EXPLORING THE
PROBABILITY

"We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma, didn't I?"

The old man in the Tube

 



REAL 1984 EXAMPLES

Oceania, Eurasia, East Asia: Three superstates did really arise after WWII, i.e. USA, USSR and China. The war zones in the novel were actually "zones of influence".

Constant war: Mussolini openly said that war was the natural condition for a national state. Hitler was almost cheerful when facing the prospect of constant war.

Big Brother: Pol Pot, Cambodia's dictator, was called "Brother number one". Many Cambodians actually doubted his existance and some never even heard of him before the liberation.

The Thought Police: In Imperial Japan, a special police called Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu had explicit orders to combat "dangerous thoughts". In the Third Reich, the Sicherheitsdeinst were literally called an ideological police.

History forging: Forgings of official photos and revisions of modern history did occure in the Soviet Union during Stalin's era. Just click the thumbnail below and see for yourself:

The Youth League: All totalitarian states have organised and indoctrinated the youth systematically. Pol Pot's Red Khmer army almost exlusively consisted of teenagers and the specially trained spies called chhlop were usually 6-10 years old.

Two plus two make five: The denial of objective truth can be traced to e.g. the Nazi distinction between "Jewish science" and "German science", which explains the Nazi failure in atomic theory. Furthermore, totalitarian regimes have always been fond of contradictionary slogans, like the Auschwitz motto: "Arbeit macht frei!", i.e. "work will make you free" or "freedom through work".

 


WILL THERE BE DARK DAYS AHEAD?

Could George Orwell's terrifying vision come true? Actually, it has already happened.

It is a disturbing fact, but Orwell simply found inspiration in reality. However fantastic it may sound, every single ideological aspect of the totalitarian society in Nineteen Eighty-four has actually been expressed in totalitarian states before the war, perhaps with the exception of the Newspeak concept. Big Brother's Oceania is the logical conclusion of totalitarian ideologies, the place where we finally can end up if we stop fighting for our freedom.

George Orwell was fully aware of what was going on in Hitler's Theird Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union. Undoubtedly, he had several different purposes with Nineteen Eighty-four — to expose the apathy of the British working class is an obvious one — but the main purpose was to make the public opinion aware of the totalitarian threat in general and the Stalinist threat in particular.

The totalitarian threat did not die with Hitler and Stalin. After WWII, Mao Ze Dong's People's Republic of China, Kim Il-Sung's North Korea and especially Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea — although the latter in an agrarian version — have all shown disturbing similarities with Big Brother's Oceania.

Then, could the totalitarian society envisioned in Nineteen Eighty-four be realized today? Well, I find it to be an unconcievable scenario. The horrors of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, among many others, will hardly be forgotten for many years to come. We tend to forget suprisingly fast, though. Only 21 years passed between WWI and WWII. Who knows what could happen fifty or hundred years into the future? It goes without saying that if it has happened before, it can happen again. The hunger for personal power and wealth is universal.

It may sound pessimistic, but Western civilisation is in a state of moral decay. The Western man lives in a consumption and information society, and he becomes more materialistic and narcissistic for every year. This resembles the 1920s, a decade when both right-wing and left-wing extremists gained terrain. If there will come a revolution in the future, let us pray it will not turn into a nightmare like so many before. 

A revolution is not necessary in order to introduce a totalitarian system, though; it can be forced upon us gradually. We have to be vigilant and defend our integrity as individuals against the people in charge, be it fascists, communists or capitalists. The state is, after all, us.

Remember, Big Brother might be watching you this very moment, my friend.