Two Thousand and Thirteen or Nineteen Eighty-Four?

A few months ago I had the urge to once again read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I was shocked at the staunch parallels with today’s society that I found within. While my head was buried in my book, Edward Snowden began leaking the NSA files he gathered while working as a contractor. The timing was surreal. If you haven't read Nineteen Eighty-Four, or like me, you haven't read it in a long time, let me refresh your memory. You’ve likely heard the concept of Big Brother, the watchful eye of an oppressive government, but that is just a portion of this amazing novel by the author of Animal Farm.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 and used Stalin controlled Soviet Russia and wartime London as inspiration for a dysfunctional future setting. While his main objective may have been to discredit Communism through metaphor, the similarities to U.S. modern society are still striking.

The book begins with protagonist Winston Smith returning home from work. He describes his stark surroundings and mundane routine. In a state of constant war, all material items are rationed and simple things like coffee and chocolate are luxuries of the past. Buildings with “their sides shored up with balks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron” line the streets of London. The description of London reminds me of the terrible photos of bankrupt Detroit, decrepit and run down.
Winston soon introduces the reader to the reality of telescreens, the Thought Police, Newspeak, and Big Brother, with propaganda everywhere exclaiming BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. These aspects of Winston’s life are what has kept this book alive for so long, and continues to draw people to use Orwell’s book as a reference to what life could look like under a police state.

Winston lives in a dystopian society where the government can watch and hear you through telescreens in your home, work, and social gathering places. They ‘disappear’ people who are suspected of thought crimes, and amend history so many times it's impossible to know where the truth ends and misinformation begins.

 The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. -George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four includes many important themes, one of which is that of a surveillance state. The book describes a world where mail is regularly opened before delivery, two-way telescreens are everywhere, hidden microphones are placed in unsuspecting places, and even children are encouraged to ‘spy’ on their parents. As Winston very well knows and points out to the reader, this is to prevent dissent. Never knowing if the Thought Police are watching, even the thought of doing something out of line becomes a dangerous thing.

Although it is not a complete parallel to the world we live in today, it is becoming more and more plausible. Crazy people shouting, “the government is watching you!” is not so crazy anymore and, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, you cannot be sure if and when the government is going through your personal correspondence. Perhaps the idea of people watching you through your laptop camera isn’t so crazy after all.

Another theme that’s used throughout the book is constant, unabashed propaganda and doublespeak. Don’t worry, we have that too. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak is the rewriting of the English language, taking out ‘unnecessary’ words and, with the help of Winston at the Ministry of Truth, censoring history is a full time occupation. Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite articles and texts that include information the party deems incorrect or to remove people who no longer, or I should say, never existed.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. -George Orwell

While we have not quite reached this level of propaganda, we are being fed exaggeration through our news media, if not flat out lies at times. That is unless you’re willing to go up against the United States government.
Our government officials are also guilty of doublespeak, with the current debate over the Affordable Care Act as a good example. The GOP has been going overboard with its false claims about ‘Obamacare,’ creating confusion over the subject and encouraging people who know nothing about the legislation to hate it. Just the double naming of the Affordable Care Act alone has many American’s completely confused.

The President is also guilty of doublespeak. While claiming consistently that he has worked hard to increase transparency, he meanwhile has been cracking down on whistleblowers in record breaking numbers and has created a much more secretive government than we had during even the Bush years. While it is true that all politicians exaggerate and tell people what they would like to hear in order to get elected, our current president has done little of what he claimed to stand for, and has increased drone strikes, made it possible for the government to detain US citizens without due process (he promises not to use said power), and most strikingly even killed an American without due process of law. Here is an interesting take on how things have improved and worsened under President Obama.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper. -George Orwell

Sadly, we don’t always need media or government to tell us what to think, because we also have the ability to distract ourselves with trivial things, such as the newest game or gadget, making it easy to ignore the bigger picture and serious threats to our freedoms and way of life. If as many people were out on the streets demanding the government to stop the NSA spy program or drone strikes as line up for the newest iPhone model, I don’t think the NSA would be as far reaching today as it was in July, before the Snowden leaks, and hundreds of innocent civilians wouldn’t be killed by American drones annually.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

I don’t think we need to worry about a communist-dictatorship government takeover, but I also believe we need to take George Orwell’s ideas and criticism of Stalin and the Communist Party in context with our current government and way of perceiving the world. Behind the propaganda of safety and spreading democracy, we are allowing our government to strip us of our freedoms little by little.

From the insanity we call airport security to the militarization of our local police forces, we seem to be getting closer to a carefully controlled society. The fact that sheriffs and local police officers are using more and more military tactics and weaponry is questionable to say the least. Remember the Boston bombings, how the Boston police shut down the city and conducted a door to door man hunt? And remember, three people were killed, not 3,000. Are we in the United States of America or US occupied Iraq?

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell 

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a timeless classic that will continue to intrigue readers for generations to come. Winston lives in a place where dissent is practically impossible, like North Korea. Although we still have the ability to protest peacefully in this country, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so without fear of police over action. It is also imperative to see through the doublespeak that government and media spew constantly. It is increasingly necessary to understand how our ability to speak out and protest is extremely important and cannot be taken lightly, by us or our government.