to create conformity of mind. Such as 'doubleplusgood'. It
would be increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-poetic. But the PC manipulation of language
works the other way. It keeps on creating fancy, pseudo-intellectual, or faux-sophisticated
terms for what is total rot. So many people are fooled because they go to college and are fed
fancy jargon as substitute for thought.
Btw, as the 84 in 1984 was the reverse of 48, the year in which the book was written, many
literary critics have said the book was not about the future but the present, esp. Stalinist
Russia(though some elements were taken from Nazi Germany and even UK). As such, it was a
testament and a warning than a prophecy. Besides, Orwell had pretty much laid out the logic
of totalitarianism in ANIMAL FARM. Perhaps, the most distressing thing about 1984 is that the
hero embodies the very logic that led to the Repressive System in the first place. When asked
if he would commit any act of terror and violence to destroy the System, Winston Smith
answers yes. It's an indication that the System was long ago created by people just like him,
idealists who felt they were so right that they could do ANYTHING to create a just order. But
the result was totalitarianism.
One area where the current order is like 1984. The hysterical screaming mobs and their
endless minutes of hate. It's like Rule by PMS.
@AnneOne thing that most people in America leave out of consideration is the reality and power
of secret societies.
One reason why BNW and 1984 fail as future-visions is they assume that the West will
remain white. Both are about white tyranny, white systems, white everything. So, the tyranny
is ideological, systemic, philosophical, and etc. It's about the rulers and the ruled. It's
about systems and its minions. Same with A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. As ugly as its future vision is,
at least UK is still white in the novel and movie. But look at London today. It's turning
Third World. And white droogs and gangs are getting their ass whupped by black thugs.
Something happened in the West after WWII. Jews gained supreme power and eventually aided
homos to be their main allies. And Negroes gained supreme status as idols of song, sports,
and sex. This has complicated matters. The group-personalities of Jews and whites are
different. Jews are more aware and anxious; whites are more earnest and trusting. There is a
huge difference between Chinese elites manipulating Chinese masses AND Jewish elites
manipulating non-Jewish masses. Chinese elites think in terms of power. Jewish elites think
in terms of power over the Other. There is bound to be far less trust in the latter case,
therefore more need to twist logic in so many ways.
As for Negroes, their attitudes are very different from that of whites. In some ways, blacks
are the single most destructive force against order and civilization. Look at Detroit and
Baltimore. Haiti and Africa. And yet, the rulers of the Current Order elevate blackness as
the holiest icon of spiritual magic and coolest idol of mass thrills. This lead to the
madonna-ization of white women. Whore-ship as worship. It leads to cucky-wuckeriness among
white men. But if whites submit to blackness, their civilization will fall.
But because Jewish power needs to suppress white pride and power with 'white guilt'(over what
was done to Negro slaves) and white thrill(for blacks in sports, song, and dance), it
promotes blackness. So, on the one hand, Jewish Power is invested in maintaining the Order in
which they have so much. But in order for Jews to remain on top, whites must be instilled
with guilt and robbed of pride. And blackness is the most potent weapon in this. But in
promoting blackness, the West will be junglized. The future of France looks dire with all
those blacks coming to kick white male butt and hump white women. And when it all falls
apart, Jews will lose out too, at least in Europe. US might be spared from total black
destruction with brown-ization. Browns may not have stellar talent but they not crazy like
the Negroes.
1984 and BNW are about people lording over others. There isn't much in the way of minority
power. But today's world is about Minority Rule, especially that of Jews and Homos. And it's
about minorities of blacks in the West taking the mantle of Manhood and Pride from white guys
who are cucky-wucked.
Now, the thing about BNW is that its vision has been fulfilled yet. While one can argue
that Stalinism pretty much achieved the full extent of Orwellianism, humanity has yet to see
the rise of clones and bio-engineering. So, to fully appreciate Huxley, it might take a 100
to 200 yrs. Maybe women will stop giving birth. Maybe the idea of 'mother' will seem funny.
