1984

Spoilers, I suppose …

I have to say I enjoy the novel 1984. Before my recent re-read of the novel I read Asimov’s critique of it. It’s a good critique and he has some good ideas, but I think he drastically misses the point in so many ways. At one point Asimov claims people in the 1980s use electric razors more than razor blades, which just is not true. I’ve not read any Asimov but I feel in this statement he tells on himself a little bit, showing how perhaps Asimov’s science fiction is much more about technological advances, with the advances being generally superior.

He makes a good point about the workings of the telescreens for surveillance, but again misunderstands them. He points out that they wouldn’t be particularly good for surveilling the public in terms of manpower and attention spans, etc. But 100% surveillance isn’t a feature of 1984. It is clearly mentioned that the telescreens only exist in the cities and there are lots of places where there aren’t any.

The point Asimov misses is that the surveillance in 1984 works on paranoia. It’s not there to completely monitor and record people’s actions all the time – although it can do that – it’s there so people are in constant fear someone might be watching them, never knowing exactly when they are being watched. It’s an old technique in fact. You keep people uncertain and use people’s mistrust of each other to keep people in check.

This is clearly set out in 1984. It’s an authoritarian regime that turns friends, neighbours and even family members against each other.

I think Asimov might have disliked 1984 simply because it’s not really a science fiction novel. It’s much more about state oppression and propaganda. It’s about ideas an media, and has some very clever ideas in it, despite its science fiction being simplistic.

There are no robots or computers in 1984. The only major technological advancement stated is a two-way TV broadcast system used for mass surveillance. In fact, if it had been about data surveillance, it would perhaps have been unreadable, overly explaining how the data is collected, and baffling readers at the time. The simplistic in this case works in the book’s favour.

It is a violent world in which the populace is entertained with newsreels of war depicting the slaughtering of enemies. Violence is a major feature in the first few pages of the book and this violent culture sets up the narrative for the confusion and struggles of Winston.

One thing that struck me about the first section of the book is how it has a kind of cosiness about it. And this is much like The Waltons, or The Durrells, or perhaps more accurately The Shawshank Redemption. Although Winston is in a stifling, oppressive world, he has at least his own modest apartment, and his own mind. There is a kind of comforting make-do-and-mend feel about it, and in particular, like in The Shawshank Redemption, a kind of coping strategy in which the main character makes the best of a terrible situation.

This makes Winston’s character compelling to read. Despite his many unappealing traits, he is an abuse victim.

Orwell wasn’t a socialist

There’s a lot of criticism for Orwell, including his lack of prophecy and his supposed fake socialism. There are a few articles online denouncing Orwell as only a pretend socialist and I urge people to read this essay which goes through the various evidence. It’s certainly an interesting read and some of the points are most valid. Among the questions over his political views, there is his clear racism, much of it clear within his writings, his adoration of Hitler, and of him being a potential rapist.

Orwell is not so much a hero of mine so I have no trouble with these things, and they do remain with me while I read his work, guiding me when trying to understand his writings. But they did not diminish my enjoyment of reading 1984.

It matters not to me whether Orwell was a real socialist or not. I’ve not read his personal writings, nor do I intend to, so I do not feel well informed enough to say either way. But we don’t really need Orwell himself to be a socialist hero; he wrote a novel that many find inspiring. Fiction really doesn’t change the world in any meaningful way, so what does it matter if the writer was a fraud?

To dismiss 1984 merely because Orwell wasn’t a real enough socialist is say: People who find the ideas engaging must stop immediately! It’s to say that if a socialist with genuine socialist leanings was inspired by the book, they are somehow wrong to be inspired.

It literally makes no difference whether Orwell was a socialist or not. And if the ‘true’ reading of 1984 is an attack on socialism, but many socialists miss that point, so what? Perhaps it’s a flaw of Orwell’s writing that made his true intentions not clear enough. If there is are different interpretations of the work, that’s down to the text’s ambiguity, not because of mass misreadings of the book.

However, having said that, the section where Winston reads The Book does point to a critique of the Soviet Union, saying much the same thing that Animal Farm says:

‘As usual the High were to be turned out by the Middle, who would then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the High would be able to maintain their position permanently.’

