1984

I decided this year to give my brain a mini break from non-fiction, so if we have a month with 5 Sundays, then the first Sunday I will read fiction. Or non-fiction adjacent in the case of this weeks book, 1984, by George Orwell. I was inspired to this decision by President Biden’s horrible decision to create a “Disinformation Governance Board” which drew immediate parallel’s to Oceania’s very own Ministry of Truth.

I think, for the most part, people who have never read this book are largely familiar with it, because it has so thoroughly entered the modern zeitgeist. Big Brother was taken in as such a fine idea that there is a TV series that’s been running for 22 years with that name. Ministry of Truth, doublespeak, newspeak, thought police, thought crime, these are all concepts that come to us courtesy of 1984. But what’s the actual story? The book has been out since 1949, so I don’t really feel a spoiler alert is necessary. But if you don’t want spoilers, your road ends here.

Winston Smith works for the records department at the Ministry of Truth. His job is to correct the history to reflect what the party determines is truth. So, if the party determined that a person was unpersoned, Winston would be tasked with changing past news articles that referenced the person to something that jived with the party message. Unpersoned could be read as canceled…with extreme prejudice. Cancel culture is the civilians in the 21st century doing what the Party does in 1984, without the death at the end. Once you’re unpersoned in 1984, you’re executed. You can actually come back from cancel culture, you can even refuse to be canceled. But you can’t refuse to be unpersoned in 1984.

So, Winston has lived just about his whole life under the aegis of the party. He was educated by them, as much as the party could be said to educate anyone, his job is a party job, his friends, in as much as he has friends, are party members. But he doesn’t really have friends. See, Winston is too smart for party membership. He has managed to piece together that what he sees around him, is not reality. He knows his job is falsifying history so that the party always seems to be on top. And there is no escaping the party. Along with the great government job comes the not-so-great government housing, which is constantly watched. The vidscreen in his flat is not just there for him to watch. It’s there to watch him. And since you never know when the party is watching, you must constantly guard yourself from emoting or reacting in anyway that might tip your hand to the thought police.

But Winston has a secret. While wandering the city of London, he wandered into an antiques shop and purchased a diary. This prewar manufacture was of such superlative quality that he wanted it, if for no other reason than it was beautiful. And he has exactly one spot in his apartment where he can’t be seen from the vidscreen. So, he starts writing his journal. Just the act of such is criminal under INGSOC, short for English Socialism, and grounds for unpersoning. But he can no longer contain this rage he feels at what he knows life should be like but can never be under the party.

And while he is aware that he is walking the road to perdition, he cannot stop himself. And he starts to wonder if the Brotherhood exists. The Brotherhood is an underground rebellion, believed to be fighting against Big Brother and INGSOC. And as he starts to wonder, he finds himself again at the antiques shop, and buys himself a coral paperweight, again because it speaks of past times that will never be again, and when leaving the shop, he notices a girl from the Ministry of Truth, and thinks he’s been found out! He almost follows her to kill her, but decides not to, and goes home. Good thing, too, because the next day she trips in the office and slips him a note that she loves him.

Now, technically he is married; however, he has not seen hide nor hair of his wife in at least a decade, since she left him after they failed to conceive a child. And since the party is set to destroy all joy in life, including sex, sex with his wife was a completely joyless affair. Frigid applies. So, he didn’t really care that he hadn’t seen her. He wrote in his journal once that he had visited a prostitute, which, while against party policy, was not something the party necessarily would specifically round you up for, unless you were so careless in seeking it out that you did the deed in front of the ministry of Love, which was responsible for maintaining law and order.

So, this girl, Julia, who is at least 15 years younger than him, has told Winston she loves him, despite having never spoken to him. But they start a love affair. And you start to get a sense of hope. They rent the room above the antique shop for their rendezvous, and the old prole (proletariat) who owns it is happy for the income, and discreetly lets them use the room as they can schedule time together.

And at work one day, he is stopped by O’Brien, who asks if he’s seen the latest dictionary with the cuts to newspeak. Winston says no, and O’Brien says to come by the house, gives Winston his address, and goes about his day. When Winston does go to the house, Julia comes with him, and O’Brien advises there is a Brotherhood, they are fighting back against Big Brother, and if either Winston or Julia are caught, no help will be given to them. Do they still want to join? Winston gives an emphatic yes, Julia slightly less enthusiastic because, I’m pretty sure, she frankly wasn’t that smart. She didn’t actually care that life sucked for everyone, she just wanted to stick it to the man. And the best way she had found to do so was promiscuity. Remember, sex was supposed to be completely joyless and for procreation only.

O’Brien gives specific instructions on how a book with the history of Oceania will be delivered to Winston, which happens just when Oceania changes their war from being against Eurasia to being against Eastasia. These are the three global powers, and at any given time, Oceania is at war with one of the other two. And now, they are at war with Eastasia. Which means that every single document indicating the enemy was Eurasia must now be altered. A week later, having finished the required edits, Winston and Julia meet at their love nest above the antique shop and Winston starts reading the book.

And it’s a pretty detailed breakdown of how socialism works. Everything you would expect to find in the communist playbook is laid out, and this is pretty accurate to how Communist states run themselves and the people who live within their borders, even today. And after a time, they both fall asleep only to wake up and find they were betrayed. The shopkeeper who sold Winston the book and paperweight, who was renting them the room, was a member of the thought police. And so is O’Brien.

That...I had actually not read this book before. I knew the references because of how thoroughly Orwellian predictions have entered mainstream consciousness. I had, naively, been expecting happiness and rebellion, the Brotherhood was real, and socialism was overthrown. Instead, I got a pretty accurate run down of what happened in the gulag’s, recognizable BECAUSE I read The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. And as O’Brien says, if you want to know what’s coming next, imagine a boot stepping on your face forever.

And through copious torture, they break Winston. He recants every stray thought he ever had that wasn’t goodthink. They don’t kill him. He was probably not important enough to be killed. It is not expressly stated, but I think I kicked him out of the party. When the book ends, he is no longer living in that apartment, he is no longer under the ever watchful eye of Big Brother. He is a rather sad drunk, drowning himself in gin, and passing time until he dies. He has been reduced to the proletariat. He nominally has more freedom. But as the party saying goes, Freedom is Slavery.

This book was a horror story. It is, nominally, about the ultimate endgame of socialism. So is Animal Farm. Orwell was a socialist, but he saw how the policies being enacted would ultimately play out, and he wrote these amazing novels as a warning. It wasn’t JUST socialism he was warning about. It was the danger of overarching bureaucracy. It was what happens when we the people fall asleep on the job, and don’t call our elected officials to the table when they step so far out of line.

The entire book calls out what happens when we don’t fight back against dictatorships and tyranny. And socialism is the death knell of a free society. One thing I noticed, and I so did not want to notice it, but it just leapt out of the pages at me. Jacques Derrida is credited with being one of the founders of postmodernist and deconstructivist philosophy. I think he was heavily influenced by 1984. The idea that truth is subjective, that there is no ultimate truth, the words don’t have meaning and don’t matter, this development of newspeak found in 1984, are also found in postmodernist philosophy. It is so evil, so subversive and wrong. Postmodernists use a whole lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing. And in 1984, O’Brien uses this technique to convince Winston that Winston is insane, and that 2+2=5. Because the Party says it does.

This book was depressing, and thought provoking, and absolutely terrifying, because it does not have to be socialists that bring about the destruction of humanity. Fascism is just as vile, and in many respects is the opposite side of the same coin, a coin which can be used to pay the ferryman, regardless if the coin toss lands heads for socialism or tails for fascism.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on July 3, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.