Maybe future beings will be cloned. And maybe different castes will be produced to do
different jobs. That way, there will be happiness. Today, people are still born naturally,
and each person wants to be 'equal'. But what if certain people are bio-engineered to be
submissive and happy to do menial work?
Also, mass cloning may be the only way a nation like Japan can sustain itself as they are
not breeding anymore.
The world today is topsy turvy and what was the left then is now the right but both were
anti fascists.
Orwell doesn't seem anything at all like the anti-fascists we see today I'd say my
politics hover around where Orwell's were but I get called a Nazi not infrequently.
Truly "war is (now) peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength."
Most forget that the three great rats (snitches) of the 20th century were Eric Blair aka
Orwell (his famous list of Stalinist media simps), Ron Reagan (Commie Hollywoodites) , and
Tim Leary (Weathmen who broke him out of jail). Blair never imagined 99% of the population
would willingly invite a telescreen into their homes, and even pay a monthly fee to be dumbed
down and manipulated. He visualized the screen correctly to be just an advanced means of
propaganda and enslavement. Maybe it is time for an updated version of 1984. Call it 2024.
Big Jew (giant orange bloated comb over head on screen) could replace Big Brother, and say
Spencer UnzSailer could replace the mythical Goldstein. Dershowitz could replace O'Brien and
torment the hapless Winston Anglin and his tatted blowup doll, Julia.
Lesson: It is a Jewish question which we need not bother ourselves about, one way or the
other. Therefore, no rules for or against BDS, no influence from AIPAC, no aid to Israel or
Palestine, etc. etc. In other words, let's learn from our Jewish friends for once, and play a
game of "let's you and him fight."
@Tyrion 2Orwell doesn't seem anything at all like the anti-fascists we see today I'd say my
politics hover around where Orwell's were but I get called a Nazi not infrequently.
Oddly enough, what we have in the West is actually repression by
sacro-ethno-corporatism.
Jews are disproportionately immensely powerful. So, there is an ethnic angle to the
current power.
But if Jews were merely rich and powerful, they could be critiqued and challenged like Wasps
still are. But they are untouchable because of the sacro-element. As the Children of Shoah,
opposition to Jewish Power is 'antisemitic' or 'nazi'.
Also, Globo-Shlomo-Homo Power owes to capitalism, not socialism or communism. Now,
corporate tyranny can't be as total as statist tyranny. Even with all the deplatforming and
etc, the current power can't do to dissidents what Stalin, Mao, and Hitler did. Still,
considering that a handful corporations dominate so much and that so many Americans are
either apathetic or rabid-with-PC, the current tyranny is formidable. After all, one doesn't
need to control EVERYTHING to keep the power. One only needs control of elite institutions,
flow of information, main narratives & icons/idols, and majority support(as US has a
winner-takes-all political system). As all such are concentrated in few institutions and
industries, the elites own pretty much everything.
With their power of media and academia, Jews have persuaded enough whites that it's virtuous
to be anti-white. And with mass-immigration-invasion, the combined votes of white cucks and
non-white hordes tip the majority toward the Globo-Shlomo-Homo Party. Unless there is total
collapse, this system can go on for a long long time.
Also, corporate power pretty much determines state power since most politicians are whores
of donors. And most people who serve in the Deep State were raised from cradle to idolize
certain figures and symbols as sacrosanct. As toadies and servants of the Power, they've
absorbed these lessons uncritically, and they are afraid to raise their kids with truly
critical mindset because asking Big Questions will derail their chance of entering the
corridors of privilege. Those in the Deep State bureaucracies are not necessarily corrupt.
They may be hardworking and committed to their service to the state, but they are essentially
flunkies since they never questioned the central shibboleths that govern today's PC. I don't
think people like James Comey are corrupt in the conventional sense. They probably sincerely
believe they are committed to the proper functioning of the state. But lacking in imagination
and audacity to question beyond the Dominant Narrative and Dogma, they can only be lackeys no
matter how smart or credentialed they are.
