I am rereading 1984.

And I am astounded at Orwell's prescience. His timing was off by 20 years, but he foresaw everything!

Government control of media.
Use of sound bites to control the messages from above.
Deification of the political leader.
Focus on one demonic enemy for the public to hate.
Organized hate-mongering.
Sexual abstinence required unless procreating.
Government intrusion into private life; spying on people at home.
Groupthink.
Class warfare. Keeping the public beaten down and discouraged.
Manipulation of the language in order to shape political ideas.
Youth indoctrination.
Encouragement of spying on others and reporting misdeeds.
Fomenting fear and anger among the citizenry.
Promulgating false information about foreign affairs.

And I am only about 1/3 of the way through the book! Genius.

this was the first book he wrote, which is the "foundation" of 1984. it is a fascinating book

I had forgotten what a great writer he was.

a little at a time.

Its just like the stuff I've fumed at and corrected blaming any and all wars on Democrats (even if they weren't in office at the time:-))

And a very important parallel at that.

One of my favorites (and it works with almost any idea). Changing the "cultural baseline" is an extremely powerful strategy. -- Few, if any, minds are untouched by the prevailing culture.

And language (what words are used and what meaning is attached to them) is an extremely powerful tool to manipulate culture. Moreover, when the trend in language is towards "dumbing down" and "overcharging", this can strip a language (and the people who use it) of the foundation on which to (better) perceive, understand and effect the world around them.

Of course, this works best when it is part of a comprehensive effort, filling people's minds with nonsense, isolating them from "foreign" thought, keeping them occupied with their lives, and driving them with desire and fear. The "carrot and stick" approach has proven its value throughout history... And at some point the "carrot" usually starts to become scarce. But the "donkeys" generally have little say in the matter at that point.

I am reading "Propaganda", by Edward Bernays myself. -- Might as well get it from the "horse's mouth".

"Propaganda" was recently re-released and has a good introduction by Mark Crispin Miller.

:crazy:

This week we are ar War with Afghanistan(Eurasia)

The next week we at War with Iraq(Eastasia)...and we've always been at War with Iraq(Eastasia)...

when we were at war with Eurasia and when with Eastasia, you merely get discombobulated, throw up your hands, and go along with the current thinking, whatever it may be this week.

This was to try to make the Iraq "war" look like just a continuation of policy.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/goldstein.html

"We need a common enemy to unite us" - Condoleezza Rice, March 2000

Goldstein is bin Laden/Saddam/al Zarqawi/ or whoever today's villain-du-jour happens to be

Maybe I missed it?

There were so many that I missed several in my writing frenzy. There is much to think about.

Doublethink sounds like doublespeak, but it's sort of the opposite -- it's the way of holding two conflicting facts and believing both are true. (Like "Republicans are fiscally conservative" and "deficits don't matter" or "We are in Iraq fighting to liberate our enemy.")


The motto "Ignorance is Strenght" has proven itself true this past election, as the entire campaign was based on a hatred of understanding of the issues and facts. Ask any Repub what good thing Bush has DONE so far, and they don't have an answer, just that they believe in him.


Winston's job is to revise history to eliminate inconvenient facts and make them correspond with current dogma...

The internet is right on course to serve the same purpose as more and more current events are archived online instead of in print form.


Oh yeah, and cheap "ink sticks" that don't so much write as carve onto paper...

It was written about 15 years before 1984. Huxley and Orwell both call it their inspiration for their dystopias.

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm and
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/nonus.html

and elsewhere. There is no excuse for not (re)reading it.

copyright infringement. :D

You'd have to read the book before you could follow the movie.

"All that was required of them was a
primitive patriotism which could be
appealed to whenever it was
necessary..." -George Orwell


" Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip”, wrote George Orwell of journalists under dictatorships, “but”, he went on to say about journalists in “democratic” societies, “the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip."

"We are different from the Nazis, in that we know what we are doing."

This is one of my favourite quotes. It is a statement that the Party's motivations - the answer to the question of "why" (as opposed to the "how" that people tend to focus on) that Winston is always asking - are "pure": they seek "power for its own sake", and power for the Party, not personal gain for themselves as individuals. Although they have access to a few more luxuries, members of the Inner Party are not especially wealthy. Unlike almost every totalitarian regime in history, including the Nazis, and perhaps if they have their way, the Bush regime, power for the Party isn't just a scheme to get rich, it is its own reward - it's something you do because it is ultimately the only thing in life worth doing. In fact members of the Inner Party are as much slaves to Ingsoc as the lower echelons that they exploit, and willingly so... true, selfless commitment to power for its own sake is the only way to create true, eternal, undying totalitarianism. It's about making your contribution to the immortality of the party... next to that, personal wealth seems, to the Party's leaders, a pointless and childish goal.

So the good news is that, as their motivations essentially boil down to greed, the Bush cabal will tear its own guts out as the Nazis did. They're not even close to being the Party; individually they are too shallow, selfish and conflicted to create a totalitarian project as ambitious as the one portrayed in Orwell's book.