Posted on 01/27/2019 10:15:54 PM PST by vannrox
As the back cover of my cheap paperback copy of George Orwells masterpiece dictates
1984 has come and gone, but George Orwells prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of Negative Utopia.
I recently revisited this book after many years of absence, and while reading along I highlighted many quotes and passages which struck me as relevant to the social justice zeitgeist of the late 2010s. To little surprise, I discovered that what the political left seeks in this day and age is well and truly like the negative utopia described in this classic story.
Here are twenty passages from the book which many of us have to live suffer through everyday in its the current year!
The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.
The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.
It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.
The idea had even crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him.
The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set ones teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of ones neck. The Hate had started.
The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein [Donald Trump] was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Partys purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching.
To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.
Thought-crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.
Parsons [Tim Wise] was Winstons fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasmsone of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.
It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneakchild hero was the phrase generally usedhad overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.
12. Literally Hitler
The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
13. Rewriting history
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
14. Fake news
Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were the huge printing shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs.
15. Threats to state power
One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme [Jared Taylor] will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
16. Narrative zombies
As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the mans brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.
17. Shaping reality
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.
18. Lowest common denominator
There was a small bookcase in the other corner, and Winston had already gravitated toward it. It contained nothing but rubbish. The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else.
19. Changing the past
One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streetsanything that might throw light upon the past had been systematically altered.
20. Destruction of sex relations
He thought of her naked, youthful body, as he had seen it in his dream. He had imagined her a fool like all the rest of them, her head stuffed with lies and hatred, her belly full of ice. A kind of fever seized him at the thought he might lose her, the white youthful body might slip away from him!
Truly captivating stuff from a literary classic. Also bear in mind that these passages were only taken out of the first 100 pages of the book. Such is the scope of modern day social justice insanity that many great passages cannot fit in just one article.
bmp
Hillary took them to be instruction manuals.
The 4chan kids are very familiar with INGSOC. It is a serious component of many memes. There is some hope for the future. Of course, I have been reading 1984 for the first time in 50 years (since 10th grade). The first time I read it was 1968 and my feeling was we have this book so we have been vaccinated and it wont happen. When 1984 came we felt vindicated. Reassured. Now reading it I get the message of futility. Serious black pilled. It doesnt matter if you hate Goldstein or love him. It doesnt matter if you resist. In fact, resistance is part of the business model. Even the resistance is crafted by the system and part of it. The Brotherhood can never succeed because it was never intended to succeed but rather just to provide a futile past time for folks who arent kool aid drinkers.
‘’1984’’ is neither prophecy or science fiction. “1984’’ is a warning. And one that seems, for the most part unfortunately, to have gone unheeded.
Somebody I heard recently said that conspiracy theories are reassuring in that even if they are greedy, corrupt, and nefarious some people find it reassuring to believe there is someone in control. At first this struck me as odd but as I ponder it it seems more true. But look around. There are subtle clues that some one does have their hand on the wheel and it aint anyone with a name we know. Think about it. What is there to prevent Bezos from owning absolutely every goddam dollar in the world? Manners? Seriously? So like, Monopoly, what happens then? No one knows so it cannot be allowed to happen. Besides what is money worth when ONE guy owns all of it? See what I mean?
Or try this. Look at gummint. Why does Hillary and Zero get away with everything and Trump cant sneeze? Well, if the truth were known by NPCs no one would vote Democrat. We cant allow that world to happen. Where no one votes Democrat. It doesnt make any more sense than Bezos owning all the money, see?
Take what you know of our courts and judicial system. They are just a dog and pony show. Only trivial matters are decided in court and everyone knows it. Only trivial matters are even issues in elections (flag burning, fag marriage, a Wall AFTER 30 million illegal cows have entered the barn, you name it).
Big brother does exist but our Big Brother is shy.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Interesting comments...
With regards to the courts/judicial system ... you should spend a few hours at your local criminal court to observe how things work at the lowest level. Dog and pony show it isn’t.
Some people find it reassuring to believe there is “someone in control.” I guess, because they don’t have to do anything but go back to living their existence as long as they get their share of whatever to be happy, until someone with control (government) decides otherwise. Reassurance then goes out the door, but it is too late.
Bezos owning all the money? Impossible it would require that he owns the means to print it and everyone would be required under force of law to accept it. So Bezos can work his way to $10 trillion (by not counterfeiting) and the Fed could just print more. It’s not that it cannot be allowed to happen, but that it cannot happen.
We can’t allow the world to happen where no one would vote demokrap? California ... the GOP is being erased before your eyes by the demokraps. “They” under the current system don’t have to make it so that no one votes for GOP, just that it doesn’t matter when they do since there will be so few who can win, and those that do win will be insignificant tokens, museum pieces, or a nuisance who will be crushed if needed. However, “they” would not be opposed to the old Soviet, one party system as long as it was their party. It has happened before in history, you mean it cannot happen here, until it does.
Ayn Rand’s “Anthem” can also be thrown into the mix as a book that was written as a warning becoming a “how to” book by the Leftists.
1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm were all Required Reading in both high school and college once upon a time.
3,936,256=1984 squared. What we’re experiencing is way more sophisticated and evil than the book. Because so far the end hasn’t happened.
He left out Newspeak, the most destructive of the lefts assault on humanity.
Only thanks to about 640,000 voters in three midwestern states. The other side just didn't get enough propaganda out there in time. I'm sure they won't make that mistake again.
That was going to be my comment, but you beat me to it...
1984, in particular, was a great book. But it became a textbook for some, rather than the cautionary tale it was meant to be.
MSM early pictures of Trump- - showing him to be 'orange'...
Orwell was an English leftist who joined the communists against the Spanish. Like many on the “republican” side he went to Spain to advance the communist revolution. I read that he never stopped being a leftist even though he saw and reported what they were like in Spain.
What's sad is the anti-Spanish propaganda is so strong, the communist talking points about Franco are still parroted by many.
I read it around then. 10 % sounds low.
Just like Crime and Punishment was required reading. Public school education.
Marking
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