US and Israel are both essentially fascist states, but the differences is Israel is an
organic-fascist state whereas the US is an gangster-fascist state. If not for Israel's
Occupation of West Bank and bad behavior to its neighbors, its form of fascist-democratic
nationalism would be sound. It is a majority Jewish nation where the Jewish elites have an
organic bond with the majority of the people. Also, Jews have a ancestral and spiritual bond
with the territory, the Holy Land. Also, there is a balance of capitalism and socialism, and
the main theme is the preservation and defense of the homeland for Jews. So,
identity/inheritance is served by ideology, not the other way around. As such, Israel is a
pretty good model for other nations(though it could treat Palestinians somewhat better; but
then, Arabs IN Israel have it pretty good.) Israel need not be a gangster-fascist state
because there is natural, historical, and cultural bond between the rulers and the ruled.
But in the US, there is no such bond between the Jewish elites and the masses of goyim.
That being the case, it is most unnatural for the US to be Jewish-dominated. It's one thing
for Jews to be successful and disproportionately represented in US institutions and
industries due to higher IQ and achievement. But the idea of the Jewish elites serving as the
Dominant Ruling Elites in a nation where they are only 2% is ridiculous. It's like Turkey has
successful minority communities of Greeks, Armenians, and some Jews, but clearly the Turks
are in control. But in the US, Jews have the top power, and furthermore, Jews want to keep
the power and make all Americans suck up to Jewish power. But this can only work via
gangster-fascism since there is no organic bond between Jews and non-Jews. If Jewish elites
in Israel think and act in terms of "What can we do to empower all of us Jews as one united
people?", Jewish elites in the think in terms of "What can we do to bribe, browbeat,
threaten, silence, blacklist, and/or brainwash the goy masses to make them do our bidding?"
One if borne of love and trust, the other of contempt and fear.
Whatever problems exist in Israel, I'm guessing there is genuine love between Jewish elites
and Jewish masses. But there is a lot of hatred, fear, and anxiety among Jewish elites when
it comes to the goyim. The result is outrageous policy like hoodwinking white Christian
soldiers to smash 'terrorist muzzie' nations and then bringing over Muslims and embracing
them as 'refugees' against 'white supremacist bigots'.
Another problem with globo-shlomo-homo(and-afro) world order is that it's leading to
Mono-everything. It's leading to mono-financial rule by Wall Street. As Wall Street is so
dominant, it is effectively taking over all financial markets. And as the US military is so
dominant, the world is ending up with Mono-Militarism. The US continues to encircle China,
Russia, and Iran. And it's leading to Mono-Manhood. Prior to mass-migration-invasion, Europe
was all white. So, even though white men tend to lose to blacks in world competition, every
white nation had its white local-national hero. Its manhood was defined and represented by
its own men. The world had poly-manhood, or plurality of manhood. Even if white men lost to
blacks in world competition, they were the dominant men in their own nations. But with
Negroes entering every white nation, the result is Mono-Manhood(that of the Negro) in every
white nation. This is now spreading to Japan as well, as Japanese women now travel around the
world to fill up their wombs with black babies. And of there is Mono-Media. The world
communicates through English, but most English media are dominated by Jews. European nations
may censor American Media, but it's never the mainstream media. It's always alternative
media, and these censorship is done at the pressure of globalist Jewish groups. Jewish
globalists pressure Europe to allow ONLY mainstream US media while banning much of
alternative media that dares speak truth to power about Jewish power and race-ism(aka race
realism).
Why does the one have to be 'superior' to the other as they both make a lot of sense?
Why not a combination of both?
How about a society that controls people with a velvet glove by allowing for and promoting
every Brave New Worldish (often fatuous) personal pleasure while simultaneously, should a
person get out of line from the state's dictates, maintaining in the background the iron fist
of a full blown Orwellian police state?
The present society, though not there yet, is not that far away from that now.
Regarding 1984 I've always thought the Michael Radford film version starring
Richard Burton, John Hurt, and the luscious Suzanna Hamilton, filmed in an around London from
April – June, 1984, the exact time and setting of Orwell's novel, to have been
outstanding.
9/23/1975 Tom Charles Huston Church Committee Testimony
Tom Charles Huston testified before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee,
on the 43-page plan he presented to the President Nixon and others on ways to collect
information about anti-war and "radical" groups, including burglary, electronic surveillance,
and opening of mail.
