{"id":4532,"date":"2022-05-22T14:11:58","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T19:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lfs.org\/blog\/?p=4532"},"modified":"2023-02-24T17:02:12","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T23:02:12","slug":"the-recurring-orwellian-threat-nineteen-eighty-four-an-early-prometheus-hall-of-fame-winner-sadly-retains-its-relevance-and-resonance-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/the-recurring-orwellian-threat-nineteen-eighty-four-an-early-prometheus-hall-of-fame-winner-sadly-retains-its-relevance-and-resonance-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The recurring Orwellian threat: Nineteen Eighty-Four, an early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner, sadly retains its relevance and resonance today"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg
\n<\/strong>Almost three quarters of a century after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four,\u00a0<\/em>the influence and prophetic power of George Orwell hasn\u2019t faded.<\/p>\n

Quite the contrary.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
George Orwell, in his 1943 press card portrait (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the rise of \u201ccancel culture\u201d and various online-sparked mob panics increasingly common in our so-called enlightened modern era and with such dystopian experiments as the recent failed roll-out of the current administration\u2019s \u201cDisinformation Governance Board,\u201d it\u2019s become virtually impossible to read informed commentary across a broad spectrum of opinion magazines and columnists without coming across Orwellian references and warnings these days.<\/p>\n


\nPerhaps that\u2019s a sad commentary on our times \u2013 or perhaps it\u2019s a perversely salutary trend in some ways, reflecting the fact that in relatively free societies, people remain wary of many perceived authoritarian trends and wish to alert others to their dangers.<\/p>\n

Either way, there\u2019s no question that in 2021 and 2022, Orwell\u2019s classic dystopian novel, published in 1948 and inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 1984, ranks at or near the top of Prometheus-winning novels in the news today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In fact, I\u2019ve come across so many apt references to aspects of Orwell\u2019s novel in recent months that this year seems to be approaching the peak-level references of the year 1984.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t recall, that was the year when so many media organizations did features, stories and commentaries on Orwell\u2019s classic novel, and inevitably felt compelled to ask the clich\u00e9 question: \u201cAre we closer in 1984 to a \u201c1984\u201d-style dictatorship? (The short answer, perhaps easier to grasp today with the help of hindsight, was no \u2013 not really, although there were and always are authoritarian tendencies to recognize and oppose.)<\/p>\n

THE DISINFORMATION BOARD, NOW \u201cPAUSED\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

But today, some political actions and trends seem more concretely Orwellian than ever – almost as if they were inspired directly from the plot of\u00a0Nineteen Eighty-Four.<\/em><\/p>\n

For instance, the Spectator\u00a0<\/em>magazine recently reported on the relative good news that the U.S. government’s recently announced federal Disinformation Governance Board has been \u201cpaused\u201d \u2013 itself a rather Orwellian euphemism by yet another administration that has difficulty speaking clearly, accurately or honestly about a variety of issues.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an excerpt from the Spectator\u00a0<\/em>report<\/a> that includes the now-obligatory Orwellian reference:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe… \u201cDisinformation Governance Board,\u201d dubbed by many, even leftists, as a dystopian Ministry of Truth, has had its wings clipped after the Department of Homeland Security unveiled the new bureau just three weeks ago.<\/p>\n

The rollout of the new board was itself lacking a lot of information, (and)… The DHS can save itself the trouble of assessing next steps, as Nina Jankowicz, the administration\u2019s pick to lead the task force, has resigned already, and the Disinformation Governance Board has been \u201cpaused\u201d amid ongoing backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Spectator<\/em> note even got a bit snarky:<\/p>\n

\u201cTaylor Lorenz, the Washington Post\u2019s \u00a0\u201cinternet culture\u201d reporter and an expert on spreading disinformation, is coming to Jankowicz\u2019s defense, claiming she is a \u201cvictim\u201d of coordinated right-wing attacks \u2014 which, evidently, Jankowicz was not qualified to squelch, despite being a \u201cwell-known figure in the field of fighting disinformation and extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although there were quite a few objections to the Disinformation Board made by columnists and leaders across the political spectrum, including several prominent liberals and Democrats, the Post reporter didn’t mention any of them in her allegedly objective news analysis. (Was she aware of them and shoved them down Orwell’s infamous “memory hole” like a propagandist in the novel’s Ministry of Truth – or was she stuck mindlessly in a media bubble of ignorance, the result in part of other propagandists and partisans within her own tribe?)<\/p>\n

