is purely nominal. We have to imagine this â that a groupof
New Statesman
intellectuals has taken over not just England but the entire English-speaking world. As England, or Airstrip One, cannot be more than a satellite of America, the assumption must be that the
New Statesman
oligarchs have first prevailed in the United States and then, armed with power, come home again. Nothing could be more absurd, and Orwell knows it. Thereâs been a great atomic war, but it has left much of Victorian London still standing â absurd again. There are vague memories of political purges in the fifties, but Winston Smithâs own reminiscences â and indeed those of practically everyone else â are of the indistinctness of a fading dream. Absurdity. Amnesia seems to have hit everyone, even when theyâre not exercising âmemory controlâ. It finds a sort of counterpart in our acceptance that we donât know, nor do we greatly care, how the revolution happened. Itâs just a necessary device to get the intellectuals into power. Absurd, comic. Iâm back where I started.
So you think thereâs nothing, as it were, nineteeneightyfourish about
Nineteen Eighty-Four?
That it was all there waiting in 1948?
Yes, in a sense. What was merely in the newspapers or the official records â like torture and concentration camps â had to be imported into Britain. The intellectual totalitarianism had to be fictionally realized. But novels are really made out of day-to-day experience, and Winston Smithâs frustrations were ours too â dirty streets, decaying buildings, sickening food in factory canteens, the government slogans on the walls â
Slogans? Like
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
and
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH ?
Not quite like those. Those are pure Nazi Germany. But I remember when I came home from overseas army service that the first peace-time government poster I saw showed a haggard sorrowing woman in black, with the legend KEEP DEATH OFF THE ROADS . Naturally, somebody had crossed that out and substituted SHE VOTED SOCIALIST . We were used to posters put out by the Ministry of Information, mostly ham-handed, not subtly ambiguous like the Ingsoc ones, YOUR FORTITUDE, YOUR PATIENCE, YOUR ENDURANCE WILL BRING US VICTORY . You and us, you see. No wonder we all became bloody purple, BE LIKE DAD, KEEP MUM . That nearly provoked a riot among wage-earning mothers. Slogans had become part of the British way of life. Orwell gave us nothing new.
Wasnât the warning new?
What warning? He was only telling us what Milton told CromwellâsEngland â hang on to your liberties. Perhaps not even that. He was playing the intellectual, game of constructing a working model of a Utopia, or cacotopia. How far, he seems to say, can I push things without seeing the careful structure collapse? Heâd already made animals play at the Russian Revolution. Another game. He was being the Swift
de nos jours
. Build your own horrible future, enjoy yourself. The thing works, and Orwell has to be pleased. But the pleasure has nothing to do with politics.
Thank you, Mr er â
.
Ingsoc considered
It is, without doubt, an oligarchy of refined intellects that is running Oceania. It cultivates a subtle solipsistic philosophy; it knows how to manipulate language and memory and, through these, the nature of perceived reality; it is totally aware of its reasons for wanting power. It has learned how to subdue personal ambition in the interests of collective rule. There is no Hitlerian or Stalinist cult of personality: Big Brother is an invention, a fictional personage and hence immortal, and those who are contained in him partake of his immortality. The oligarchy has learned how to reconcile opposites, not through dialectic, which is diachronic and admits absence of control over time, but through the synchronic technique of doublethink. Ingsoc is the first professional government, hence the last.
Its doctrines are
New Statesman
intellectuals has taken over not just England but the entire English-speaking world. As England, or Airstrip One, cannot be more than a satellite of America, the assumption must be that the
New Statesman
oligarchs have first prevailed in the United States and then, armed with power, come home again. Nothing could be more absurd, and Orwell knows it. Thereâs been a great atomic war, but it has left much of Victorian London still standing â absurd again. There are vague memories of political purges in the fifties, but Winston Smithâs own reminiscences â and indeed those of practically everyone else â are of the indistinctness of a fading dream. Absurdity. Amnesia seems to have hit everyone, even when theyâre not exercising âmemory controlâ. It finds a sort of counterpart in our acceptance that we donât know, nor do we greatly care, how the revolution happened. Itâs just a necessary device to get the intellectuals into power. Absurd, comic. Iâm back where I started.
So you think thereâs nothing, as it were, nineteeneightyfourish about
Nineteen Eighty-Four?
That it was all there waiting in 1948?
Yes, in a sense. What was merely in the newspapers or the official records â like torture and concentration camps â had to be imported into Britain. The intellectual totalitarianism had to be fictionally realized. But novels are really made out of day-to-day experience, and Winston Smithâs frustrations were ours too â dirty streets, decaying buildings, sickening food in factory canteens, the government slogans on the walls â
Slogans? Like
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
and
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH ?
Not quite like those. Those are pure Nazi Germany. But I remember when I came home from overseas army service that the first peace-time government poster I saw showed a haggard sorrowing woman in black, with the legend KEEP DEATH OFF THE ROADS . Naturally, somebody had crossed that out and substituted SHE VOTED SOCIALIST . We were used to posters put out by the Ministry of Information, mostly ham-handed, not subtly ambiguous like the Ingsoc ones, YOUR FORTITUDE, YOUR PATIENCE, YOUR ENDURANCE WILL BRING US VICTORY . You and us, you see. No wonder we all became bloody purple, BE LIKE DAD, KEEP MUM . That nearly provoked a riot among wage-earning mothers. Slogans had become part of the British way of life. Orwell gave us nothing new.
Wasnât the warning new?
What warning? He was only telling us what Milton told CromwellâsEngland â hang on to your liberties. Perhaps not even that. He was playing the intellectual, game of constructing a working model of a Utopia, or cacotopia. How far, he seems to say, can I push things without seeing the careful structure collapse? Heâd already made animals play at the Russian Revolution. Another game. He was being the Swift
de nos jours
. Build your own horrible future, enjoy yourself. The thing works, and Orwell has to be pleased. But the pleasure has nothing to do with politics.
Thank you, Mr er â
.
Ingsoc considered
It is, without doubt, an oligarchy of refined intellects that is running Oceania. It cultivates a subtle solipsistic philosophy; it knows how to manipulate language and memory and, through these, the nature of perceived reality; it is totally aware of its reasons for wanting power. It has learned how to subdue personal ambition in the interests of collective rule. There is no Hitlerian or Stalinist cult of personality: Big Brother is an invention, a fictional personage and hence immortal, and those who are contained in him partake of his immortality. The oligarchy has learned how to reconcile opposites, not through dialectic, which is diachronic and admits absence of control over time, but through the synchronic technique of doublethink. Ingsoc is the first professional government, hence the last.
Its doctrines are
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