But this is not so much an attack on socialism than a warning against authoritarianism – a clear, recurring feature of the book – how oppression is used by the ruling classes to maintain their grip on power. And perhaps this is the only warning Orwell has in terms of politics. Perhaps 1984 is not at all about left versus right, but about authoritarianism versus libertarianism. After all, one of the main acts of resistance in the novel is sexual freedom. More than anything the narrative puts individual freedom against state oppression.

Perhaps his only concern was to warn against authoritarian oppression.

The Mechanics of Propaganda

I’m sure a lot of the criticism for Orwell and 1984 is quite valid. I can easily believe Orwell wasn’t a genius in political thinking, but first and foremost I think people should remind themselves 1984 is very much a work of fiction, and very much fantastical in its description of authoritarianism. In this essay from The Wire, the writer claims 1984 “hampers awareness of what really threatens democracy today.” Really? Is a work of fiction written 75 years ago the biggest danger to our political lives? Do people base all their political thinking on just one work of fiction? Is there not an actual, real life mass media system keeping people poorly informed via selective reporting, a bias in favour of the wealthy and powerful, and a heavy focus on celebrity bullshit?

1984 is a work of fiction and it is more of an allegory than a prediction of reality, and that is why it has stood the test of time and entered public consciousness.

The extreme system of government and the convenient three mega-state world do not seem particularly feasible to me. While the credulity and compliance of the people seems very much accurate, the fact that there are so very few dissenters makes the book feel more like a lesson than a prediction. And the book’s final point, that a tyrannical government could become so permeating and powerful that even one’s thoughts are controlled, is obviously more satirical than anything else. As does the amount of effort the regime expends on torturing and reforming just one person, when they could easily just kill him since he’s not notable enough of a person to become a martyr.

Newspeak is entirely far fetched in my opinion. How feasible is it to be able to control the language people use and to reduce the number of words? It is something that seemingly can only exist in fiction, yet it is a brilliant device to illustrate the censorship of oppressive political systems and how language is used to control people and their thoughts.

It poses the reader the notion of: What if words were removed? So instead of an array of similar-meaning, but slightly nuanced, words, they are reduced to just one single word. Then later, some words are removed entirely, so there is no way to express that particular concept or emotion.

Again, this is a satirical, allegorical device to reveal how propaganda and censorship work, if not absolutely like Newspeak does, but but incrementally like real world censorship does. By this simple idea, the notion of state power controlling people’s thoughts through limiting ways of expression makes clear how propaganda and censorship operate.

It is in that sense why 1984 has lasted so long. In the real world, language is controlled by those in power, words are even given new meanings. Newspeak is just a fantastical example of the how the powerful control the narrative for their own gain, and this was as much true at the time Orwell wrote the novel as it is now.

I think once more to the propaganda campaign that has led to the once Labour leader Corbyn to be consistently associated with anti-semitism. I would not call this an effective campaign in any regards. I’d say most people do not care or pay attention enough and most supporters do not believe these obvious smears. This campaign was and is upheld by the mostly self-appointed anti-semitism experts who clearly have a pro-Israel agenda, and by the corporate owned news outlets that repeat a particular framing of the situation uncritically. It is authority – real or fabricated – that upholds the smears. But the result is an evidence-free conjoining of the MP Corbyn with anti-Jewish racism.

Real world corporate news even has things ‘memory-holed’ to a certain extent. True, news stories are not necessarily erased from history, but corporate media, who assert an unquestioning authority on political narratives, regularly forget pieces of inconvenient news and under-report them. Journalists regularly forget valuable context when reporting on events, let interviewees speak lies unchallenged, and in many cases adopt a single narrative unquestionably, dismissing unquestioningly counter narratives as disinformation or conspiracy.

For a good example of memory-holing, read this excellent article by Jonathan Cook on how the BBC finds time to fact check death count from the earthquake on March 28 in Myanmar, but how they fail to properly fact check Israel’s propaganda excuses for their war crimes and genocide.