In my estimation, That Hideous Strength, the final novel of the science fiction trilogy of C.
S. Lewis, is the best and most prescient dystopian novel written – largely because it
is so much more than just a dystopian novel. It combines great characters, imaginative
fantasy from modern to medieval, and is a truly creepy horror story as well – with a
hilarious happy ending which illustrates God's very own sense of humor.
"... Huxley's main insight, namely that control can be maintained more effectively through "entertainment, distraction, and superficial pleasure rather than through overt modes of policing and strict control over food supplies" is not actually absent in 1984 . ..."
"... In fact, exactly these kind of methods are used to control the Proles, on whom pornography is pushed and prostitution allowed. In fact porn is such an important means of social control that the IngSoc authorities even have a pornography section called "PornSec," which mass produces porn for the Proles. ..."
"... One of the LOL moments in Michael Radford's film version is when Mr. Charrington, the agent of the thought police who poses as a kindly pawnbroker to rent a room to Winston and Julia for their sexual trysts, informs them on their arrest that their surveillance film will be 'repurposed' as porn. ..."
"... But while 1984 includes almost everything that Brave New World contains in terms of controlling people through sex, drugs, and distractions, it also includes much, much more, especially regarding how censorship and language are used to control people and how tyranny is internalised. The chapter from which the above quote comes, shows how Winston, a formerly autonomous agent, has come to accept the power of the system so much that he no longer needs policing. ..."
"... But most brilliant of all is Orwell's prescient description of how language is changed through banning certain words and the expression of certain ideas or observations deemed "thought crime," to say nothing of the constant rewriting of history. The activities of Big Tech and their deplatforming of all who use words, phrases, and ideas not in the latest edition of their "Newspeak" dictionary, have radically changed the way that people communicate and what they talk about in a comparatively short period of time. ..."
"... Orwell's insights into how language can be manipulated into a tool of control shows his much deeper understanding of human psychology than that evident in Huxley's novel. The same can be said about Orwell's treatment of emotions, which is another aspect of his novel that rings particularly true today. ..."
"... Colin Liddell is one of the founders of the Alt-Right, which he now disavows, and currently blogs at Affirmative Right . He recently published a book "Interviews and Obituaries," available on Amazon . ..."
One of the frequent comparisons that comes up in the Dissident Right is who was more correct
or prescient, Orwell or Huxley.
In fact, as the only truly oppressed intellectual group, the Dissident Right are the only
ones in a position to offer a valid opinion on this, as no other group of intellectuals suffers
deplatforming, doxxing, and dismissal from jobs as much as we do. In the present day, it is
only the Dissident Right that exists in the 'tyrannical space' explored in those two dystopian
classics.
But, despite this, this debate exists not only on the Dissident Right but further afield.
Believe it or not, even Left-wingers and Liberals debate this question, as if they too are
under the heel of the oppressor's jackboot. In fact, they feel so oppressed that some of them
are even driven to discuss it in the pages of the New York Times at the despotically
high rate of pay which that no doubt involves.
In both the Left and the Dissident Right, the consensus is that Huxley is far superior to
Orwell, although, according to the New York Times article just alluded to, Orwell has
caught up a lot since the election of Donald Trump. Have a look at this laughable, "I'm
literally shaking"
prose from New York Times writer Charles McGrath :
And yet [Huxley's] novel much more accurately evokes the country we live in now,
especially in its depiction of a culture preoccupied with sex and mindless pop entertainment,
than does Orwell's more ominous book, which seems to be imagining someplace like North Korea.
Or it did until Donald Trump was inaugurated.
All of a sudden, as many commentators have pointed out, there were almost daily echoes of
Orwell in the news The most obvious connection to Orwell was the new president's repeated
insistence that even his most pointless and transparent lies were in fact true, and then his
adviser Kellyanne Conway's explanation that these statements were not really falsehoods but,
rather, "alternative facts." As any reader of "1984" knows, this is exactly Big Brother's
standard of truth: The facts are whatever the leader says they are.
those endless wars in "1984," during which the enemy keeps changing -- now Eurasia, now
Eastasia -- no longer seem as far-fetched as they once did, and neither do the book's
organized hate rallies, in which the citizenry works itself into a frenzy against nameless
foreigners.
