Transcription
This video is sponsored by Mondly.
Kellyanne Conway: "Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. What you're saying is it's a falsehood, and they're giving - Sean Spicer, our press secretary - gave alternative facts to that." But the point. After Donald Trump's 2016 inauguration, sales of *1984* increased by 10,000% and it became the number one bestseller in America.
In a post-truth society, is George Orwell's *1984* even more important now than ever? It is a book that, in politics, has been co-opted by both the left and the right, with the term "Orwellian" being used and misused in the clamour for power. Orwell believed deeply in the importance of truth, seeing it as essential to freedom, individuality, and justice. *1984* reflects a fear of truth's erosion under authoritarian regimes and propaganda. He was alarmed by the power of governments and media to distort reality, how lies could be accepted as truth if repeated and reinforced by authority. These beliefs are deeply grounded in Orwell's personal experiences, as we shall see, fuelling his growth as both a political thinker and a writer – two aspects always intertwined in his life.
In some ways, the novel is about the future, but it is also about the present. Even Orwell, who published the book in 1949, said it should be seen not as a prediction, but as a warning. "It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13." *1984* follows Winston Smith, a man trapped within the oppressive regime of Oceana's totalitarian state. The novel begins with one of its most chilling practices – "The Two Minutes Hate". This is a daily ritual where citizens gather to unleash intense hatred towards the Party's enemies. Driven by propaganda images, the frenzy unites the crowd, overpowering individual thought and loyalty, and binding citizens to Big Brother through shared, uncontrollable rage. You get the crowd together, you get them to hate Goldstein, or Eurasia, or East Asia, you get them to hate anything, and because of that feeling, that drug, that mass hypnosis, you can be directed by the state into any direction. With total control over history, you can steer the masses towards any chosen target, as long as there are rituals to sustain this directed hate, to create mass hysteria. It easily overpowers the natural individual connections of love we share. Like in *1984*, where hate suppresses individual thought and fosters conformity, in today's post-truth climate, modern hate-driven rhetoric can drown out the truth, pushing people towards tribalism and away from nuanced understanding, fuelling loyalty and silencing dissent, by turning people's emotions against perceived enemies, rather than allowing them to question those in power.
George Orwell's experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War is pivotal to the creation of *1984*, and the whole of his work can be organized around that central moment when he goes to Spain to fight fascism. The Spanish Civil War was a conflict between the Republican government, supported by leftists, communists, and anarchists, and the Nationalists, led by General Franco, who were backed by conservative, fascist, and monarchist forces. The war became an international battleground for ideologies, with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supporting Franco, while the Soviet Union and international volunteers aided the Republicans. It was marked by brutal violence, aerial bombings, and widespread atrocities. Public figures like Orwell, who identified as a Democratic Socialist, saw the war as a fight for democracy against the rising fascist and Nazi powers in Europe.
When Orwell first arrived in Barcelona in late 1936 to fight for the Republican cause, he found a kind of paradise – a Brotherhood of Man – where class distinctions had been abolished and an atmosphere of camaraderie and idealism permeated the city. He felt as if he'd found a Republican utopia. On the front lines, Orwell witnessed bravery amongst the fighters, but he also began to witness political rivalries that would soon erupt into violence. The Republican side was fractured, with communists, socialists, anarchists, and other factions, each vying for control. The Soviet-backed Communists, seeking dominance, turned on their former allies, including Orwell himself, who they labeled a Trotskyite and an "enemy of the state". During a battle, Orwell received a near-fatal bullet wound to his neck, but for him, the hardest wound was a political one – to his idealism. He had seen firsthand how the spread of misinformation and deliberate falsehoods by the Soviet-backed Communists actively distorted the truth to serve their ideological agenda, how they prioritized political control over the broader anti-fascist struggle. And it is here in Spain, that witnessing the extremist propaganda and betrayal within the political movement, that we can see how *1984* began to grow in his mind. Orwell had been driven to Spain by his hatred of fascism, but he left six months later with a second enemy. His book about his experience in Spain, "Homage to Catalonia," was published in 1938 and is still the highest-selling and most read book about the Spanish Civil War. It is a book about how truth itself was a casualty of the conflict, a lesson he would carry forward into his critiques of authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
In *1984*, Big Brother establishes a new language for the population, not to facilitate communication, but to enforce control. Concepts like "doublethink" and "Newspeak" function as instruments of power, designed to shape and restrict thought itself. Orwell had a lifelong fascination with how language conditions thought, and the way thought can be reconditioned by the manipulation of language.
In 1941, Orwell had joined the BBC's Eastern Service, where he helped produce radio broadcasts aimed at countering Nazi propaganda and maintaining morale in British-controlled India. While he supported the fight against fascism and understood the need to counter Nazi influence, it was during his time at the BBC that Orwell saw firsthand how simplifying complex truths, and demonizing opponents, manipulating facts, or changing them to fit a specific narrative, demonstrated that propaganda, even for a good cause, could be a dangerous tool in the hands of authority. Just as Winston rewrites news to align with the Party's agenda, Orwell saw that information at the BBC was filtered and shaped, and government-approved, albeit for the purpose of wartime unity.