State ‘truths’ are an important feature of 1984. The literal destroying of knowledge and art is a real thing used throughout history. Orwell takes this to an extreme conclusion to reveal to the reader the absolute power it has. Without evidence or proof, only a people’s memory remains, and once those who remember die, all that’s left is the official accounts. Lies then become the truth.

Features of Control and Coercion

The biggest strength in 1984 is how it analyses and explains the effects of propaganda in an authoritarian regime. There’s an interesting part during Hate Week where the official enemy of the state changes from Eastasia to Eurasia. The person delivering a speech does not break rhythm as the target villain of his speech changes mid sentence. The people listening immediately seamlessly change their thinking to conform with the official party line, and even though they helped set up the decorations for Hate Week, suddenly start to rip it all down, since the decoration is no longer showing a state villain but an ally.

Interestingly in criticising Orwell, Asimov actually gives an example confirming this effect happening in real life:

‘Do you think the German people in 1939 pretended that the Poles had attacked them and started World War II? No! Since they were told that was so, they believed it as seriously as you and I believe that they attacked the Poles.’

What Orwell writes is an exaggeration because it all happens spontaneously in mid sentence. But this kind of Doublethink does happen in the ‘free’ world too. Who were once enemies are suddenly portrayed in a kinder light, as potential allies by Western governments and media. The recent coup in Syria is a good example of this where Western governments and media outlets spoke well of the new regime, despite the new leaders being an offshoot of the terrorist group ISIS..

The switching between good and bad happens in the real world because ordinary people are generally ill informed by the billionaire-owned news outlet making the switch. There is a trust in corporate media authority that allows the news outlets to say what is what, generally unchallenged. People are held in a ill-informed limbo, sustained by the corporate media trick of providing little context to help readers/listeners make up their own mind. In this state, I think it is easy to nudge people one way or another, to insinuate who is good or bad. But in 1984 the people literally forsake one ‘truth’ for another, switching from something they knew to something they now know. They do this from a deep-seated fear more than lazy trust.

Orwell’s self-delusion device is an effective way of portraying what looks like people denying to themselves what they actually know. This applies to the members of The Outer Party-- i.e. the middle class – and he implies these people of Oceania are sort of well informed, despite the persistent and continual censorship of history, that they should know better. (Compare this to the Proles who are poorly informed, and whose opinion is irrelevant to The Party).

Asimov makes a good point about why Big Brother should bother to erase the past when no one is likely to have the time or ability to read any history anyway. Orwell does seem to imply the Outer Party are both well informed and easily manipulated, yet at the time their entire world controlled and information destroyed.

Real world manipulation hinges more on poorly informing the public through a corporate dominance of the news rather than it being a case that well informed people willing to deceive themselves to follow the party line – although self-deception is a common human trick. In reality, people don’t really know as much as they should, but are emboldened by strong assertions and encouraged to hold an opinion on subjects they have little expertise. I’d say anyone who relies only on corporate news is most likely less informed than they might think they are.

By thinking of people as being well informed, the self delusion portrays people as dupes, as simpletons, as gullible, as weak and easily manipulated. I can’t help thinking Orwell is having a dig at his peers in some way. I don’t think people are quite so stupid, but they are poorly informed, and when one lacks the necessary context needed to form a good, rounded opinion, people are inclined to come to poor conclusions.

There are likely many holes in the 1984 world’s logic. But this is to take the book a little too literally. The point of the book is to create is a terrifying world of absolute control where it is impossible to think for yourself, even if some of the practices of absolute control don’t make sense.

Victim of Hate

In his critique of 1984, Asimov dislikes Orwell for his misanthropy, he dislikes how the working people are described as stupid and uncouth. In 1984 the Proles are without power, their beliefs and potential so irrelevant they do not need the 24 hour surveillance. Perhaps Asimov was just a very optimistic person because I personally enjoy the misanthropy.

People en masse are pretty inactive it seems. Looking at the destruction of the planet reveals clearly how nonchalant people can be. It’s easy to dismiss people’s apathy and inaction as stupidity, but I don’t think Orwell quite does that. I feel a lot of his critiquing of people holds true. It’s just not very optimistic. It perhaps stings because it actually hits the nail on the head.

In The Book Orwell writes:

‘The aim of the Low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristics of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.’