THE NEW “THOUGHTCRIMES” – ANOTHER PROFESSOR CANCELED<\/strong><\/p>\n

Former New York Times<\/em> columnist\/editor Bari Weiss, who was demonized and hounded out of that newspaper by a mob of young illiberal staffers, now has a must-read Substack column and website standing up for reason, civil liberties, free expression, facts, science and the right to dissent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Weiss, a Jewish liberal who has published an important book on How to Fight Anti-Semitism,<\/em> recently published on her Substack “Common Sense” blog<\/a> a guest column about the proposed Princeton firing of a tenured professor for a long-resolved mistake made and adjudicated many years ago.<\/p>\n

Significantly, when Weiss (at @bariweiss) tweeted about the slant and biases of a recent New York Times report about the latest witch-hunt, she used a word popularized by Orwell in Nineteen Eighty Four:<\/em> \u201cthoughtcrime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the playbook: person expresses thoughtcrime,\u201d Weiss wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Puritans and the bureaucrats go digging. Then they caricature and smear the person based on their worst moment or mistake. They pretend it\u2019s about that, but the thoughtcrime was always the thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>THE BBC, GOING DOWN ORWELL\u2019S \u2018MEMORY HOLE\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, for a third example (among many one could pick recently), and one seemingly drawn directly from the pages of Orwell\u2019s novel, consider what\u2019s been happening lately in Great Britain, the actual if fictionalized setting for Orwell\u2019s propaganda-spewing Ministry of Truth and his haunting portrait of mobs riled up by a dictatorial and media-manipulative dictatorship to participate in \u201cTwo-Minute Hates\u201d \u2013 a rather prescient stab on Orwell\u2019s part at the typically short-lived excesses of today\u2019s social-media panics.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an excerpt from \u201cThe BBC Quietly Censors Its Own Archives,” an article about how out of public view, the state-owned broadcaster has been altering old episodes of its shows to make them \u2018suitable\u2019 for modern listeners.
\n
\n<\/strong>\u201cReflecting\u00a0upon George Orwell\u2019s many authoritative predictions can grow tiresome for writer and reader alike. And yet, given our present predicament, one might ask what choice one truly has. \u201cThe sinister fact about literary censorship in England,\u201d Orwell wrote back in 1945, \u201cis that it is largely voluntary.\u201d And so, indeed, it is,\u201d as National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke reported in the article.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Daily Telegraph <\/em>reported\u00a0that \u201can anonymous Radio 4 Extra listener\u201d had \u201cdiscovered the BBC had been quietly editing repeats of shows over the past few years to be more in keeping with social mores.\u201d To which the BBC said . . . well,\u00a0yeah<\/em>. In a statement addressing the charge, the institution confirmed that \u201con occasion we edit some episodes so they\u2019re suitable for broadcast today, including removing racially offensive language and stereotypes from decades ago, as the vast majority of our audience would expect.\u201d Thus, in the absence of law or regulation, has the British establishment begun to excise material it finds inappropriate by today\u2019s lights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deployment of the word \u201cbroadcast\u201d in the BBC\u2019s affirmation was both deliberate and misleading. Historically, a \u201cbroadcast\u201d was a one-off event, like a newspaper or stage performance. But, as the BBC presumably knows, in the age of streaming, \u201cbroadcasts\u201d tend to be more permanent than that. Because it is so old, much of the material that the BBC has been altering is not available to purchase or download, nor broadly owned on physical media, which means that when the BBC elects to change it, it is changing the only working copy that the majority of the public may enjoy…<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a free market, one might be obliged to throw up one\u2019s hands and lament that the copyright holder was such a philistine. But the BBC is a\u00a0de facto <\/em>government agency \u2014\u00a0an agency for which all Britons who own televisions are forced by statute to pay \u2014 and, as a result, the material that it is modifying is effectively publicly owned.<\/p>\n

