Welcome to Part Two of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, our latest audio adventure in Tales for Our Time. If you seek a respite from the woes of the world, if only for twenty minutes before you lower your lamp each night, you may prefer its predecessor tale, Psmith, Journalist by P G Wodehouse. Whatever your taste, we have plenty of other yarns in all genres over on our Tales for Our Time home page.
Still, these are serious times, and it helps (indeed, it is necessary) to be able to get off the hamster wheel of breaking "news" and take a sober look at how we got here and where we're headed. Orwell's masterful forensic examination of the panopticon state is essential to that.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, it was assumed that Big Brother was the designated baddie. As Sal Tessio, a New Jersey member of The Mark Steyn Club, reminds us:
Quite ironically it was Apple that produced the 1984 inspired TV commercial shown in January 1984 during the Super Bowl in which the narrator states that if people buy the Macintosh (presumably as an act of defiance against Big Blue IBM) then life in the year 1984 won't be like life in the book 1984. Thirty-seven years hence Apple is Big Brother...looking down...judging...erasing...
Here's that 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four ad, made for Apple by Ridley Scott:
Well, 1984 wasn't like Nineteen Eighty-Four. But 2021 sure is: as Sal says, Apple is ever more openly Big Brother; it vaporizes you with nary a thought (ask Parler if you can find a means of communicating with them - maybe a telegram?) and its smartphone, as I said in my introduction last night, is a portable telescreen that improves on Orwell by tagging along and watching you wherever you go.
So Apple would never run that 1984 ad today, would it? Because fear of state control has been superseded by fear of wrong thoughts and "sensitive" content.
Tonight's instalment of Nineteen Eighty-Four opens with the daily 11am "Two Minutes Hates", which features as always Emmanuel Goldstein, "the Enemy of the People":
The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure... Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even--so it was occasionally rumoured--in some hiding-place in Oceania itself...
Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party--an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it...
The sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically... But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were--in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police.
Orwell is presumed to have based "Emanuel Goldstein" on the real-life Leon Trotsky during his exile in Mexico. Likewise, Goldstein's tract The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism ("oligarchical collectivism" is not a bad term for our own times) is the merest gloss on Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and eventually settled in Mexico, until Stalin had him icepicked in 1940. In exile he had an affair with Frida Kahlo and took up gardening, but Moscow still spent a decade publicly blaming him for everything going wrong back home.
It is not necessary, though, for the All-Purpose Enemy to be that real. The Deep State decided five years ago that "Russia" was behind anything that advantaged Trump: The Kremlin had bought a hundred grand's worth of Facebook ads and a bunch of "Macedonian content farmers" and loosed them on the presidential election to devastating effect. An entire election cycle later, the Democrats and the media declared as one that they would not be addressing the matter of Hunter Biden's laptop because it was "Russian disinformation". Which is, in Orwell's very well-chosen words:
...an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.
And so tens of millions of apparently sane Americans believe Trump is a Russian agent and that Putin somehow dropped off a fake laptop at a Delaware computer shop.
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"...an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.
And so tens of millions of apparently sane Americans believe Trump is a Russian agent and that Putin somehow dropped off a fake laptop at a Delaware computer shop." Chilling. And the owner of the computer shop was harassed and had to close his business.
But I learned last week that the right has more dangerous extremists than I thought. It was a mob that entered the capital. Most were Qanon Kraken believers. Orwell's description of the two Minute of Hates illustrates how the emotions of a mob develop. Violence is never acceptable.
My friends on the left are more than willing to say that "Trump incited the mob" which he did not. Yet - crickets when Kamala Harris fundraised to bail Antifa/BLM rioters out of jail.
This morning I ordered a DVD of Home Alone 2 before they vanish Trump from it. I never had a desire to watch those movies. But these times are so extraordinary that I find me ordering a DVD as a political statement. Everything is Political these days.
The again maybe Big Brother will be a bearded mid forties genius with piercing blue eyes, a hypnotic stare and flat accent that you can't quite place.
