BY JOHN GLYNN
ZIN GEORGE ORWELL’S CLASSIC NOVEL, 1984 THE STORY’S protagonist, Winston Smith, is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Wherever Winston goes, even within the supposed comfort of his own home, the Party’s eyes monitor him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of Big Brother, the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader. Although Western democracies are nowhere near the extremes of social control envisioned in this cautionary tale, written as it was when the technology was unavailable to even the most industrialized countries, that is no longer the case, as evidenced in recent stories abut China’s move to place hundreds of millions of cameras around its country to monitor every move of its citizens.
In 1984, language is controlled, something that we can see today with mandatory pronouns and the steady stream of misinformation. The Party created by Orwell strives to implement an invented language called Newspeak (alternative facts), which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it (fake news); or doublethink, holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time (America first/Putin first). In Orwell’s dystopia, even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrimes are, in fact, the worst of all crimes, even worse than kneeling during the national anthem.