The Socialist Debate
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
With these slogans, George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR burst upon the literary world as the
definitive anti-utopian novel for the second half of the 20th Century.
Published in 1949, this darkly cautionary and prescient vision of the near future was a warning against
the dangers of a totalitarian government fueled by high technology. Orwell envisions a world devastated
by nuclear war and poverty, where the West has fallen under the spell of a totalitarian socialist dictator,
Big Brother. A political demagogue and religious cult leader all rolled into one, Big Brother's power and
mystery are so immense that one may wonder if he even exists at all.
Big Brother's Ingsoc Party (English Socialism) has perfected the uses of high technology to monitor the
lives of its populace, and to insure unswerving loyalty through surveillance, propaganda and
brainwashing. The government's most brilliant and most appalling project is the actual deconstruction of
the English language into Newspeak, the language of the Party. Each successive edition of the
Newspeak Dictionary has fewer words than its predecessor. By removing meaning and nuance from the
vocabulary, the government hopes to eradicate seditious and anti-social thinking before it even has the
chance to enter a person's mind. Without the vocabulary for revolution, there can be no revolution. For
those who persist in thinking for themselves, so-called Thought Criminals, Ingsoc's stormtroopers, the
Thought Police, are there to intervene, incarcerating the free-thinkers in the Ministry of Love, where
they will be re-educated, or worse.
http://www.newspeak.com/1984.htm
The biggest lie of newspeak is that big government is good for individual freedom.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
With these slogans, George Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR burst upon the literary world as the
definitive anti-utopian novel for the second half of the 20th Century.
Published in 1949, this darkly cautionary and prescient vision of the near future was a warning against
the dangers of a totalitarian government fueled by high technology. Orwell envisions a world devastated
by nuclear war and poverty, where the West has fallen under the spell of a totalitarian socialist dictator,
Big Brother. A political demagogue and religious cult leader all rolled into one, Big Brother's power and
mystery are so immense that one may wonder if he even exists at all.
Big Brother's Ingsoc Party (English Socialism) has perfected the uses of high technology to monitor the
lives of its populace, and to insure unswerving loyalty through surveillance, propaganda and
brainwashing. The government's most brilliant and most appalling project is the actual deconstruction of
the English language into Newspeak, the language of the Party. Each successive edition of the
Newspeak Dictionary has fewer words than its predecessor. By removing meaning and nuance from the
vocabulary, the government hopes to eradicate seditious and anti-social thinking before it even has the
chance to enter a person's mind. Without the vocabulary for revolution, there can be no revolution. For
those who persist in thinking for themselves, so-called Thought Criminals, Ingsoc's stormtroopers, the
Thought Police, are there to intervene, incarcerating the free-thinkers in the Ministry of Love, where
they will be re-educated, or worse.
http://www.newspeak.com/1984.htm
The biggest lie of newspeak is that big government is good for individual freedom.
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Libertarian Opinions