While I don’t agree all people want everyone to be equal, the sentence describes systemic oppression to explain people’s political apathy, and I would say this applies to all working people, not just the working class. I’d say people’s apathy comes from not just overwork, but a lack of education (that is, some history isn’t taught in schools), poor news reporting (that focuses on celebrity and sport more than news), and cultural influences as well. Orwell writes with a seeming sneering judging towards working class people, but I feel the reason people might take issue with the way he describes groups is because he’s actually fairly accurate.

Winston himself isn’t particularly likeable, but he’s an interesting character. He’s not so much a hero because he’s never been allowed to be an hero. He is misogynistic, but it makes sense. It is a symptom of his oppression. He’s frustrated so he despises women – because he wants women. He is a product of the authoritarian regime he lives in. His hatred of the world very much makes sense but the small fact he is aware of something wrong makes him more as a victim.

One moment he fantasises smashing Julia’s head in out of fear because he thinks she’s spying on him. Then when she falls over in front of him, his compassion comes forward. He is partly paralysed by conflicting feelings, but he is compelled to help her back onto her feet. Winston is a victim and I don’t think Orwell is saying men who are violent towards women are the actual victims rather than the women – being a victim oneself does not absolve you from your own transgressions – but 1984 is not a normal situation and it is clear Winston’s hatred of the world is really hatred for Big Brother.

1984 is a world where people’s entire lives are surveilled and controlled. It’s a stifling world where one is not allowed individual thought or individual expression, and you are forced to support war and death to the enemy, in a world of diminished opportunity. This is why Winston expresses a lack of solidarity with his fellow citizens.

As with all good stories, it is a test of character, and 1984 is one long test of a single person’s character. What makes Winston’s character enjoyable to read is that although he’s is often loathsome, he is aware that something is wrong, while others play the role Big Brother wants them to play. He is aware of his victimhood and through that, there’s a sense he can break out of that, rebel, and perhaps be a better person too. The rebellion is all in his head, because he cannot easily express opposition to Big Brother openly. 1984 is a tale of a victim realising his victimhood, but so victimised he cannot express his opposition in a positive way.

Julia

I love Julia’s character at the beginning. She starts out so well, being someone smart enough to contrive carefully considered systems of defiance and evade detection from Big Brother at the same time. She teaches Winston some things, shows him ways to rebel, and is clever enough to do it.

The problem is Orwell later describes her as indifferent to resisting the system, a kind of credulous dupe, who is only interested in pleasure. It feels like Orwell creates a strong, strong-minded woman who helps to liberate Winston, but as soon as they get together, Orwell works to make her more and more vacuous and brainless. It’s a real shame.

Perhaps he changed his mind on her as he wrote, perhaps his inner sexists slowly seeped out, idk. But it does feel to me that he wrote her character as too clever, then decided he needed to isolate Winston again, and this isolation comes at the expense of Julia’s character.

Orwell uses Julia to make a point about people lacking an understanding of the system and therefore harbouring a kind of immunity to it. But this point could have been made without dragging Julia into the mix. There are other characters this could be said about, and the point could still be made about people’s susceptibility towards authoritarian regimes.

The other thing wrong with Julia is that she is described as being in love with Winston merely from sight alone, having never spoken to him. At the beginning, the note she hands him with ‘I love you’ written on it could easily be a tactic to shock Winston and make him realise there is more to living, more to the people around him, but Orwell pretty much has Julia literally in love with Winston, and it doesn’t really work because Winston is described as older and weak and pale, with a varicose ulcer, and he even tells Julia he wanted to rape her.

It is at that moment Julia seems so lucid, understanding that Winston’s feelings are the result of an oppressive system. Her lack of shock and fear at the rape remark can be read as a demonstration of her cultural insight. But this is negated by her later indifference to opposing the system, making her more passive than anything else.

For her to be in love with Winston from the beginning seems out of place and it would have been easy enough to have her develop feelings of love over time. She could also have been a better ally with Winston also. There’s no reason for her to be distanced from Winston by being apathetic, and I think a close bond between them would impact the ending more greatly. It would make the ending of the novel all the more terrible.