Like many here, I first read 1984 and Animal Farm as part of the school curriculum. In my case it was back in the late 70s. I have re-read them since and still find them compelling. I have recommended then to my 3 adult children, two of whom I know have read them and found them unsettling. Finding time to listen to Mark's dulcet tones is tricky for me. I tend to rely on reading at odd hours. I hope to resolve that soon.
Orwell could not have foreseen future tech and his perspective of totalitarianism was stern middle aged men with dark moustaches. I think big brother will more likely be an attractive, fun, slightly androgynous person in "their" thirties, young enough to relate to young people but old enough to seem wise to young people. "They" will be vegan and drink no sugar soda. "They" will have an amazing "green" life and gently admonish miscreants in the friendliest of manners. They will only prescribe the benefits of re-education for own own good.
And Emmanuel Goldstein's visage will alter as is deemed useful by The Party in the same way that the ally and enemy status of Eurasia and Eastasia alternate when useful. The two minute hate will be aimed at Trump for the time being until he is replaced by the next enemy of the state.
I would apply the first line Mark quotes from Orwell to the 'surprising' attack by "Trump Supporters" against a sacred symbol of our once great democracy in DC last week. So out of character. There is no question that those who led the attack were Trump's people right? - why they were wearing red hats and carrying American flags so case closed.The use of agent provocateurs is right out of the true bible of the democratic party 'Rules for Radicals'. Ask any Tea Party members that were infiltrated back in '12 by agents planted to shout out vile racist attacks against our African American President with always a 'journalist' present to report this to an outraged public. No conservative commentator in the country dares even suggest this very real and I would say likely possibility. So we march with heads down before these tyrants to the eventual doom of our movement. Truly mind boggling as the 'Great Darkness' descends upon America.
I wonder if the day will come when being a member of the Mark Steyn club becomes a matter of interest, and of record, to someone somewhere.
I'm not so sure it hasn't already.
My regret = being on "the list" as a (mere) First Year Founding Member.
I just joined this evening with that exact thought in mind. Mark don't care. I don't care. We all shouldn't care. Otherwise we're all at least halfway there anyways.
The gaslighting of the Capitol "riot" is running full steam. Thousands marched, hundreds went into the Capitol; some reportedly not Trump supporters but Antifa/BLM provocateurs. Big Media doesn't care to look. Big Tech uses it as an excuse to crush free speech, and not incidentally fatten its already bloated wallet by destroying up-start competitors. Big Brother talks about felony murder charges—to teach the Deplorables a lesson. But cheerleads Antifa/BLM. The next step in gaslighting is to spread rumors of a 50 state "armed" protest when Usurper Joe is coronated—probably just a pretext for "emergency" anti-Second Amendment diktats. As usual, America's Founders prove men of intellect, but thankfully not intellectuals; men of vision, but thankfully not visionaries. Their description of a legitimate (and just) government is simple. 1. It recognizes certain unalienable rights that it doesn't grant, can't take away, and must respect. 2. It operates on majority rule, but not majoritarianism, because no majority can "vote" on what rights a minority (however defined) might enjoy. 3. It's foundation is equality under the law, and a rejection of might makes right because even —and especially—rulers must be restrained from their baser impulses. Everything else is tyrannical and despotic. I think it's easy to see how the Declaration of Independence would categorize today's government.
I'm with you on this, and very curious that of the dozens of cases apparently being investigated, only two -- one actual Republican and the Horn Guy -- have had their names in the headlines. I predict that the names of many of those eventually charged will have other connections, and we will hear little or nothing of them after 1/20/21.
"I think it's easy to see how the Declaration of Independence would categorize today's government."
Totally agree. To an outsider, what's confusing is the apparent contradiction between the Second Amendment (in the context of what took place on January 6th) and "law and order". Isn't the Second Amendment a legitimate defence for intrusion into the legislature?
I just relistened to Mark's "Plum Duff", which has the advantage of being current. Books like "1984" and "Brave New World" are fine as harbingers of where we are headed. "Plum Duff" sadly recounts what we have already become. To coin a phrase, it is ripped from the headlines.
I have a question for anyone willing to hazard an explanation. What do you say to people who see Trump as Big Brother? How do you engage people with the hopes of changing their minds when they start from the position of believing that Trump's MAGA platform is the cause of our current "1984" predicament?
