“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.”
“Thoughtcrime is death.”
“Two minutes hate.”
“We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.”
Ironically, we’ve reduced George Orwell’s magnum opus, Nineteen Eighty-Four into a few simple Newspeak-ian phrases and a jumble of ideas about totalitarianism and privacy issues. Some political discussions can be reduced to each side calling the other Big Brother. An image search for Big Brother pulls up images and posters of Former President George W. Bush and Current President Barack Obama alike.
We invoke Orwell and the novel on few issues. There has been a rapid advancement in surveillance technologies. The United States is currently involved wars in the Middle East, far enough away for many people to keep out of mind. According to some our language has ‘devolved’ into Newspeak (see adding i- or e- to everything or txtspeak amongst other examples.)
The worst amongst the times 1984 is invoked is during partisan attacks between political parties. Comparing your opponent to Big Brother when they do–well, anything you don’t like– cheapens the discourse and the use to the metaphor, making it useless when the allegory is actually applicable.
It’s easy to just look at the surface elements presented in the novel, but we need to remember how insidious the Inner Party is, especially if we don’t want things to turn out doubleplusungood.
Now, other dystopian novels tackle similar topics, but 1984 captures people minds and emotions in a way the others don’t. Fahrenheit 451 is a society where books are burned by ‘firemen’ in order to keep the hedonistic anti-intellectual society in place. However, Bradbury was attacking mass media for ‘dumbing down’ society and if you read the interview in some editions, it reads uncomfortably close to arguments about political correctness.
Brave New World is better with a scary vision of mass production and sameness inspired by Ford’s assembly line, but his attacks on the supposed hedonism of certain activites seem archaic, such as the non-procreational sex.
Bradbury and Huxley seemed to fear that it would be society’s wants that will doom us to dystopias. Orwell, however saw the collapse coming from the top. We don’t know who Big Brother is or who the leaders of the ruling Inner Party are, one of the things 1984 scary. All that is known is that there was a war fought, a revolution won and the rest is lost down the memory hole. In Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, there seems to be a point where people let these things happen, where as in 1984 things are made to happen.
But there is a difference in what makes the scenario of each novel scary. F451: Burn the book. BNW: Drink the soma. 1984: Speak the Newspeak. The first two are very material. You can point to the problem. The protagonists in the first two do, and either survive to tell or die trying.
What makes 1984 really scary– for me at least– is that even the dissent is manufactured. In the other books you can run off somewhere away from the dystopia, or you can find someone to share the dissent with.
Not so in Oceania.
You would have to make it to Eastasia or Eurasia, something hard to do when the enemy of the moment keeps changing. The whole world is tied up in a war also– if there even is a war– if there is even another country. If you tell somebody about your dissenting thoughts, you’ll be reported to the thoughtpolice. Oh, and the government also toys with you, letting him think you think you have found an escape and an ally in the Inner Party.
But that’s just the beginning,the amount of control that the Inner Party has over information masterful. The propaganda is genius. The control over information is air-tight. Heck, it is even your own job is to retouch images and delete records of events and people. (Orwell predicted one of the problems of the digital age: With the internet and image editing, information can be transient.) Even your journal, full of your own thoughts can betray you. Your own thoughts are trapped in your head. And even that doesn’t last.
Welcome to Winston’s world.
A Soviet "nonperson" vanishes: commissar Nikolai Yezhov retouched after falling from favor and being executed in 1940. (Pictures and description from Wikpedia)
Now, Orwell was writing from the beginning of the 20th century, with the first two World Wars just happening years ago and with the world entering the time of the Cold War. Much of Oceania’s politics and actions are based off the Soviet Union, which he saw as a perversion of the Socialist ideas he held and even some of the actions US and the UK itself during that time.
That said, I don’t think we are all that close to the world Orwell presents. Have things occasionally started blowing in a similar direction. Yes, in the past and even during modern times. Remember free speech zones? Wiretapping? (The previous administration should be slammed for that and the current administration should get rid of it.) Heck, part of the reason the US went to war in Iraq was that initially very few people were willing to risk their patriotism being questioned, if they were against the war or even questioning it. The accusations over patriotism continue on today.
However, for all of the previous administration’s faults, there must have been a few poor souls who actually wanted to help the country out and there was some actual good done. That and the propaganda machine of the Bush Years was nowhere near the level of that of the novel. Bush’s popularity dropped down to low 30-something percent, if not lower towards the end. The same can be said of the start of Obama’s current term. One can achieve similar ‘control’ over the media by understanding how the news-cycle works and hiring a good graphic designer or a team who knows how to brand.
So basically: No, the census is not like 1984. Neither is the public option, that’s Logan’s Run, but not really. I’m sure there are some for of Bush’s policies, just can’t think of them off the top of my head. Getting comments deleted or yourself banned from a message board on the internet… very much not like 1984.
When someone goes on how something is like 1984, ask them to follow through with their whole arguement. Someone yelling “1984! Big Brother! Thoughtcrime!” and nothing else doesn’t have much of one. And, if they have a television or radio show ask yourself what their motivation is for doing so.
That all said, the novel serves as useful reminder on what real totalitarianism is. There are many things that governments and corporations can do to monitor its citizens and customers, but when we have the ability monitor the government and businesses right back, we don’t have to be afraid. Really, you just have to pay attention and actually participate in the government. It’s when they come for all the information and change the language around, that’s when we will have something worry about.
When it comes around, you hopefully won’t be singing:
Someone to claim us, someone to follow /
Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo /
Someone to fool us, someone like you /
We want you Big Brother, Big Brother…
