Did Orwell’s 1984 Become Reality?
To some readers, it might seem rhetorical to ask whether the story of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984 ), first published in Britain in 1949, has somehow escaped its pages and spread like an ominous miasma across the contours of social reality. But upon closer inspection—that is, if we avoid the compromised mainstream news media—a disturbing situation emerges.
Everywhere we look in Western countries, from the UK, through Europe to America (and even India , whose “Orwellian digital ID system” was recently praised at length by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer), we see a range of social conditions that, in varying stages, precisely represent the no-longer-fictional totalitarian state that Orwell described in 1984. Needless to say, this is a warning against totalitarianism with its unabashed manipulation of information and mass surveillance, writes Bert Olivier .
I’m certainly not the first to see the ominous contours of Orwell’s nightmarish vision forming before our eyes. In 2023, Jack Watson did so too, when he wrote (among other things) :
Thoughtcrime is another of Orwell’s assumptions that has come true. When I first read 1984, I never imagined this invented word would be taken seriously; no one should have the right to question what you think. Obviously, no one can read your mind, and surely you can’t be arrested just for thinking something? I was completely wrong, however. A woman was recently arrested for praying silently in her head, and, remarkably, the prosecution was asked to provide evidence of her “thoughtcrime.” Needless to say, they didn’t. But the realization that we can now essentially be accused of thinking wrong thoughts is a worrying development. Freedom of speech is already under threat, but this goes beyond freedom of speech. This is about freedom of thought. Everyone should have the right to think as they please, and no one should feel obligated or compelled to express certain beliefs or think only certain thoughts.
Most people know that totalitarianism is not a desirable social or political situation. Even the word sounds ominous, but that’s probably true only for those who already know what it means. I’ve written about it before , in different contexts , but it’s more relevant now than ever. We need to remind ourselves of what Orwell wrote in that eerily prescient novel.
Given the rapidly expanding and intensifying electronically mediated surveillance strategies being implemented worldwide – no doubt intended to instill in citizens the subliminal awareness that privacy is fast becoming a distant memory – the following excerpt from Orwell’s text seems disturbingly prophetic, considering the time in which it was written (1984, Free Planet e-book, p. 5):
Behind Winston’s back, the voice from the telescreen continued to chatter about pig iron and the overspending of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Every sound Winston made, above the level of a very faint whisper, was picked up by the screen. Moreover, as long as he remained within the field of view of the metal plate, he could be seen as well as heard. It was, of course, impossible to know whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or according to what system, the Thought Police connected to an individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they were keeping everyone under constant surveillance. But in any case, they could connect to your wire whenever they pleased. You had to live—and did live, from habit that had become instinct—with the assumption that every sound you made was being listened to and, except in the dark, every movement was being closely followed.
Before providing compelling examples of contemporary, real-world surveillance equivalents of the 1984 “telescreen” that have become sufficiently “normal” to be accepted without much protest, and to further refresh your memory, here’s a quote from Hannah Arendt from The Origins of Totalitarianism (New edition, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich 1979, p. 438):
Total domination, which seeks to organize the infinite plurality and differentiation of people as if all of humanity were but one individual, is only possible if each person can be reduced to an unchanging identity of reactions, so that any of these bundles of reactions can be arbitrarily exchanged for another. The problem is to fabricate something that doesn’t exist: a kind of human species similar to other animal species, whose only “freedom” would consist in “preserving the species.”
As the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben would say, totalitarianism reduces each individual human being to “bare life”; nothing more, and after a period of being subjected to its mind-numbing techniques, people begin to behave accordingly, as if incapable of manifesting their natality (unique, singular birth) and plurality (the fact that all people are unique and irreplaceable). The final blow to our humanity comes when the coup de grâce of totalitarian rule is delivered (Arendt 1979, quoting David Rousseton on the conditions in Nazi concentration camps, p. 451):
The next decisive step in the preparation of living corpses is the murder of the moral being within. This is accomplished primarily by making martyrdom, for the first time in history, impossible: “How many people here still believe that a protest has even the slightest historical significance? This skepticism is the true masterpiece of the SS. Their great achievement. They have corrupted all human solidarity. Here, night has fallen on the future. If there are no witnesses, there can be no testimony. Demonstrating when death can no longer be postponed is an attempt to give death meaning, to act beyond one’s own death. To be successful, a gesture must have social significance…”
Looking at the current global social situation against this backdrop yields interesting, if disturbing, results. Niamh Harris, for example, reports that German MEP Christine Anderson and British politician Nigel Farage have both warned that globalists are feverishly working to establish a full-fledged surveillance state “before too many people wake up” to this situation. Anderson—whose warning is echoed by Farage—points out the irony that people are waking up precisely because globalist efforts to accelerate the installation of a totalitarian surveillance state are gaining momentum and becoming increasingly conspicuous. The more the process accelerates, the louder the critical voices become (and the greater the likelihood of protests), and the more anxious the neo-fascists become to close the net around the world’s citizens. She warns that:
“Digital identity isn’t meant to make your life easier. It’s meant to give the government total control over you.”