I wonder if Orwell decided to make Julia an airhead and further isolate Winston so that his eventual, inevitable betrayal of her seems like a more natural conclusion, that it helps the reader understand and accept his betrayal. Perhaps making the bonds between Julia and Winston too great would make Winston’s betrayal seem more cowardly and weak, no matter what Big Brother does to him. It would make Winston less of a victim, more of a coward.

The Book within the Book

‘The Book’ part of the novel is a bit more interesting than I remember it being, but it goes on way too long to describe very simple concepts. It reads a bit like Orwell’s written treatment for 1984, which he then decided to put into his book unedited. It doesn’t need to be so long or repetitive and it’s a bit of a bore towards the end.

The basic point of The Book is: There are three, equally matched super states who are endlessly at war, not for any material gain, but for the ruling classes to keep their wealth and power. War is used to occupy people’s emotional thinking, to get them to be patriotic, while they work hard to create products that are ultimately destroyed in the wars.

1984 describes a meaningless, repetitive cycle in which the masses are kept in a limbo of drudgery for fear that, if their living standards improved too much, people would see there was no need for those with wealth and power. So the powerful maintain their position by keeping people emotionally distracted by war, which simultaneously allows them to excuse their own poor living standards and to remain subservient.

There’s a seeming socialist message amongst that, and much of the ideas check out. In real life War is used by the wealthy to increase their wealth. It is used to manipulate masses, for weapons manufacturers to extract wealth from the state. War is used to gain valuable natural resources.

To help maintain the lust for war, information is carefully controlled. Insinuation is a key feature of news articles (usually when official enemies are the subject), while real war crimes (such as ones committed by the West and its allies) are ignored, downplayed overlooked, etc.

Coincidentally in the UK we currently have a Labour government destroying what’s left of public services, taking benefits away from the most vulnerable, while wages stagnate and prices rise. At the same time, this government is promising to spend more on the military, accompanying it with jingoists rhetoric aimed at the superpower Russia. If you’re trying to tell me 1984 is a load of garbage and bears no reflection on the reality of politics, then real life politics tells me otherwise!

What is outlined in The Book is a simplified version of world politics, with perhaps an Illuminati kind of world order. But while much of what is described isn’t quite the reality, it’s a useful summary of how it all works. It feels more like a philosophical interpretation of world events rather than a description of real political vicissitudes.

Much of what is written in The Book feels like a critique of wartime Britain, a way to account for the patriotism and the wilful sacrifice that allows the war to continue and living standards to remain poor. This is something that can be said whether you agree the second world war was necessary or not. It’s not necessarily saying the war was pointless, but that the wartime paradigm could be very much used for the upholding of, and the continuation of, any meaningless war.

The Book claims that it is technology that gave rise to the 1984 world. Before, the class system was necessary and claims of wanting equality were largely empty. It was the development of machines that took away people’s need to work that allowed equality to potentially become a reality. It was the ruling classes who shifted to a more authoritarian regime to maintain their wealth and power over everyone else.

It could very well be the case that Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, and to allow his fantastical ideas to be more widely accepted wrote them in the form of science fiction. If that is the case, what isn’t clear is whether Orwell is saying technology inevitably creates authoritarianism – that technological advancement must be therefore avoided – or whether it is that technology will be abused by the ruling classes unless wary people make sure it doesn’t happen.

If we are to look at the spying, the mistrust and the authoritarianism of the Soviet Union, but give them greater technology to accomplish their surveillance, then the 1984 world becomes a reality. This is possibly Orwell’s single idea: Give the Soviets CCTV; which is why this work of ‘science fiction’ isn’t really science fiction.

Perhaps Orwell’s aim was to warn people that authoritarianism could occur via technological advancements, but The Book does state that the 1984 world only happened because of socialist revolutions, and this gives credence to the notion that Orwell’s aim was to only ever warn about socialist misuses of technological surveillance, but not capitalist ones.

As I said previously, it matters not whether Orwell was a friend to socialism or not. If his ideas fit and inspire, it makes no difference what his true intentions were. The claim of the ruling classes using technology for maintaining power and increasing wealth is true. In this interview Yasha Levine describes how the internet was created specifically to spy and control the people. Orwell’s description of pointless wars is not entirely true. Wars are used to gain control of parts of the world with valuable resources. They are far from pointless, but the weapons making machine does profit from ‘forever wars’ so war is a permanent feature of the world.

