Like most writing about 1984, this piece assumes Smith is a reliable narrator.

Would you trust someone who makes the kind of decisions Smith makes? Or advocates some of the courses of action he suggests to O'Brien? Are there more likely explanations for everything in the first two sections than Smith's narrative?

Nineteen Eighty-Four, and most of Orwell's other works (including his essays) are freely available at:

https://orwell.ru/

Edited to add direct link to the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, as referenced at the end of the article:

https://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app

Newspeak didn't occur in a vacuum. I find it more likely Orwell was spoofing Wells and Basic English and all of the post-1918 utopian attempts at "simplifying language" or auxlangs, than that he would be pretending to any originality.

It's not newspeak that causes crimestop. It's that "quiet desperation is the english way", it's the middle class attitudes of the title of "Keep the Aspidistra Flying", etc. that cause crimestop. Orwell was aware of crimestop from his own experiences, and he was aware that he lived in a world with, admittedly, bureaucratese, but without newspeak.

What Orwell was doing with Newspeak was, I believe, less a direct spoof of existing schemes than an illustration of how common habits of language might be consciously harnessed and directed by a totalitarian regime to further its own intellectual and political designs. In his own words[1],

When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.

Along these lines, the basic idea behind Newspeak was to create a language where "the existing dialect" would "do the job for" the Party, by making the expression of desirable thoughts not merely the natural result of lazily-chosen expression, but the automatic result of any admissible expression, by simplifying, not only the language itself, but the underlying body of ideas it was capable of expressing.

[1] https://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

He wrote an entire essay on politics and the English language: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli... which he complains about incoherent metaphors as cover for bad politics. Newspeak is a language in which metaphor is banned, and therefore politics and opposing the state is impossible.

Thank you for this, this is a wonderful resource!

I found the link to download an ASCII version of 1984 by reading the readme.txt file, the anchor link seemed broken.

Hope this helps another seeker:

https://orwell.ru/Download/1984/e84_asc.zip

One of the cool things I think about 1984 that occurred to me while re-reading the appendix now as suggested by the article is that in order for Orwell to say something very new about our civilization, or at least to say something old but to many new people, he needed to invent his own language to do it. In a sense there's mirror between what Orwell is doing with his book, in telling our society about itself, and what Ingsoc was doing to Oceania, in limiting thought to goodthink. They both invented a new language in order to relate a new meaning. I like that, and there's something...peculiar about books that invent a lot of new terms. Like LOTR and Harry Potter. There's something "generationally transformative" about such books, maybe. In a sense sci-fi is all-in on this sort of word coining, Matrix, Terminator, Star Trek.

Nineteen Eighty-four is sort of sci-fi. It's set in the future. And then the appendix, is set even further in the future talking in staid and "encycolpaedia"-like tone about the time of the events of the book as if it is in the past. What if Orwell was a time traveler, who wrote 1984 after a visit to a possible future, and was told that by writing this book, that future would not persist. Then on his second trip back to the future he verified he'd changed that timeline by writing his book, and lifted the appendix to 1984 from an encyclopedia on "the rise and fall of English socialism" from the future after the collapse of the political system his book had helped undo. Closed time like curves.

The whole Smith story is just fast-forward for what Orwell wanted to say, which is all contained in Goldstein.

Examine the world of 1984 from Goldstein on out, and it's an excellent example of what might happen if one took Plato's Republic[0] and attempted to practically implement it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[0] I'm not sure if the Republic referents are direct, or indirect due to Orwell's second rate boarding school having stanned the greeks.

I like your take. My take, is that Orwell is actually a closet totalitarian, and was singing the praises of such, albeit covertly and in the guise which he knew the public could fawn about and accept. I imagine Orwell smoking his pipe and chuckling to himself, "...and they thought it was against totalitarianism, that's why they swallowed it whole!" After all, the Party is really the victor and hero of the novel. The hopeful appendix could itself be a historical revision of a future "more perfect" incarnation of the Party. I think the 2-minutes hate against Goldstein, is the same 2-minutes hate against "Totalitarian States" that Orwell cynically evokes from a public he knew was ready to go rabid on this thing, against which, I think he believed, resistance was futile. I think he saw himself as greasing the wheels of that. So he's mocking his audience's gullibility while proving his point that totalitarianism is the only thing that can rule them, and selling them such via the backchannel of this novel everyone believes to be against that. I think, in this lens, Orwell is as the biggest political-social thinker of last 200 years, and he carried it off without being recognized as what he was doing, the ultimate power play, which makes it all the more impressive. I really shouldn't write this here, people will probably go crazy. But it's nice to see a fellow differentthinker, so I braved it. A final thought is that there's this concept call dramatic catharsis, in comedy, where the mockery of something is commonly seen as a way to remove its power, but in actuality simply provides a useless outlet for people's frustrations and further acclimates them to it. So, Italian plays mocking the state were how the people coped with it, but the state rolled on, better them cope than revolt. In that lens, 1984 is sort of a pre-catharsis that greases the wheels for the entrance of totalitarianism, by convincing everyone, as another commenter adroitly noted, "of the inevitable demise of English socialism". So Orwell was faking the death of totalitarianism in the mass consciousness, to provide cover for the introduction of totalitarianism. Sort of like that scene in the Dark Knight, where somebody brings the "body of the Joker" to Gambol's hideout, where the Joker promptly comes back to life and takes over.