The counter to this is that Trump is the only non-establishment candidate to get elected
President since Andrew Jackson and therefore almost the exact opposite of the idea of top-down
tyranny.
But to return to the notion that Huxley is superior to Orwell, both on the Left and the
Dissident Right, this is based on a common view that Huxley presents a much more subtle,
nuanced, and sophisticated view of soft tyranny more in keeping with the appearance of our own
age. Here's McGrath summarizing this viewpoint, which could just as easily have come out of the
mouth of an Alt-Righter, Alt-Liter, or Affirmative Righter:
Orwell didn't really have much feel for the future, which to his mind was just another
version of the present. His imagined London is merely a drabber, more joyless version of the
city, still recovering from the Blitz, where he was living in the mid-1940s, just before
beginning the novel. The main technological advancement there is the two-way telescreen,
essentially an electronic peephole.
Huxley, on the other hand, writing almost two decades earlier than Orwell (his former Eton
pupil, as it happened), foresaw a world that included space travel; private helicopters;
genetically engineered test tube babies; enhanced birth control; an immensely popular drug
that appears to combine the best features of Valium and Ecstasy; hormone-laced chewing gum
that seems to work the way Viagra does; a full sensory entertainment system that outdoes
IMAX; and maybe even breast implants. (The book is a little unclear on this point, but in
"Brave New World" the highest compliment you can pay a woman is to call her "pneumatic.")
Huxley was not entirely serious about this. He began "Brave New World" as a parody of H.G.
Wells, whose writing he detested, and it remained a book that means to be as playful as it is
prophetic. And yet his novel much more accurately evokes the country we live in now,
especially in its depiction of a culture preoccupied with sex and mindless pop entertainment,
than does Orwell's more ominous book, which seems to be imagining someplace like North
Korea.
It is easy to see why some might see Huxley as more relevant to the reality around us than
Orwell, because basically "Big Brother," in the guise of the Soviet Union, lost the Cold War,
or so it seems.
But while initially convincing, the case for Huxley's superiority can be dismantled.
Most importantly, Huxley's main insight, namely that control can be maintained more
effectively through "entertainment, distraction, and superficial pleasure rather than through
overt modes of policing and strict control over food supplies" is not actually absent in
1984 .
In fact, exactly these kind of methods are used to control the Proles, on whom pornography
is pushed and prostitution allowed. In fact porn is such an important means of social control
that the IngSoc authorities even have a pornography section called "PornSec," which mass
produces porn for the Proles.
One of the LOL moments in Michael Radford's film version is when
Mr. Charrington, the agent of the thought police who poses as a kindly pawnbroker to rent a
room to Winston and Julia for their sexual trysts, informs them on their arrest that their
surveillance film will be 'repurposed' as porn.
In fact, Orwell's view of sex as a means of control is much more dialectical and
sophisticated than Huxley's, as the latter was, as mentioned above, essentially writing a
parody of the naive "free love" notions of H.G.Wells.
While sex is used as a means to weaken the Proles, 'anti-Sex' is used to strengthen the
hive-mind of Party members. Indeed, we see today how the most hysterical elements of the Left
-- and to a certain degree the Dissident Right -- are the most undersexed.
Also addictive substances are not absent from Orwell's dystopian vision. While Brave New
World only has soma, 1984 has Victory Gin, Victory Wine, Victory Beer, Victory
Coffee, and Victory Tobacco -- all highly addictive substances that affect people's moods and
reconcile them to unpleasant realities. Winston himself is something of a cigarette junkie and
gin fiend, as we see in this quote from the final chapter:
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on
dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the
telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up
at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the
caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into
it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured
with cloves, the speciality of the cafe
In these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments
at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp.