For the life of me, I cannot understand how the entire world cannot see what is so plainly obvious. Trump is Goldstein, Big Brother has subcontracted the Ministry of Truth's responsibilities to Big Tech, Obama (although as yet unseen in this role) is Big Brother "behind the curtain" so to speak, and on and on.
Orwell's memory hole proved correct despite the fact that original documentation remains readily available for anyone to see. People just accept the revised narratives without question and despite open reporting of the obvious contradictions. And the "has always been at war with" references? The accuracy is uncanny. Yet vast numbers of people not only don't see it, but they get it exactly backwards after having read it.
"What do you say to people who see Trump as Big Brother?"
"Huh?" If I'm being kind.
"Are you on drugs?" If I'm not.
But your question was more rhetorical, Wayne; I can see that. For there is nothing to say to such people. As the proverb goes, there is none so blind as those who will not see. Their blindness is selective, purposeful, and inoperable. In which case, "Are you on drugs?" is about all I got.
My sister read "1984" and would sometimes reference in conversations and it stunned me to realize she, as you say, had it completely backward. Her only reading material is "The Nation" and the home town morning paper which is reliably left wing. She also notes democrat, and thinks I'm a Nazi, but is too kind to call me one. Friends you can choose, but family...
I've been using none so blind for years.
I honestly do not want it to be rhetorical. I'm afraid that if we don't come up with something to effectively treat this pandemic of cranium-rectal inversion, then there is no hope of turning the tide.
"What do you say to people who see Trump as Big Brother?" I say please make an appointment with the nearest optometrist.
Lol
It's all part of "Trump Derangement Syndrome". Every evil is his fault, no good he does is recognized. It's emotional, irrational. There's no conversing possible.
Believing anything/nothing cuts both ways. Mark's Fox colleague Jebediah Bila (Yeah, that's her name. Madonna was taken.) declared on the weekend that there was no voter fraud, and Trump was just lying to his voters. How do you believe such a thing? Close your eyes, child, just close your eyes.
"...in Orwell's very well-chosen words:
'...an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.' "
This not only applies to Russia-gate as you state Mark, but also to 9/11 (WTC7 for starters), the Plandemic, man-made climate change, the rigged elections, the Holocaust, right vs left, and so much more....interestingly, our individual biases allow us to see some of the hoaxes and mis-directions plainly, while vehemently disagreeing with others, but set aside our biases and look for the truth and we see we live under a constant barrage of lies...
If we are ever allowed to see the truth about 2030-2921 the distillate will be that the Left, it's agents provocateur along with willing Republicans (sitting and unwitting) did the following:
Stole the elections
Stole the Rally Jan 6
Stole the Republic
Stole the future
This isn 't just the USA but this is The World now and forever....awomen.
Where to go now? Where can one run away to go avoid the real future? If bookings to Oceania open up, please let me know.
Razor-sharp - and painfully so - as always, Robert. Your wife's Plan B (vis-Ă -vis Solzhenitsyn) sounds wise.
Other thoughts, via Twitter: "We'll be begging China to save us".
Also: "Now the Amish look incredibly forward thinking".
Two minutes of hate seems quaint in today's stranger than fiction world.
"And so tens of millions of apparently sane Americans believe Trump is a Russian agent and that Putin somehow dropped off a fake laptop at a Delaware computer shop."
As I said yesterday, the left thinks Orwell wrote how-to books.
We have been watching episodes of a favorite TV show -- "Babylon 5" -- recently. One recurring line among many prescient statements:
"Terror is another form of communication."
And how convenient to have a carry-along telescreen . . .
I wake up every morning to a smaller world. The President of the United States of America has been memory-holed by Big Social; most of his supporters are gone with him, along with any cause he/they espoused. Today, I see Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch has been suspended by Big Bird for using an expression he's been using for months, namely (pausing to allow women and children to be whisked from the room): "#Hydroxychloroqine is a safe drug."