One thing about The Book is that it is later revealed that it is a work of fiction. It’s an interesting technique to first explain away the 1984 world, then later claim that isn’t the case. Storywise this creates more alarm and confusion with Winston’s torture scene – which is a series of events many films and TV shows have clearly been inspired by, being disjointed and confusing, with older characters reappearing randomly.

But the dismissing of the contents of The Book means it can also be read two ways by the reader: that everything is true in the book, and O’Brien is lying about it; or that everything is false in the book and it is in fact a fabrication. I think this is part of the enduring quality of 1984. It presents ideas that the reader can accept or dismiss according to their own political views.

The truth of The Book is never completely revealed either way, and this asserts that the real aim of the book is to question knowledge and information more than anything else.

Critic of Orwell? Think Again

Yes, Orwell has his critics, but one of the reasons 1984 has stood the test of time is because his ideas are quite clever and they have parallels with postmodernism – yet were written several years before the rise of postmodernism. One of the key features of Doublethink is that it works on the fact we cannot know someone else’s mind. If all evidence is destroyed – which is what happens in the 1984 world – then only memory remains. But if no one else remembers – or claims not to remember – how can one prove anything?

In Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition (not that I’ve read the entire book) there’s a compelling concept of performing a fake bank robbery. A fake bank robbery would result in very real consequences, thus a fabrication becomes the real. The real comes from the fact that no other person can know what the fake robber is thinking. The only possible interpretation is to assume the robbery is genuine and respond accordingly.

Doublethink works in a very similar way to this, and one of the main features of 1984 is self doubt, a person’s inability to truly know reality, and the power tyrannical governments have exploiting that. So in a corrupt and ultra-authoritarian system, the ruling class creates reality. Whatever they say is the truth.

The far right exploit this loophole. They use dogwhistle to speak to their supporters, without openly saying the things they want to do. To stop them it comes down to critics to read between the lines and interpret what their aims are. The problem is, if it isn’t explicitly stated, how can one possible know for sure? It’s this doubt that can lead to the dismissal of criticism, and aid the far right to rise to victory.

True, sometimes the far right are very open with what they say, but we know we have biased, billionaire-owned news outlets dominating our airwaves, so much of the doubt in the right’s true aims can be brought to us by corporate news outlets. They tell us there is nothing to worry about, and overworked people, not really paying attention might believe that.

So to dismiss 1984 as bad science fiction is to miss the point. It’s a book about isolation and uncertainty set in a terrible world where even one’s thoughts are controlled by the government. It’s an outrageous fictionalised world that takes the loss of personal freedom to its extreme.

Brave New World

I’ve compared 1984 to Brave New World before. Brave New World has a lot more humour to it and in many ways gets it right with its ‘bread and circuses’ style of authoritarianism. We live in a world where much of the populace is placated with enough food and enough entertainment. However in more recent years, Western states have seen a diminishing of people power and an increase in authoritarian rule. The rise of the internet has already created the mass surveillance the ruling classes need. So in more recent years the balance has tipped more towards 1984.

Having said that, the ‘bread and circuses’ thing is also a feature of 1984. Only the Party members are under constant surveillance simply because the views of the masses largely don’t matter. The Proles are placated with enough food and drink and enough entertainment.

I would say that the rise in state authoritarianism is largely due to the Web. Ironically, the very thing that is surveilling us all is also the thing that is assisting the exchange of ideas and helping people to become organised. The increasing suppression of people’s rights appears to be because people are becoming too organised. So I’m not entirely sure a regime like the one in the 1984 world, that controls information so completely, would ever be necessary. If information is controlled, people should be too uniformed to resist, so violent oppression should be unnecessary. Violent oppression is really only necessary when people get too smart.

But in the 1984 world, even a little bit of knowledge is to be too smart, and maybe that is how authoritarianism would eventually be. Orwell takes it to the extreme. I don’t know, maybe that is the way of things to come.

If we let it.

Over and out for now, guys!

xxx