George Orwell wrote 1984 as warning to his generation and to
future generation, a warning against the totalitarianism that spread throughout
many nations during the 1930s and 1940s.
Rather than heeding the warnings, leftists in this country seem to have
embraced 1984 as an instruction manual or a playbook. It may not be the case that they are
literally using 1984 as their playbook, it is more likely that they are simply
using the tried and true steps to implement their leftist policies which
eventually will bring about the totalitarian society Orwell warned us
about.
The progressivism here in the United
States is very similar to the other
totalitarian leftist political philosophies, socialism and fascism. The main difference is that progressivism has
a soft veneer of compassion and
politeness, along with much better press agents.
All leftist political philosophies target children in an effort to implement social change, very often turning children against the older generations. Look at how progressivism here infected colleges and universities first then grade and high schools. Compare that to this quote from Chapter 2.
It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak — ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used — had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
Progressives here have constructed a set of beliefs which are built on many contradictions and absurdities. If you don’t embrace these beliefs you are labeled an enemy and silenced. AntiFa now physically attacks those who do not follow leftist beliefs and there have been many calls to imprison individuals who do not follow along. Check out this quote from chapter 2
Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette Packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
There has been a concerted effort in this country to erase
our actual history and replace it with politically correct revisionist history.
Doesn’t this quote from Chapter 3 remind you of that?
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
This quote from chapter 3 reminds me of the progressive orthodoxy
that is crammed down our throats by the media and other adherents to Political
Correctness.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.
Political Correctness is Newspeak. That is abundantly clear from these two
quotes from Chapter 5
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
Collectivism rather than individualism is at the heart of
all leftist philosophies, including progressivism. This is captured in this quote from Chapter 7
The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering — a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons — a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting — three hundred million people all with the same face.
Progressives here have received a tremendous amount of help
redefining reality through the liberal news media, infected educational system,
and Hollywood, similar to this
quote from Part 2 Chapter 5
In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
This quote from Part 3 Chapter 2 reminds me so forcefully of
the progressive attempt to force their world view down our throats. Individualism is a major impediment to their
world view, Turning us into a mindless
mob which embraces the twisted PC reality will be the end result of their
efforts.
You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.
Like all leftist philosophies, progressivism is all about a
small body of elite gaining power over the masses. This quote by Obrien from Section 3 Chapter 3
captures that so well.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
All quotes are copied from this Wikiquote page.