Orwell began writing *1984* in 1946, shortly after World War II, and in the novel, Big Brother's Ministry of Truth draws significant parallels with Orwell's experiences working at the BBC during World War II, effectively rewriting history on a constant basis. Language too played an important role in World War II propaganda, and in *1984*, Newspeak is used to limit the vocabulary available to the public, to make rebellious thoughts almost impossible to articulate. At the BBC, he saw that terms like "collateral damage" could desensitize people to human suffering, just as Newspeak aims to eliminate words like "freedom" to make dissent impossible. It was something he had already seen with Stalinist Russia creating euphemisms for brutal acts, such as calling political purges "cleansing" or "re-education". Today, so much of our culture wars are a battle for language and terminology. Terms like "Alt-Right" or "Woke" are examples of how language is reduced to shape and polarize society, bringing Orwell's cautionary vision disturbingly close to reality.
Orwell was diagnosed with tuberculosis in the 1940s, and it had a profound impact on *1984*, influencing both its tone and its themes. In the 1940s, people were terrified of TB because it was highly contagious, deadly, and had no reliable cure. The disease spread easily through the air, so anyone could contract it, often without knowing where or how. TB primarily attacked the lungs but could affect other organs, causing severe coughing, weight loss, fever, and ultimately a slow, painful death. People would spy on their neighbours, friends, and families, and report them to the authorities if TB was suspected. The police and medical services would descend on your home and take you off to a sanatorium. Treatment at the time would have felt exactly like a form of totalitarian control, with patients under solitary confinement, in a room not dissimilar to Room 101 in the novel, which Orwell described simply as "bare". Patients were kept in bed, forbidden from sitting up, speaking, reading, or even writing, which would have been a form of torture for Orwell. Extremely painful procedures involved large needles puncturing the lungs to inflate and deflate them, and patients were kept under constant surveillance, with daily X-rays.
Orwell's situation as a TB patient, trapped in a world where human connection is almost impossible, resonates in Winston's yearning for human contact. And Orwell's sense of solitude and lack of control during his illness reflects Winston's submission to a system that is designed to crush individuality. Orwell, sick with tuberculosis, wrote the novel on the remote island of Jura in Scotland, and it's hard to separate that image from Winston feverishly writing his diary. Winston, who is only 39 in the book, has poor health, which deteriorates throughout the novel, reflecting both his physical and psychological strain under the Party's oppressive regime. And while writing the book, Orwell experienced persistent coughing, weakness, and physical suffering, much like Winston's chronic ailments in the novel. The physical decline of both men, one fictional and one real, mirrors the oppressive environments they inhabited: Orwell under the strain of illness and isolation on a remote island, and Winston under the unyielding control of the Party. There is a sense that this is, if not a deathbed novel, then at least a novel written in the knowledge that it was to be his last, which made Winston's physical and psychological torment more visceral and authentic. Orwell's awareness of mortality gives *1984* its raw intensity, making it not only a work of dystopian fiction but also Orwell's final, urgent statement on the importance of truth, freedom, and human resilience.
Big Brother is the omnipresent, authoritarian figurehead of the Party in *1984*, symbolizing absolute power and surveillance. He embodies control, inspiring fear and loyalty. Yet, his actual existence is uncertain. Big Brother manipulates the concept of "the Enemy" by constantly shifting alliances and redirecting public hate, a distraction from domestic policies that we are all too familiar with in the 21st century. The so-called enemy in *1984* is "The Brotherhood," and like Big Brother, we are never sure whether they are real or whether it is another form of control. Big Brother keeps the population submissive through fear of an omnipresent, yet possibly fabricated, enemy. Orwell drew on his real-life experiences with betrayal, paranoia, and fabricated enemies within authoritarian systems, and by creating a fictional enemy in *1984*, he illustrated how the state uses deception and psychological manipulation to maintain control, warning readers of the dangers of unchecked power and ideological fanaticism. You never know where you are with *1984*. Who is real and who is not real, and who is on your side and who is the enemy.
*1984* is a book that resonates differently over different periods. During the Cold War, readers saw it as a critique of totalitarianism. In the 1980s, it highlighted the dangers of intrusive technology. Today, it stands foremost as a defense of "Truth". Truth is one of the first casualties in the fight for ideology; after that, there is only propaganda.
In *1984*, doublethink is central to the Party's control, allowing citizens to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. By encouraging doublethink, the Party ensures people can believe opposing ideas, such as "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," "Ignorance is Strength," making them immune to rational thought or personal truth. Particularly in the last two decades, conspiracy theorists of every variety have all demonstrated a fierce disregard for factual evidence that contradicted their beliefs, often reinforced by TV cable news, talk radio, and online echo chambers.
*1984* is a bleak novel, difficult, pessimistic, and unrelenting. A novel that really gets under your skin – and that is the point. It's an uncomfortable book, and Orwell wants us to be uncomfortable, because when we are, that's when we start to see what's going on. And yet, *1984* doesn't end with THE END, but with: "The final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050." 2050. This is the final word of its appendix, "The Principle of Newspeak". This section is written in Oldspeak rather than Newspeak, and in the past tense, suggesting it is written later and from the point of view of someone who has already read the novel. It offers the reader a rare glimpse of hope, suggesting that the Party's attempt to eliminate Oldspeak, and by extension free thought, ultimately failed, and there is a future beyond Big Brother's regime. Another, less hopeful theory is that the appendix serves as a testament to Big Brother's final and ultimate victory. Either way, *1984* is the book that we reach for when truth is twisted, language is manipulated, and power is misused. It's a novel designed to wake us up.
"The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one," he explained in a press statement after the book came out. "Don't let it happen. It depends on YOU." If you are free in your country to read *1984*, then it is not the country described in *1984*. Orwell used the novel to warn us that without objective truth, individuals lose their agency, and society loses its freedom.
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