Having read other Orwell works, in which he appears pretty pinko, I'm not sure about your take, but am happy to discuss its motivations.

Certainly I believe that he could chuckle over Animal Farm being eagerly taken up and sold as an anti-communist, rather than an anti-dog-and-pig, book.

Well, I think if you take that to the extreme you end up with totalitarian.

And by writing the appendix, he re-enabled that time line since everyone was assured of the inevitable fall of English socialism...

Hahaha!

Orwell became an engaged socialist as a young man based on his experience as being sent out as a colonial officer to Burma, and then as a consequence his exploration of the lives of the lower classes in the “developed” regions of Europe (primarily UK, France and Spain).* he wrote extensively of the inequities of capitalism and specifically of British social system.

By the end of the war his opinions had expanded as he understood the common thread of manipulation that ran through the governing systems of capitalism, fascism and communism. His subsequent, and final book, Animal Farm was about how communist systems, due to human nature, can tend to to end up just as bad as the others. It’s unclear to me if he ever gave up on his hopes for socialism (and if he had, if he despaired of any alternative) but it’s his weakest book in an extraordinary corpus.

1984 is often taken as a denouncement of socialism, but it’s more broad than that.

* Blair’s journey to socialism parallels the earlier journey that made socialism an acceptable doctrine in the UK at all, the trenches of WWI. That was the first time many of the upper class (all officers of course) had ever interacted closely with members of the lower classes and really developed even an inkling of what their lives were back home.

> 1984 is often taken as a denouncement of socialism

It's specifically a denouncement of Stalinism and the paths that led there. The tendency of people to conflate everything from Blairism through Fabianism to Stalinism into the same "socialism" makes it hard for them to see that it's not a denouncement of all of those things at once.

>and Koba (as Stalin was sometimes affectionately known).

The live representation of old Russian anecdote about what West thinks about Russians. ;)

The anecdote is one-liner: History teacher in English school "...tsar Ivan Groznyj who was nicknamed Vasil'evich for his brutality". ("Groznyj" means "fearful" and "Vasil'evich" is a patronymic name)

Koba was a nickname of Stalin during his Tsarist Russia work with Bolsheviks. So to refer to Stalin as "Koba" is about to refer to Obama as "Barry".

Anyway, 1984 was about Britain and is a prediction based on what Blair endured working for BBC during WWII years.

> FYI, most of the HN crowd here are proles here who are incapable of identifying any truth in Orwell's writings.

can u elaborate

They are probably referring to the kool aid drinkers

In that case, they must have no clue what ‘proles’ is short for.

I have been down voted _and_ flagged. See what I mean?

Like someone mentioned here, they buy into the larger propaganda, which could be the govt, society, a professional group, a cultural group etc.

Their have no ability of independent thought, anyone with a different point of view other than what their thought leaders suggests can be the target of their ire.

Great to hear that science (neuroscience) here is catching up with Orwell. It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it?

I think I know. I don't think Orwell (Erik Blair) was writing a book about a dystopian future. No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future. From personal experience with the BBC, he knew what news and history really were. As a connected individual (allowed to finish his work on the private owned island of Jura) he was aware of the plans that were in place.

So, I don't see 1984 as a dystopian vision of the future. I see it as a far more straightforward projection of what was already in place. We may be unaware of our prison, but Orwell was not - and was telegraphing it to us.

And most of us still do not get it, and cannot see it. We are glad big Brother is making us wear masks to help us breath better, that we are keeping away from our families because of love, that we will be 'cured' by a 'vaccine'.

And if you draw attention to this around here, you won't be thanked! We're not coding a harder, more impenetrable prison - we're making a better future, right?

> It is a great book, and Orwell was spot on with so much of what he wrote. How did he do it?

Not to diminish Orwell's prescience in any way, but Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We precedes Orwell's work by almost 30 years. It contains all the same themes, and without a shadow of a doubt, had a massive influence on Orwell's work.

Zamyatin’s novel is being made into a movie for next year: https://www.youtube.com/embed/BVLvQcO7JGk

I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too.

> I would suspect that Yevgeny Zamyatin would also have been privy to the plan. Aldous Huxley too.

No, they were not part of any plan if there was ever one. Yevgeny Zamyatin and Aldous Huxley were participants and observers of civil war, revolution, and its subsequent corruption by totalitarians. Their books are a testimony to that and a warning.

Ah yes, a dissident who couldn't get published in his own country was obviously included.

And - to go further still - Orwell, Huxley (and perhaps Zamyatin) fulfil the 'Goldstein' role, IRL.