But while 1984 includes almost everything that Brave New World contains in
terms of controlling people through sex, drugs, and distractions, it also includes much, much
more, especially regarding how censorship and language are used to control people and how
tyranny is internalised. The chapter from which the above quote comes, shows how Winston, a
formerly autonomous agent, has come to accept the power of the system so much that he no longer
needs policing.
But most brilliant of all is Orwell's prescient description of how language is changed
through banning certain words and the expression of certain ideas or observations deemed
"thought crime," to say nothing of the constant rewriting of history. The activities of Big
Tech and their deplatforming of all who use words, phrases, and ideas not in the latest edition
of their "Newspeak" dictionary, have radically changed the way that people communicate and what
they talk about in a comparatively short period of time.
Orwell's insights into how language can be manipulated into a tool of control shows his much
deeper understanding of human psychology than that evident in Huxley's novel. The same can be
said about Orwell's treatment of emotions, which is another aspect of his novel that rings
particularly true today.
In 1984 hate figures, like Emmanuel Goldstein, and fake enemies, like Eastasia and
Eurasia, are used to unite, mobilise, and control certain groups. Orwell was well aware of the
group-psychological dynamics of the tribe projected to the largest scale of a totalitarian
empire. The concept of "three minutes hate" has so much resonance with our own age, where
triggered Twitter-borne hordes of SJWs and others slosh around the news cycle like emotional
zombies, railing against Trump or George Soros.
In Huxley's book, there are different classes but this is not a source of conflict. Indeed
they are so clearly defined -- in fact biologically so -- that there is no conflict between
them, as each class carries out its predetermined role like harmonious orbit of Aristotlean
spheres.
In short, Brave New World sees man as he likes to see himself -- a rational actor,
controlling his world and taking his pleasures. It is essentially the vision of a well-heeled
member of the British upper classes.
Orwell's book, by contrast, sees man as the tribal primitive, forced to live on a scale of
social organisation far beyond his natural capacity, and thereby distorted into a mad and cruel
creature. It is essentially the vision of a not-so-well-heeled member of the British middle
classes in daily contact with the working class. But is all the richer and more profound for
it.
Colin Liddell is one of the founders of the Alt-Right, which he now disavows, and
currently blogs at Affirmative
Right . He recently published a book "Interviews and Obituaries," available on Amazon
.
away humility and restraint. It fosters a sense of
entitlement.
Chris G
said...
February
24, 2017 at 04:48 AM
On the Crooked Timber piece: Quiggin makes a very astute
observation about 'propertarians' and Divine Providence in
his concluding paragraphs. If one takes it as a matter of
faith (religious or secular) that human activity inherently
leads to good outcomes that'll be a huge influence on how you
engage with the world. It blows away humility and restraint.
It fosters a sense of entitlement.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to
Chris G
...
Yep. All roads lead to scapegoating. The anti-social
capabilities of base desires and greed are often paled in
comparison to those of detached indifference supported by
abstract high-mindedness. For example, both sides can blame
the robots for the loss of decent blue collar jobs.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Not sure that there are "both sides" any more in elite
circles. There are at least two types though. There is very
little presence among elites on the progressive side.
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 04:58 AM
Chris G
said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Hard to call this related but worth reading, Why Nothing
Works Anymore -
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-singularity-in-the-toilet-stall/517551/
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 05:11 AM
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to
Chris G
...
[THANKS! This was LOL funny:]
"...When spun on its ungeared
mechanism, an analogous, glorious measure of towel appears
directly and immediately, as if sent from heaven..."
[This was highly relevant to today's lead article "The
Jobs Americans Do:"]
..."Precarity" has become a popular way to refer to
economic and labor conditions that force people-and
particularly low-income service workers-into uncertainty.
Temporary labor and flexwork offer examples. That includes
hourly service work in which schedules are adjusted ad-hoc
and just-in-time, so that workers don't know when or how
often they might be working. For low-wage food service and
retail workers, for instance, that uncertainty makes
budgeting and time-management difficult. Arranging for
transit and childcare is difficult, and even more costly, for
people who don't know when-or if-they'll be working.
