1984 - George Orwell

[HuckfromScandal]

Quote from 1984

“Every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.....history has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.”

Would quite like a thread of quotes that sum up life in 2020 based on George Orwell’s 1984.

Please add the ones that resonate with you.

@CaraDune

In computing, they're called "rounding errors" for a reason: the clue is in the name - error.

I'm guessing TheSandman isn't a mathematician. However he/she might identify as one, I suppose.

Which is why, if you look carefully, I put the word PROVE in quote marks.

There really is a sense of humour deficit in the world these days, isn't here?

@TheSandman I've honestly never googled about trans women although do read articles here but everyone I follow on Twitter is GC and I read a lot about Maggie Oliver and the lady on Twitter who cycles for murdered women, so I don't see how it's possible to have learned that's what I want to read.

Apologies, Sandman. Poe's law strikes again.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

(Given how batshit 99% of the stuff on this is, though, it's pretty much impossible to avoid falling foul of Poe's law on this one.)

Top 4 results for "women murdered 2020" on duck duck go (which allegedly doesn't store or analyse your search history):

@RedToothBrush

The state is not orchestrating pile-ons on Twitter. The state is not creating or enforcing Newspeak

What do you think 'enemies of the people' was all about?

All these thought terminating clichés:

'Let's get Brexit done'
'Stay home, save lives'
'Trans women are women'
'Strong and stable'

There will be another along shortly to deal with exit from transition.

They are everywhere in politics. Both from the state and from the incumbent party and opposition parties.

The idea the state isn't doing it, is a bit naive. Especially when instruments of the state are being used to run a party political campaign (when they aren't allowed to, but are ignoring the rules and doing it anyway).

Look, I am not at all saying 1984 isn't relevant. What I am saying is that what we are seeing has some features that are a little different than what Orwell envisaged.

The role of the state in this has been in someways secondary rather than primary. This is what people are getting at when they talk about things like institutional capture. The various authoritative left agendas don't seem to be things the state is deeply interested in, rather, they have been influenced by lobby groups, interest groups, sometimes large party donors, who are attempting to harness the states powers over lawmaking, regulation, the courts, and use of force (particularly the police). They've attempted to harness the press in a similar way.

This has implications for example if we are looking to see who is really driving this, we probably should not be looking at the Lisa Nandy's of the world, even if they have been unwitting tools. It's also notable that where there have been gains for things like freedom of speech or thought it's often also been through the state. The forces pushing these ways of thinking seem to be quite powerful, and the power of the state may be required to stop them in many cases. So that power is very two-edged - it can be used against principles like freedom of thought but it can also be used to preserve them.

We don't live in a centralised state of the kind Orwell was particularly thinking of. But in our more decentralise, supposedly democratic, capitalist structures we often end up with similar effects, they are mediated differently however. Those who seek power may not do so by becoming members of government, instead they become bankers or press barons, influencers of the state who have none of the transparency or accountability of politicians or even civil servants. They are very often shadowy figures, difficult to identify.

If we're looking at Big Brother as the source of our problems, we may miss out on those figures. And if we disempower the state in an effort to restrain big brother we may find that we have few other tools to restrain them.

I was just wondering whether any readers had read the book I have been banging on about

www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Adventures/dp/0571338526/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&crid=3KR6A9P6FARH5&keywords=nothing+is+true+and+everything+is+possible&sprefix=nothing+is+%2Caps%2C176&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1592755202&sr=8-1

I believe it is an important work that describes beautifully how cultic manipulation is used by a particular nation state, Russia

His subsequent book, This is not Propaganda I have only just started reading but it uses examples of this kind of manipulation by other nations states.

I think that these books are essential reading

it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

For people interested in (re-)reading it, since Orwell died in 1950 it comes out of copyright in most countries with the rest of Orwell's works on 1st January next year, at which point I expect it to be free on the internet. It will stay in copyright in the US for a long time yet, though.

Mind you, it's already out of copyright in Australia . . .

@hoodathunkit there is a thread on FWR inspired by this one, asking for recommended reading, in case you want to give your suggestions there as well. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

@wanderings

A lot could be read into the way that churches are forcibly closed, and public worship remains forcibly forbidden, and that many churches (hopefully voluntarily) are flying flags saying "NHS, we thank you"; but again, it feels like the herd mentality: there's a certain pressure to publicly declare allegiance to the NHS. Not so long ago, many people would have considered the church and God as the ultimate refuge from something as terrible as disease. Suppose this pandemic had happened at a time when far more people attended church; would churches have remained open, would the public have rioted if they were forcibly closed, with slogans such as "If we die in church, it's God's will"?

I've seen lots of photos of churches flying NHS flags captioned on the internet "Is this the new religion of England?".

But I'm so glad the slogan is not "Boris, we thank you", or "government, we thank you". Thank would be reminiscent of the first Shrek film, where the face of the dictator Lord Farquaad was seen everywhere, like the face of Big Brother in 1984.

The CofE is after all a state church and it's always has the tendency to reflect the interests of the state. Even in many of the colonies where the elite often were members. Radical economics until recently were more likely to be found among the Catholics. It's only really much more recently where the bishops of the CofE have been largely removed from the need to stay close to power that they have acted more along those lines. Although even with an extreme version of government secularism the US has created a Christianity as a sort of state religion that is more about supporting capitalist theology rather than offering some kind of real alternative to the state. I was in a Zoom meeting recently for a social event that happened to be full of Anglicans, several of them priests, and of course they got to talking about the pandemic. One thing that struck me was what a bunch of pussyfooted rule-followers most of them were, totally unwilling to ask difficult questions about their role as members of a church and what the state was telling them. I've been reading Graham Green recently and the difference in the sense of purpose for the institution was startling.