Not to play the Nazi card too early in the hand (well, it's out now), but they knew a thing or two about terrorism themselves. The Nazi policy of "Nacht und Nebel" (Night and Fog) was intended not only to disappear those targeted, under cover of darkness, but to leave not a trace behind. Only the memory of their appearance, the echo of their voice, remained (if you dared to remember); they were neither seen nor heard ever again. President Trump, gone. Parler, gone. Free speech, dead and gone. Forgive a discussion of Nazi tactics in a story about a thinly disguised Soviet state. Not the same thing at all; don't know what came over me. It's just that I'm afraid to go to sleep at night for fear of who will be gone in the morning.
You are not alone in your fears.
That disturbing final sentence says it all, Josh.
Indeed, George.
Thank you, wonderful Kate. These are dark times, and I hope that none of us feel alone. There is a certain comfort and power in that.
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch"... surviving through to the end of the was the goal. ... tomorrow it started all over again. "No day dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. It is all night — night forever."
It's not about one political ideology or another, it's about totalitarianism which comes in all forms. That's what Orwell hated. He remained a socialist until he died, however, he recognized the great danger of concentrating power in the hands of the state, no matter who's in charge. It can be Hitler or Stalin or Chairman Xi.
Apple were partly right. They just got the year wrong.
A masterpiece read masterfully. It only takes a few name switches to have this read like the daily news. I had a similar feeling while reading a political speech in "Atlas shrugged" and looked up from the page penned in the nineteen fifties and saw the the exact argument on CNN in the 1990s. It was then that I knew the narrative of one party was a tested piece of political propaganda and all I had believed for thirty years was 180 degrees from reality. Call it the Kathy Shaidle moment or David Horowitz epiphany or Michael Medved's right turn etc. It is why the youth are easily manipulated and conservatives seem to be older and reformed leftists.
Marc:
Medved was a Never-Trumper, who regarded Donald as a closet Nazi, based on his nationalism. Medved still opposed a second-term for Trump, because he said that closet door might still open. Seeing Nazis under every bed is a strong characteristic of a leftist. Many people (Glenn Beck, David Frum, Michael Coren, etc.) can change their politics like they change their socks. It's not necessarily a character strength.
Medved's inability to see what's going on, and then to perceive Trump as the primary threat to liberty, was one of the things that had me questioning reality back in 2016. Medved had always seemed to be one of the best analysts out there. But then again, he got fairly unhinged during Bush 43's second term.
His entire thesis seemed to boil down to the Republicans needing control of the House and a supermajority in the Senate along with the presidency before anything could be done about anything.
Sorry to hear it. Trump was a litmus test for conservatives to chose substance over style. So many of my north stars fell.
I didn't want it to end so I listened to it again! Both riveting and horrifying, the parallels with current events are many. I'd read it in high school but at the time it wasn't viewed as a cautionary tale as it seemed impossible and unthinkable that such a thing could ever occur in America. Mark, thanks for choosing this modern classic which so perfectly exemplifies the show's title - Tales for Our Time.
I think the reason that we are where we are, is because too many people still believe it's impossible and unthinkable, even though it's happening around them.
Exactly right, John. And if they do have a sense of what's happening, too many people are aligning themselves (often passively) with the new tyranny.
It's also interesting to see so many people suddenly distancing themselves... from themselves.
Many thanks Mark for quoting my thoughts on the irony of Apple's famous 1984 Super Bowl advertisement. I sometimes wonder what Steve Jobs would think of how Apple is run today. Sure, Jobs was a liberal and a well known Obama supporter. But he was also cut from a different cloth when compared to just about any of the current big tech oligarchs. My recollection is that Jobs wasn't much a fan of overt political activism in his business. Rather, the business was Jobs' activism. Would Jobs have gone with the flow of the times and embraced cancel culture as his handpicked successor Tim Cook has done? I'm not so sure that he would have but I find it an interesting question to ponder.
Of course it's only after I let it out into the universe, that I discover I am wrong. Twitter apparently doesn't allow for any hashtag using only numbers, so it's false that Twitter specifically bans the hashtag #1984.
I would feel sorrier for my error if Twitter hadn't banned many conservatives' Twitter accounts and Trump's account too, but I am still wrong, so please disregard my earlier comments on the subject.
Surprised this was not memory-holed. Although not a Boomer, 1984 - and the ability to critically understand it was required reading for all in my school. Fast Times at Ridgemont High I guess.