I had an opportunity to re-read 1984 recently and was astounded at it’s clarity of prophecy. Everything noted in 1984 has become fact. It is ironic that the version I have states it is a work of warning, but that time has since passed. Pornography and sour beer for the proles sounds an awful lot like pornography and marijuana that we have today for the masses. Newspeak is now replicated in words that offend for example, “Mother”, “Father”, and other such specimens like ‘Woman” and “Man”. Which untold number of words will be deleted next?
Truth is what to believe, so men have vaginas and women have penises. Truth will never be based on facts now, only beliefs and what the party says will be the truth. The party can make anything physical happen and they can make anything mental happen as well. The party will be the truth. (disinformation as it is called today and practiced by everyone struggling for power.) The assault on the nuclear family, the turning of children against their parents, the erosion of “parental rights” with the aim of complete destruction of such a concept.
Power of the party must be maintained, so first they remove connection to the land (Dutch farmers anyone?) Then they remove connection to the family (seen in American schools and institutions today) which leaves a perfectly moldable specimen of human mass. They then pour in the beliefs which are suitable for complete control. Financial fear (debanking), social fear (cancel culture), ideological fear (class struggle replaced with identity struggle.) All foretold by the prophet.
The DEI mafia, surreptitious and insidious, has crept into the corporate boardrooms of the West. It is no different from organized crime, cartels or totalitarian mafias. Identities must be protected! The enemy is within and it must be rooted out and exposed. Shamed and defaced like a brutal Maoist cultural shaming. It’s target should cry and weep, beg forgiveness and be publicly ridiculed in a modern day pillory: websites and social apps.
At first I was shocked, not so much at the accuracy of the predictions, but the lazy way people have fallen asleep at the wheel, letting themselves be herded. The tipping point has been reached and I fear it is too late to discuss dignity and freedom of thought or expression with anyone as those words will be come repugnant , mocked, ostracized and shamed in the name of equity.
Was it Blair’s fault? In writing such a thing was it a prophecy or a recipe for future Maoists? I understand now Blair’s dislike of academicians and they are thoroughly described in 1984. So he got the year wrong, but it has come nonetheless
What am I left with as an individual? Nothing. I can only maybe possibly choose the tyranny I will live under. Maybe a tyranny whose truth is closer to something I would say is true, for alas, my beliefs are my truths as well.
Indeed he was.
Working for The BBC, he was trained well in arts of doublespeak, for the BBC are the architects of such language. We are living in a truly Orwellian time (the epithet is astonishingly appropriate, as you say). Orwell is one of our truly great writers, both fiction and opinion. He wasn’t always right though, his piece about the writing of Frank Richards – he wrote children’s books by the yard, most famous of which are the Billy Bunter books, now banned from public libraries because they are deemed both offensive to fat bastards and elitist because they are about a ficticious Public School called Greytowers. I have a collection of them which I adore. I read them avidly as a child, a kid from a shit-hole in East London. How dare I read such elitist, offensive, nay Fascist even, drivel???? Because they are fucking brilliant, that’s why. Anyway, Orwell didn’t like Billy Bunter because it was elitist. Which is a bit rich coming from a bloke who went to Eton School, the most elitist institution known to man. Typical sullen socialist. But I’ll let him off from that one because most everything else he wrote is wonderful. It was his only mistake (in my view) so give a bloke a chance to redeem himself. I don’t say that about everyone. There a few people who I wouldn’t give a second chance to.
All of what he wrote in 1984 is now upon us. The ministry of truth is the BBC and organisations like facebook and suchlike creations. The other bit is that everyone is watching everyone else being watched by everyone…or are we just being controlled by one enormous panopticon? Therein lies yet another story.
Have you read Brave New World? Because that’s the other half of the story. It’s almost as if these two books have been implemented as if they are instruction manuals.
Fear.
No fear.