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Friday
Gil Duran of the FrameLab blog has written an interesting reflection on how American fascists are appropriating George Orwell’s 1984 for their own purposes. The claim should be preposterous, of course, since Orwell is targeting totalitarianism, not democratic rule. Still, we shouldn’t be surprised: claiming that 2+2=5 is, as Orwell famously points, basic to authoritarian rule.
Duran concludes his piece with a set of suggestions on making sure we get our arithmetic right.
The article begins with Winston Smith’s declaration that freedom is “the freedom to say two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
This, of course, is not what Big Brother’s party asserts:
In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it … For, after all, how do we know two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable?
Duran then provides examples of American authoritarians quoting Orwell’s novel:
“We are living Orwell’s 1984,” wrote Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., to his millions of followers on Twitter after the platform banned Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Free-speech no longer exists in America.”
In October, Elon Musk — currently promoting the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory on Twitter — posted a photo of his new t-shirt, which was emblazoned with the words “What would Orwell think?” alongside a Big Brother-like eye.
In response, Duran quotes Max Fawcett in Canada’s National Observer, who is 2021 wrote that these “Orwell-enthralled conservatives” think 1984’s critique of authoritarianism
validates their maximalist view of free speech on anything from COVID-19 conspiracy theories to bigotry directed at minorities, immigrants and the LGBTQ community. Any attempt to curtail hate speech or contain the spread of misinformation is, in their eyes, a textbook example of the ‘thought police’ from the book’s fictional superstate of Oceania.”
Duran elaborates further:
The skewed conservative interpretation of Orwell holds that freedom means the freedom to spread lies about topics like the 2020 election, COVID, vaccines or anything else. It depicts any effort to challenge falsehoods as an attack on this supposed freedom, and as a form of “thought control” in line with 1984’s totalitarian Big Brother. It vilifies fact-checkers, journalists and social media content moderation policies as enemies of freedom. According to its twisted upside-down logic, liars are defenders of liberty and truth is a form of oppression.
“What could be more Orwellian,” Duran follows up, “than claiming Orwell would have supported authoritarians and lies?” Indeed, Orwell would be horrified at how fascists are using his book. After all, as a socialist he fought against the fascists in Spain while as a lover of democracy he wrote Animal Farm and 1984 to call out Stalinism. Duran notes the author “clearly believed that objective facts do exist — and that those who deny the existence of objective facts are the villains.”
In point of fact, Trump appears to be using Big Brother’s playbook, not Orwell’s novel, to guide his own behavior, whether it’s claiming that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or insisting that he actually won the 2020 election. He went further than any previous president, including Nixon, in attempting to weaponize the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service against his opponents, yet he complains incessantly that these entities have been weaponized against him. It has become common practice for him and his followers to accuse their opponents of doing what they themselves do or want to do. As many have noted, with them every accusation is a confession.
Orwell’s most penetrating insight is one that Trump has thoroughly internalized. The main point of his lies is not to change minds but to test loyalty. The more outrageous the lie, the bigger the chance to prove you are a true believer. As Orwell explains, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Believing the lie that Trump beat Biden has become the entry exam for today’s Republicans. If you don’t reject the factual evidence, you’re out.
Rejecting evidence, it so happens, is Winston’s official job. Behaving like many in today’s GOP, he deletes select facts from the official archives on behalf of the Ministry of Information. As Duran explains,
The goal of the Ministry of Information is to eliminate unsavory facts and truths, thus changing history to suit the whims of the totalitarian dictatorship. Its chilling motto — “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past” — makes clear that true power is the power to manipulate the perception of reality.
In 2018, Trump’s non-stop lying prompted Indian author Salman Rushdie to write a New Yorker article on our need for the literary classics, which are defined in part by their commitment to truth. Seeing literature as essentially a “no bullshit” zone, Rushdie wrote that the job of contemporary writers is “rebuilding our readers’ belief in reality.”
Literature can’t save us by itself. But it’s an indispensable ally in our efforts to save democracy.