Thanks Ninkanink

I'll add it there

I also wondered whether anyone had played the online game Nation States?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NationStates

You get a virtual nation and make decisions as to the legislation and policies.

It has been ages since I played it but, for example, if you permit naturist beaches in your nation you end up with laws making public nudity compulsory every alternate Wednesday.

If you permit mining on your nature reserve you end up with a barren rocky outpost.

The reason I was thinking of Nation States is because when you play the game the resulting nation is not necessarily what you decide, and this is what happens in real life due to entryism and astroturfing.

This entryism is the nature of cold wars in which, rather than use expensive and destructive kinetic weaponry, hostile states use "Influence". They infiltrate grass roots activist movements and use them to cause havoc and social divisions (see Divide and Conquer).

Even the nature of nation states has changed with the advent of the www. We have the so called Islamic State, which exists in real life but also in the virtual world.

I suspect that daesh is not the only novel state engaged in brainwshing vulnerable people, including children, and whose boundaries are not defined completely in relation to geography.

So, if I was a nation state, or a hybrid nation state / criminal network or nation state / terrorist cult I would identify the most treasured cultural assets of my opponents and subvert them.

This is exactly what a martial artist does but on a larger scale. You use the opponent's strengths against them.

if the opponent has long arms and a long reach you attempt to get them to overextend themself and then you break their arm.

If they are bigger and stronger than you you have to bait them to overextend themself and use their force to trip them up or send them falling.

Notice the theme of over-extending. It is central to martial arts but also to astroturfing and entryism.

Let us take lesbian and gay rights. A good thing most people would agree.

Take a nation that is hostile to L&G rights. One way of opposing lesbians and gay men is to oppose them. A cleverer way is to infiltrate, bankroll and control their organisations until they overextend themselves and and up promoting child abuse and people waking in doggie outfits while working for a child protection charity.

Once you have done this you sit back from a distance and sneer at these evil brits and their filthy paedo inclinations.

Another example would be environmentalist groups that stop you and your associates from mining the life out of rainforests.

Bankroll them, infiltrate them and get them to cause havoc with protests to the point where you can sit back, sneer and carry on destrying the planet.

excuse the typos

am very late

later :)

Every county, including ours, has done this kind of thing all over history.

Any good cause taken to an extreme can become tyranical and oppressive.

The misuse of human rights organisations and legislation is central to how this has all come to be.

I have so much to say about this no time right now

That book hoodathunkit references - Nothing is true, everything is possible - is well worth a read.

It describes post-Soviet Russia where an ideological void was filled with a cacophony of opposing beliefs / movements / voices, deliberately produced by the state-run TV, so that nobody knows what to believe or think any more about anything.

Written about the 1990s, it explains the more recent Russian Twitter misinformation bots, whose goal is not so much to attack any one ideology or political party, as the very concept of truth itself.

In Brave New World, "mother" was seen as a dirty word. In the "civilized" world, babies were gestated in artificial wombs and brought up communally. Only "savages" still did that disgusting pregnancy and childbearing stuff.

In our world, i"woman" is the bad word which either needs to be eliminated or torn of all association with icky biology.

In Brave New World, "mother" was seen as a dirty word. In the "civilized" world, babies were gestated in artificial wombs and brought up communally. Only "savages" still did that disgusting pregnancy and childbearing stuff.

Siri, what is Surrogacy?

As an aside, I’ve been reading Orwell’s As I Please Tribune essays.
This one on true history (4th Feb 1944) is relevant today.
www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19440204.html
It’s noticeable how concise and readable these essays are. Orwell was my teenage crush, despite having died before I was born.

I actually prefer Orwell's essays to his novels. Penguin has issued a collection of them but I don't know if it's still in print. He wrote a brilliant one on Dickens, but also one I remember on Good Bad Books, which is well worth a read. But many others.

I really want a collection of his essays. Thanks for the tip about penguin, I guess I could find it on eBay or elsewhere if it’s no longer in print.

As a sidelight, has anyone read The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey? I believe that one of the characters, an unpleasant man who runs a shop and a smallholding is a (unfavourable) portrait of Orwell. Only my hunch, and I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read it.

here it is
www.amazon.co.uk/Shooting-Elephant-Essays-Penguin-Classics/dp/0141187395?tag=mumsnetforu03-21
How the Poor Die is another tremendous one

@Ninkanink

I really want a collection of his essays. Thanks for the tip about penguin, I guess I could find it on eBay or elsewhere if it’s no longer in print.

Everyman's Library has a really good, comprehensive (1400 pages) edition of his essays. It includes a lot of his columns written before and during the war as well. Really worth it if you are into Orwell.

blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Essays-by-George-Orwell-author/9781857152425

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”.

Not from 1984 but pretty much describes the current state of affairs. Shouting Fascist at someone has now been replaced by shouting racist.

"He who controls the past controls the future."

Explains why there's so much statue toppling and demands for offensive texts and art works to be removed. Communists always try to erase history, art and culture.

@MaMaLa321 I’ve read both The Franchise Affair and a fair bit of Orwell in the last few years. What made you think that about the character in the Tey novel?

Some of the Orwell essays were read on Radio 4 Extra recently.