“Digital currency is the cream of the crop of all control mechanisms… What do you think will happen the next time you refuse an mRNA vaccine? With the push of a button, they’ll simply cancel your account. You won’t be able to buy food anymore. You won’t be able to do anything at all.”
Given these warnings, a good example is the recent attempt by noted globalist Tony Blair to allay people’s fears about digital ID systems. Needless to say, his praise for the system (for its “tremendous benefits”) combined with AI and facial recognition is grossly disingenuous, as is clear from his words (quoted from Wide Awake Media on X):
Facial recognition can now identify suspects in real time on live video feeds… It helps quickly identify suspects in crowded places like train stations and events. AI goes even further: it recognizes crime patterns, guides patrols, and streamlines decisions… This is where technology like digital ID becomes crucial.
Wide Awake Media’s laconic comment on Blair’s words (referring to the UK’s already dystopian surveillance methods) says it all: “Imagine these kinds of systems being in the hands of a government that locks people up for memes and jokes.”
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that these examples of attempts to further the totalitarian agenda of total surveillance, combined with inescapable control mechanisms like CBDCs, are rooted in the structural dynamics of the (no longer fictional) Big Brother society that Orwell so aptly described over 75 years ago. Except that—given the rise of the network society of electronically mediated actions and behavior—such surveillance and control have reached levels of efficiency and ubiquity that Big Brother could only dream of. This becomes undeniably clear when one examines reports like this one , which suggests that in contemporary Britain, surveillance technology allows neo-fascist authorities to identify, arrest, and imprison individuals for so-called “crimes” reminiscent of the thoughtcrimes of Orwell’s 1984, except that they seem utterly trivial in comparison. As the article in question puts it:
After a series of high-profile arrests for free speech offences, Britain is being seen by the White House as a realm of narrow-minded, bipartisan woke tyranny, where authors of abusive tweets can expect to spend more time in jail than sexual predators and paedophiles, and where commentators and comedians should be avoided – lest they be taken to a cell immediately upon arrival for offending the left’s orthodoxy.
Lucy Connolly, a mother and nanny who received a 31-month prison sentence for “incitement to racial hatred” for a single (quickly deleted) tweet she posted in the wake of the Southport Murders , is just one of many Britons the state has prosecuted for such offenses in recent years. British police are currently making 30 arrests a day for online offenses, with many of these cases treated far more seriously than violent, sexual, or property crimes. Connolly was one of 44 convicted of “incitement to racial hatred” last year…
Those who, like Tony Blair, do their best to justify surveillance as “useful” even go so far as to use Orwellian terminology to allay public fears that this vaunted “protection” would be a victim. In this vein, in 2022, the outgoing mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, was reported as claiming that:
Americans will learn to love the Chinese-style surveillance state, according to New York City’s Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who responded to criticism of the growing use of facial recognition technology by declaring, “Big Brother protects you!”
Adams made the disturbing statements in response to elected officials who have expressed concerns that the use of such technology is turning society into an authoritarian surveillance state.
However, not everyone was charmed by the mayor’s reassuring words:
Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, responded by warning that facial recognition technology would be deployed to crack down on “any aspect of resistance” in the city.
“These are technologies that would be horrifying in anyone’s hands. But giving even more power to an agency with such a horrific track record of surveillance abuse, at a time when they are facing declining oversight, is a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Part of the problem facing freedom-loving citizens everywhere is the uncritical acceptance by many – but certainly not all – people that ever-changing technology somehow justifies itself.
That’s not the case, as a simple thought experiment confirms. If someone told you that today, compared to its 18th-century predecessor , the French Revolution, there’s a much more efficient “electronic guillotine” available, one that ends a person’s life quickly, humanely, and painlessly, and that could solve the overpopulation problem by euthanizing people over 60, would you agree?
Of course not. First of all, seniors have the same right to life as everyone else, and many of a person’s most productive and enjoyable years come after age 60. So there’s absolutely no reason to accept or justify new technology as “beneficial” simply because it’s supposedly “more efficient.”
Yet, everyone with globalist convictions seems to believe that to convince the “sheep” to enter the digital prison, all they need to do is glorify the technology involved—by, of course, spreading lies. But I mustn’t forget that according to the 1984 playbook, which all globalist neo-fascists seem to have adopted (foolishly assuming no one would notice), everything we were taught in the world that preceded the attempt to establish their vaunted New World Order has been turned upside down, so that “falsehood” (lying) has now become “truth.” If this sounds far-fetched, consider the globalists’ disingenuous pronouncements through the lens of 1984 (p. 6):
The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak—was strikingly different from everything else in sight. It was a massive pyramidal structure of gleaming white concrete, stretching 300 meters into the sky, terrace after terrace. From where Winston stood, he could just make out the Party’s three slogans, elegantly emblazoned on the white facade:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Today’s “Newspeak” does exactly the same thing , as anyone who follows alternative media can easily discover. If we, who cherish our freedoms, wish to preserve them, we had better be vigilant against all the ongoing attempts to impose permanent restrictions on us, or perhaps even permanent termination, all in the name of supposed “benefits, safety, and convenience.” If we don’t, we have only ourselves to blame if legislators of various stripes manage to surreptitiously impose these restrictions on us.
https://www.frontnieuws.com/is-orwells-1984-werkelijkheid-geworden