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The fact that almost all media commentary, book reviews and feature articles about the book 1984 have ignored the crucial role of controlling the past indicates that Orwell's prophecy has already been partially fulfilled. The central theme of his book, the control of history, has already been largely written out of references to his book and has disappeared down the memory hole.
The book's hero, Winston Smith, works in the Ministry of Truth rewriting and falsifying history. The Ministry writes people out of history -- they go "down the memory hole" as though they never existed. The Ministry also creates people as historical figures who never existed. Big Brother, who controls the State of Oceania, uses "thought police" to ensure that people in the inner and outer Party are kept under control. Oceania is at perpetual war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. Alliances between these three states change without rational explanation. "Hate weeks" are organized against Goldstein, the leader of an alleged underground opposition to Big Brother, and hate sessions are organized against either Eurasia or Eastasia.
All of the media commentary about Orwell's greatest book ignored the importance of the past and control of the past as a theme in 1984. The extent of censorship of history is indicated by suppression of the fact that Orwell originally considered giving the title 1948 to his book because of widespread Big Brother tendencies already in the year 1948
The powers of security police in Western countries to intercept mail and tap phones have often been extended, police agencies keep numerous files on law-abiding citizens, and more and more public officials have the right to enter private homes without a warrant. Many government departments keep computerized information on citizens and there is a danger that this information will be fed into a centralized data bank.
Attempts by law enforcement agencies to obtain more information through informer schemes, through new law enforcement agencies, and through new techniques such as computerisation of information, are understandable, but the cumulative effect of such Big Brother activities is to make countries such as the United States, Britain and Australia increasingly totalitarian societies. The corruption of language described in 1984 is widespread in the media today, with "Newspeak" terms such as democratic, socialist, fascist, war criminal, freedom fighter, racist and many other expressions being used in a deliberately deceptive, propagandistic way to whip up mass hysteria or simply to ensure that people can never achieve even an approximation of the truth.
Because of his experience in the Spanish civil war that media reports of the conflict bore no relation to what was happening, Orwell developed a great scepticism about the ability of even a well intentioned and honest writer to get to the truth. He was generally sceptical of atrocity stories.
It should be noted that Orwell worked for the BBC for a time, and the Ministry of Truth is modelled to some extent on the BBC. Orwell noted that the BBC put out false hate propaganda during World War II, and controlled history by censoring news about the genocide Allied policy of levelling German cities by saturation bombing. Orwell's beliefs about the control of the past, including the recent past, also derived from his experiences in the Spanish civil war, where he found that "no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain for the first time I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts
"Doublespeak" propaganda terms are used in these conflicts. "Peace-keeping forces" are used to make war, invasions such as in Grenada are described as "landings," planning for aggressive war is described as "defence strategy." The book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace edited by Harry Elmer Barnes describes the permanent war economy of the United States, the trickery employed by the U.S. government to enter World War I and World War II, and the censorship of dissident historical views by the media, the book trade, libraries, the curricula sections of education departments, and book reviewers.
Challenging the official version of anything may be a civic responsibility and even great fun, but it is still difficult for those who dispute the establishment version of history to have their views heard. The best way to combat Big Brother control of the past is to ask questions and challenge the claims put out by the high priests of sanctioned history repeatedly. People should ask, for example, whose interests are served by the repetition of particular atrocity stories? What real evidence is there for various mass murder allegations?
Support bona fide civil liberties groups and actively oppose government measures restricting basic freedoms. Freedom of speech is a basic civil liberty and people should fight to retain it.
PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE
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