> he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of

Correct. After signing up with the left-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War, and getting betrayed by the Stalinists, he was one of the left-wing British writers who could see what Stalinism was and wrote about it. The whole "memory hole" business is a reference to the removal of Trotsky from photographs, for example.

This has nothing to do with anti-maskism and COVID denialism.

What?

Honestly i say this not to be mean but to try and help, it sounds like you are not mentally well. There are many real threats to the well being of the masses enacted by various powerful people and groups but masks and vaccines are not one. they are just the best way we know how to deal with a virus that is killing thousands of people a day.

feralimal, I cannot upvote you more than once, pity.

Lol, someone once commented that I was mentally unwell, when I suggested that most people around us are nuts.

Thank you! I've been getting some flak on my 1984 comments!

On mental health, I still like the old quote: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

Cheers!

That is actually a great quote. I actually have that quote ( along with some of mine) listed on a webpage:

https://realminority.wordpress.com/quotes/

If Big Brother hadn't told you about Covid, would you even know?

I'm a physician in a hospital that has literally entire floor units - plural - occupied by nothing but dyspnea, a respiratory step-down unit that has become an expansion of the ICU, residents pulled off of every non-internal medicine training program to supplement the internal medicine teams, fellows pulled out of their training programs to supplement the hospitalists, and an ICU so packed that it looks like a bathroom at football stadium.

Eh, I probably would've noticed something's up.

After spending ten days in an ICU (with happy hypoxia[1]), and seeing it hospitalise a member of my family for about a month, leave one almost bedridden for days and with a metallic taste in the mouth for weeks, and two others with cough/fatigue/completely no sense of taste, I'd've probably suspected something was up. Could I rule known diseases? Maybe not, but it'd have to have hit us usually hard and with an unusual set of symptoms.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/happy-hypoxia-...

I mean, my wife is a nurse in an ICU that has had to triple capacity in the last 6 weeks and still has less than 15% capacity remaining, so, yeah, I'd imagine I'd have some inkling.

So, like 2018? https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/

SARS2-COVID-19 is a novel virus. True. Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.

>Would we notice without modern medicine and rtPCR tests? I'm not convinced.

With all due respect, this statement tells me with near-certainty that you've never worked a patient-facing role in healthcare. The fact that you feel free to espouse your opinion on the subject directly related to patient-facing care should be a red flag to you.

I have worked in healthcare as a paramedic. My wife is a nurse. My mother is a nurse. My brother-in-law is an MD. The public-health policy makers usually have worked in patient-facing healthcare. My local public health director was one of the best and brightest physicians I've EVER met. He cut his teeth working on eradicating smallpox in his youth, and has remarkable depth in his knowledge of epidemiology. ...All of us agree that this definitely IS different than the status quo. It is NOT different from historical precedent though, and there are many people that are quite alert to these things. These same people would notice unusual clusters of patients suggesting a terrorist attack, chemical exposure, water contamination, etc. Just because it requires knowledge you do not have doesn't mean that experts wouldn't have identified this. Which, funny enough, is exactly what DID happen.

If Big Brother hadn't published 1984 would you even know how they really operate?

(this comment is a tribute to https://xkcd.com/966/ )

I'm not clear what your position is, but what does it say about one, in one can only see the tyranny in a book but not be able to see it in real life?

I am able to see both Orwell’s tyranny AND Huxley’s tyranny.

If I frame all dysfunctional human interactions through the lens of “tyranny” then I see “tyranny” everywhere.

That is how all confirmation biases works. That is why they are all uninteresting.

Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun...

The world today is less tyrannical (as per Orwell’s concept) than it was when he was alive. Only when you ignore all moral progress do you get to paint contemporary society with Orwell’s brush.

Might there be some confirmation bias at work here?

Might you be responding to half of my post?

Of course ("some")!

The question stands.

It stands indeed.

It stands a few lines below the answer.

The answer being...?

>Falsifying one’s own biases is much more fun...

Meaning... Looking for evidence AGAINST the very thing you've convinced yourself of.

It seems we agree after all.

My mind was attracted to this particular idea: "That is why they are all uninteresting."

I happen to believe that confirmation biases (and their various relatives) are infinitely interesting, and also that there is infinite value in understanding them and their systemic consequences. The irony(?) of the situation is that finding even one individual who shares this belief is exceptionally rare, and I have been through an extremely broad spectrum of communities. This also seems rather interesting as well.

That it's not there or at least looks radically different?

Well, the part about Airstrip One having always been part of Oceania is due to hit at the end of the year... (although I guess we still don't know exactly how, yet)

If anything, Big Brother in countries like Iran tried to downplay the information.

Denialism conspiracy bullshit has no place here.

If you're actually so sheltered that you cannot see it, you should give thanks. If not, I have nothing but contempt.

Either way, take your black propaganda somewhere else.

> No. I think he was writing about the dystopian present he was already aware of, and then projecting that a little into the future.

He was extrapolating mostly from Stalin's USSR. This is well-known.

No mention of the fact that Orwell plagiarized the plot of 1984?