Such conditions are not new. As union-supported
blue-collar labor declined in the 20th century, the service
economy took over its mantle absent its benefits. But the
information economy further accelerated precarity. For one
part, it consolidated existing businesses and made efficiency
its primary concern. For another, economic downturns like the
2008 global recession facilitated austerity measures both
deliberate and accidental. Immaterial labor also
rose-everything from the unpaid, unseen work of women in and
out of the workplace, to creative work done on-spec or for
exposure, to the invisible work everyone does to construct
the data infrastructure that technology companies like Google
and Facebook sell to advertisers...
[This was very insightful into its own topic of the
separation of technology "from serving human users to pushing
them out of the way so that the technologized world can
service its own ends," but I would rather classify that as
serving owners of proprietary technology rights.]
...Facebook and Google, so the saying goes, make their users
into their products-the real customer is the advertiser or
data speculator preying on the information generated by the
companies' free services. But things are bound to get even
weirder than that. When automobiles drive themselves, for
example, their human passengers will not become masters of a
new form of urban freedom, but rather a fuel to drive the
expansion of connected cities, in order to spread further the
gospel of computerized automation. If artificial intelligence
ends up running the news, it will not do so in order to
improve citizen's access to information necessary to make
choices in a democracy, but to further cement the supremacy
of machine automation over human editorial in establishing
what is relevant...
[THANKS! It was an exceptionally good article in places
despite that it wandered a bit off into the ozone at times.]
It hits on one of the reasons
why I am less skeptical than Darryl that AI will succeed, an
soon, in all kinds of fields: it may remain stupid in some
ways, but we will adapt to it.
Consider phone answering services. Its simple speech
recognition, which was once at the forefront of artificial
intelligence, has made them ubiquityous. Yet Dante would need
a new circle for a person who said "I just heard you say
5...3...7...is this correct?"
Some of these adaptations subtract from our quality of
life, as the article nicely describes. Some add to it, e.g we
no longer spend time at the mall arranging when and where to
meet if we get separated. Some are interesting and hard to
evaluate, e.g. Chessplayers' relation to the game has changed
radically since computers became good at it.
And there is one I find insidious: the homogeneization of
human activity and even thought. The information we ALL get
on a subject will be what sorts to the top among google
answers; the rest might as well not exist, much like
newspaper articles buried in a back page.
On the political front, Winston will not be necessary,
nobody will click through to the old information, we will all
just know that we were always at war with Eurasia.
And on the economic front, the same homogeneization, with
giant multinationals and crossmarketing deals. You'll be in a
country with great food, like Turkey, get into your rented
Toyota, say "I want dinner", and end up at a Domino's because
they have a deal with Toyota.
The middle third of the twentieth century was hysterical
about the totalitarian state
And the erasure of micro scale cultural heritage
That seems laughable since at least 1965 as lots of old
long dormant memes
Revived in these frightfully "totalized " civil societies
The Motions of human Society reveal underlying dialectics
not mechanics
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 09:55 AM
Paine said in reply to Paine...
"1984 " is way past it's sell by date
Much like Leviathan and the declaration of independence
Reply
Friday, February 24, 2017 at 09:59 AM
cm said in reply to
Julio
...
There was probably more than one movie about this topic -
people not happy with their "peaceful" but bland, boring, and
intellectually stifling environment.
Huxley had deeply felt apprehensions about the future the developed world might make for
itself. From these, he made some warnings in his writings and talks. In a 1958 televised
interview conducted by journalist
Mike Wallace
,
Huxley outlined several major concerns: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the
tendency toward distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the crucial importance of evaluating
the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to wily persuasion; the tendency to promote
modern politicians to a naive public as well-marketed commodities.
[32]
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
FAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available
to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social
issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which
such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free)
site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should
be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors
of this site
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or
referenced source) and are
not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society.We do not warrant the correctness
of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be
tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without
Javascript.
In
reality, standing alone with election fraud notwithstanding , last October's lockstep
decision by an entire news industry to suppress the starkly headline-worthy scandals around
Hunter Biden's laptop, along with all other negative stories about Joe Biden, accounts directly
for 17% of Biden voters who would have abandoned him " 