“This raises a host of important questions \u2014 chief among which is: Why, if \u201cthe vast majority\u201d of the BBC\u2019s audience expects the organization to render its archives more \u201csuitable,\u201d has it been doing so in secret?<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain: In the Internet age, changes made to source material tend to be iterative rather than additive. When the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0updates a story in its newspaper, one can plausibly obtain both copies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“By contrast, when the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0updates a story on its website, the original page disappears. By its own admission, the BBC has been deleting entire sketches from comedy series that are 50, 60, or 70 years old, many of which can be heard only with the BBC\u2019s permission. Are we simply to assume that the public supports this development? And, if so, are we permitted to wonder why the BBC was not open about it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The knowledgeable article observes that Orwell based the job that central character Winston Smith held in the Records section of the Ministry of Truth on the job that his wife had held at the British Ministry of Information\u2019s censorship department early in World War II.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The \u201cprocess of continuous alteration\u201d in which Smith was engaged, Orwell wrote in\u00a01984<\/em>, \u201capplied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs\u2014to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance,\u201d such that \u201cday by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.\u201d<\/p>\n

“What better description could one find of what the BBC is now doing to its canon? Some of the revisions… are, indeed, the result of changing mores. Others, however, smack of cynical self-protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to its traditional role and its remarkable longevity, the BBC is in the enviable position of having untrammeled access to a treasure trove of historical archives. If, in an attempt to protect its reputation and placate Britain\u2019s many would-be arbiters of taste, it is incapable of curating and exhibiting those archives without attempting to bringing them \u201cup to date,\u201d then, as a matter of priority, they must be placed elsewhere \u2014 alongside an exacting and stringent warning that, whatever the role of government-run media may be in 2022, it cannot be to control the past, the present, or anything in-between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such yes, Orwellian\u00a0<\/em>trends today to control, suppress, hide and censor art, culture, news, information and \u201cmisinformation\u201d (too often meaning simply facts, news and legitimate opinion that the authorities find inconvenient) may be predictable but they still remain disturbing to freedom lovers and anyone who appreciates the need for culture to remain vibrant, open and honest about its history.<\/p>\n

Happily, then, it’s good to see relatively wide awareness and concern, across a variety of opinion magazines and from left to right, whenever such authoritarian trends manifest – even when they do so absurdly, prompting some measure of both disdain and cynical humor.<\/p>\n

How much worse would our world and culture be if such trends were simply taken for granted and not even reported?<\/p>\n

Here’s a relevant excerpt from the Prometheus Blog appreciation of Orwell’s novel:<\/p>\n

“Although most totalitarian and communist systems have thankfully collapsed or faded from the Earth, Orwell\u2019s novel resonates today even in less extreme circumstances and societies.<\/p>\n

“Many of his telling details and imaginative concepts and phrases illuminate the tribalism, identity politics and political correctness amplified through television, the Internet and other forms of social media in a 21st\u00a0<\/sup>century global village where facts and truth, or respect for honest differences of opinion and policy increasingly don\u2019t seem to matter.”<\/p>\n

Read the full Prometheus Blog appreciation of Orwell’s masterpiece here.<\/a><\/p>\n


\n\"\"<\/a><\/u><\/strong>* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For a full list of winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to the full set of published appreciation-reviews of past winners.<\/p>\n

* Read\u00a0\u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/em>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us<\/strong>! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards,\u00a0join\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital, and in some ways even more powerful than politics in the long run, by sparking innovation, better ideas, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights and differences.<\/p>\n

Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread better visions of the future that help humanity overcome tyranny, slavery and war and achieve universal liberty and human rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg Almost three quarters of a century after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four,\u00a0the influence and prophetic power of George Orwell hasn\u2019t faded. Quite the contrary. With the rise of \u201ccancel culture\u201d and various online-sparked mob panics increasingly common in our so-called enlightened modern era and with such dystopian experiments as the recent failed … Continue reading The recurring Orwellian threat: Nineteen Eighty-Four, an early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner, sadly retains its relevance and resonance today<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,9,1862],"tags":[58,1575,1570,1572,1573,59,1571,1574,268,1189,1576],"class_list":["post-4532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-essay","category-george-orwell","tag-58","tag-bari-weiss","tag-bbc","tag-disinformation","tag-disinformation-governance-board","tag-george-orwell","tag-ministry-of-truth","tag-national-review","tag-prometheus-hall-of-fame","tag-the-spectator","tag-thoughtcrime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-1b6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4532"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4558,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions\/4558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}