Post 12: Where 1984 Isn't Coming True

SPECIAL NOTE: Given that Sinclair Lewis was born in 1885, and Mussolini, the figure most associated with Fascism didn't come to prominence until at least 1919, I think it's safe to say this quote is about a century off. This is a minor nitpick, but those desperate to uncover the "truth" about politics might lead by example, and take the three seconds necessary to uncover the truth about their own quotations.

Let's start off with something we probably all know, but too often are willing to forget. Fascism was real. There were Fascist governments, Fascist armies, Fascist secret police forces and, by the millions, Fascist victims, those who were beaten, jailed, and very often killed by forces too powerful to even try to stop. It was the great scourge of the 20th century. The same is true of Communist regimes, and of theocratic ones. Right wing or left, religious or atheist, dictators have, and do, dominate large parts of the world. They have done so for millenia, they might very well continue to do so, though, thankfully, trends in the last fifty years suggest they may be on the decline.

I would imagine none of this to be a great surprise to any reader, who may wonder what the point of such a lengthy opening memento might be. You're right. Here it is: You can do those victims of dictatorship no greater disservice than to equate your suffering to theirs, and that's precisely what posters like this try to do. "People were rounded off and sent to concentration camps? I feel you man - Ron Paul wasn't invited to the Fox News debates. Fascists are everywhere." "Forced collectivization in the Soviet Union? Rough business. Sounds to me of Obamacare." What could be more insulting to victims of autocracy that, despite everything we know about their atrocities, all the education and testimony and direct evidence we have about how truly cruel these regimes were, there's still a compulsive need among a great many of us to make it about ourselves (going much further in this direction might risk some overlap with Samuel's most recent post - which, interesting and provocative, can be found directly below -, but don't forget we're still partially in preamble mode here).

>This problem isn't a universal one. Godwin's Law, and more recently the First World Problems meme has done a lot to spoof this attitude, but even they can't do the job (my own Law says that as a conversation, online or no, goes longer, the likelihood of any topic being broached approaches one) or worse, becomes a tool of those who don't really get it ("Whining about homework? What a First World Problem. Let's talk about some real concerns... like Harper being a Nazi.")

Whenever the topic of dictatorship coming to America (or Canada, or Western Europe, or wherever else it won't happen) arises, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is inevitably brought up. I'm not personally a fan, but it would be pretty stupid to try to deny the book it's status as one of the most important of the last century, and, while far from the first dystopian work, the one against which all others have and will be judged. Its extremely vivid depiction of how totalitarian government could control every aspect of its citizen's lives hit most of its readers particularly hard, and for the last sixty years almost every sentence has been parsed, deconstructed, and hotly debated by every totem on the pole, from top tier academics and literary critics to seventh graders, many of whom act like they're its first readers. For these men and women, Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer a fiction or even an allegory, it's a both predictor and descriptor of the future. The first world will turn out like this they say. Every new bit of legislation brings us closer and closer to Orwell's vision, which is entirely accurate. It is my assertion, as no doubt you've guessed, that this is far from the case. As I see it, the publication of this book virtually guaranteed it would never, at least in the first world, become a reality. Because of how iconic things like "Big Brother" or "NewSpeak" have become, as a population we've become so overcautious about their possibly coming true we've almost eliminated the chance they ever will. But this is only the beginning of where this book's devotees go wrong.

>For starters, there's not much evidence that this was, as Orwell saw it, a prediction of things to come. In fact, most evidence seems to suggest it was instead a satire of pre-existing totalitarian regimes, especially the Soviet Union, with little sprinkles of World War II-era Great Britain, where censorship and rationing was at a relative high. Rather like Animal Farm, his other main claim to literary fame, Orwell is doing what he, and all satirists are famous for, exaggerating the worst of what already exists in order to make fun of it. Defenders of Nineteen Eighty-Four-as-prophecy might then question my attempt to guess Orwell's motivations, or instead point out that just because the author has a certain attitude toward his own work, does not mean that it's the correct one. To some extent I agree (I may even write another post just to deal with the topic), this point I made may be tenuous. But I would also say that the side that has tenuous evidence is always preferable to the side that has none.

More important than how Orwell looked at his work, or what inspired it, is the question of how accurate he was. I can think of one example in particular in which he was very wrong. I mentioned NewSpeak earlier. In the novel, the government, in an attempt to stifle the free speech of its citizens, create NewSpeak, an increasingly simplified form of the English language. The party reasons that, by banning certain words, its citizens will be unable to express certain concepts. But this is absurd. Orwell seems to be under the impression that words determine thoughts (a strong version of what's known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; the Wikipedia link can be found at the bottom of the article), a once popular theory long since debunked and tossed aside by linguists. But it doesn't take much linguistic training to see how silly the concept really is. Look at euphemisms: When coloured became considered offensive, people started saying negro. When that became offensive, the term became black. When that became (to some) offensive, we started saying African-American. At no point did banning the word coloured (or negro, or black) restrict anybody's concept or ability to express the idea behind the word. We just came up with new ones. That one aspect of the book, no matter how crucial, is inaccurate is not in itself a total damning of its credibility, and I hate to give the impression of short changing you out of a fuller analysis, but in the interest of both not taking up reams of space, and staying on point (we're not going to become a dictatorship), I should start to think about calling it quits.

The writing of this post made me think about the general direction this blog is heading in and it seems that we've made our theme overreaction, or, more specifically, how best to avoid or rectify it. This wasn't really intentional, although perhaps it was unavoidable given our stated purpose (a place to put especially long rebuttals to statuses our friends posted). Needless to say, I feel I should close on the same note our other posts have all, in one form or another, have: With a sincere request we chill the fuck out. There are no ghosts in the attic, no monsters under the bed, and no spectres in our government.

PS: For those interested in learning more about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity