A Totalitarian Government
Ana Mullor ]

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NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR

By George Orwell

 

The organisation of the Oceanian system is a pyramidal structure, where the infallible Big Brother image is placed on top, followed Inner Party members. Below this, we have Outer Party members and finally, the Oceanian Prole.

This totalitarian government consists of four ministries:

Ministry of Truth responsible for education, news, entertainment and art.

Ministry of Love responsible for keeping law and citizen’s loyalty.

Ministry of Peace responsible for war and alliance subjects.

Ministry of Plenty responsible for economy and financial issues.

All ministry names, far from representing their real meaning, are intended to seize people’s life and conscience with deceitful philosophy and manipulated norms. Should anyone dare to infringe upon them, whether mentally or physically, they will suffer hard punishment like torture, hard labour, or even the worst, the death.

Apart from that, the Oceanian government’s strategy to keep population submission and worship is based on deceiving feelings of an unceasing war situation, which threaten people, making them believe that Big Brother protects them all against the enemy attacks.

In fact, the objective of this situation is led to get an unificated state, increasing a patriotic feeling among its citizens. Eventhough, there is no real war or alliance in progress. It is just an ideological war that the Party uses to manipulate and control pepople´s behaviour, as all the bombs and rockets thrown against the population, causing death, mutilations and panic, help the Party to avoid any attempt of revolt in a surrounding conditions of hunger, food rationing, poverty, desolation and mental absorption.

The doctrine of the Party preaches a large number of principles and practices that must be obeyed and respected since their childhood in order to grow up and be what Party calls, "right citizens". Starting with a strict education and brainwashing, children become adult’s spies who even denounce their own parents to the Party.

Subsequently, this creates a situation of full dedication and service to the Party’s aims. The Party develops a large number of activities to reach its goal, such as:

- The Youth Anti-Sex League,

- The Saving Campaign,

- Hating Week,

and the Two Minutes of Hate are among others, predesigned activities to monitor and to control not only Party members’ thought, but their acts too.

As for relationship between men and women, Party members must strictly follow Purism principles. It is forbidden to think of any loving feeling or sexual attraction. Therefore, love affairs among Party members are considered serious crimes.

Apart from that, the Party’s main projects are Newspeak concept, construction and implementation through Doublethink, the mutability of the past and degeneration of objective reality, which, finally, will come up to be the complete annulment of human beings, as well as, loss of identity.

Newspeak is the deconstruction of the current English language into a new concept of language established by the Party, in order to solve ideological needs. Newspeak implies the gradual reduction of vocabulary power. On the one hand, it is intended to eliminate words with historical meaning or secondary nuance that may generate anti-social thoughts. On the other hand, it introduces new words that have been particularly designed to remove any revolutionary idea.

Furthermore, Newspeak allows the government to control public opinions and to lead people’s mental activity successfully towards its own objectives of reducing the thought area. This is achieved by reducing the number of words to a minimum necessary and giving them the precise meaning.

Newspeak words are classified in three groups: the first one includes daily use of words to express simple thoughts, the second group includes composed-words and the third one includes the remaining ones.

From a grammatical point of view, any Newspeak word can be used as a verb, noun, adjective or adverb. When a verb and a noun share the same word-root, there is no difference between them, so this norm helps to destroy some forms of speech. To name a few, adding the suffix "plenty" to the verb-noun form adjectives. Adding the "in" prefix, we obtain a negative meaning, adding the "plus" suffix, we increase the emphasis and we also intensify the meaning.

There is another possibility of changing word meaning’s; for instance, adding affixed prepositions like "post","sub","under" and some others to words.

The second group of vocabulary is formed by words deliberately constructed for political purposes and with the intention of seducing the speaker’s mental attitude towards the Party´s principles. The biggest difficulty is to precise with accuracy the new words meaning invalidating parallelly the meaning of existing ones. Some words have a subtle meaning sometimes difficult to be understood by a person who does not manage the practice of Newspeak and the Party´s ideas.

As time goes by, Newspeak will be more and more spread, so it will deeply perpetrate in daily society communication. Its words will continue being reduced in number and its meanings restricted up to the point of a remote danger of using them improperly. This will provoke the extinction of the old English language, which after a couple of generations it will be really impossible to read history written in old language format, besides there will be no possibility to keep contrary ideas against the Party due to lack of vocabulary to express them.

Meanwhile, in the transition period from old English language to the generalised establishment of Newspeak, if a person using new words may remember their original meaning, practising Doublethink can easily solve this situation. However, this risk will completely disappear after a couple of generations due to the fact that a child being educated in Newspeak as the only existing language will grow without any possibility of questioning himself about old words and their proper meaning.

Finally, the result will be that, assuming language is the vehicle to express our minds contents, neither the idea of perpetrating criminal ideas nor to act against the Party system will be practicable at all and our minds will be tracked to a manipulated and falsified language shape.

Apart from that, how does Doublethink function here? It is the necessary medium to implement Newspeak successfully. Doublethink is the ability to believe two opposite ideas without feeling any mind disorder. The fact of rewriting news, information, events need a high mental skill to believe obvious illogical thought or statement.

The most relevant slogans through which Doublethink works are: "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "Ignorance is Strength".

These statements imply contradictory ideas in their full meaning, but the objective of Doublethink is to invade people’s minds with irrational slogans, which they will never wonder about, firstly because they are Big Brother’s messages, secondly, because the belief of a permanent external war situation leads citizens to believe on the need of an internal peaceful state, though this also hides the government strategy to avoid internal revolts, thirdly, people understand freedom as the humanity’s destruction because members are used to the idea of everything must be under a surveillance system, finally, obeying and respecting the Party´s slogans, it generates a state of equilibrium, which Party members are forced to believe unhesitatingly as they do not understand "the enormity of what was demanded from them".

The practice of all theses mechanisms are the most dreadful intention of the Party to conquer the world and to stamp out liberty and feeling from human beings.

Principal Introduction Main Subject: Totalitarianism A Totalitarian Government Life and People Personal Conclusion References

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Created and updated on : Jan 20th, 2000