The West is a Totalitarian Empire Maintained by Force, NOT a “Democracy”

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” – Frank Zappa

May 7, 2021 – The West is no longer pretending to be a “democracy.” Now with a religious fervor, they still use that weaponized word to whip up the mob against alleged “existential” threats to this so-called “democracy” that doesn’t exist. No. For those of us who haven’t been totally psychologically neutered and can still think critically, that pretense has been dropped to reveal the neoliberal capitalist empire in its final form: totalitarianism.

It was always a cannibalistic monster, devouring everything in its path and leaving sad apocalyptical hellscapes in its wake. For the denizens of this hegemonic regime, we could ignore its worst abuses and remain blissfully ignorant of its pathological terror as long as others remained on the receiving end of its brutality. When it was Afghani women being gangraped and Iraqi men being tortured and sodomized with wire brushes while shocked with electrodes on the genitals, we could pretend the empire was fighting for our “freedoms.” Sure, we knew they were engaged in some vague sick horrors somewhere in the mountains and deserts of the Middle East, but we told ourselves it was to protect the homeland from the baddies and it would never come to our shores. It would never be turned inward onto us. Surely they couldn’t turn these tools of war on their own citizens because… gosh darn it, we are Americans! We are “free” and live in a “democracy,” we have these things called inalienable rights.

But, the thing about those inalienable rights though is that they come from God and not government. They belong to all of humanity not just Americans and westerners. If they can be violated somewhere in the world, they can be violated here. The worst things we justified in the name of “national security” we should have known would be used on us back home one day.

Now the empire has turned its Sauronic eye inward, to the “insider threat” from so-called “domestic terrorists.” The machine has been recalibrated, the tables turned and now you are the “enemy” within, they claim. We should have known, we should have tried to do more to stop its excesses, to reign the beast in before it became too powerful and all-consuming. Back when we still had a chance to do something. But we didn’t, and now perhaps what’s happening and what will happen is inevitable: the culmination of decades of evil and corruption unchecked, now emboldened by virtue of having gotten away with it all.

The New Language 

Totalitarians, like other authoritarian cults use language to enslave people. They will come up with a new vocabulary that will enforce “us vs them” narratives to maintain their adherents. Language can be used as a tool for control. You can control people and the official narrative. Some of the new language we are seeing are phrases like “the new normal” to describe the authoritarian lockdowns that have been enforced worldwide. The “Great Reset” is apparently a conspiracy theory but also something we need to do to save the world and achieve more “equity.” Labels abound within this genre of  totalitarians: “Science deniers,” “Anti-vaxers,” “Dangerous far right conspiracy theorists,” “Reality deniers,” “Holocaust deniers,” “Anti-Semitic,” “Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs),” etc.

When the Left riots, it’s called a “peaceful protest” even as buildings are burning in the newsreel background and leftists throw Molotov cocktails. When the Right protests, it’s called a “riot, insurrection, coup, sedition” and people are immediately rounded up and thrown into prison in isolation 23 hours a day, held indefinitely as trials get delayed. The right wingers who attended this protest are called “white supremacists,” “white nationalists,” “Domestic violent extremists (DVEs),” “Russian Inspired white nationalist insurrectionists,” and more.

We then have the new “social justice” linguistics. We get normal pronouns like him or her replaced with  “neutral” pronouns like “xe,” “xym,” and “xyr.” We have “trigger warnings” and “microaggressions” and “intersectional” feminist lingo. The creation of this new language is what happens when authoritarians desire to exert control over others. They don’t want to engage in an open marketplace of ideas, they don’t want to debate anything and they certainly don’t want to have to justify their ideas. Thus we get abusive language like the following:

• “White passing”: When a person who is part of a minority group voices an opinion that runs counter to the victim narrative peddled by the Social Justice crowd about said minority group; hence, a minority person who challenges such a narrative is “white passing” because they are “passing as being white.” Other variants of “white passing” are “Uncle Tom” (if the dissenter is black) or simply “traitor” (if they are any other race).
• “Internalized misogyny”: When a woman voices an opinion that is at odds with the consensus of feminist groups, she’s accused of internalizing and regurgitating “societal attitudes of oppression toward women that have been propagated by the patriarchy.” This is actually really condescending toward women — which one wouldn’t expect to be a problem in a feminist environment — because it’s basically saying that unless a woman toes the third wave line, she cannot possibly have her own intellectual autonomy, but must be brainwashed to the point where she’s “unaware of her own oppression.” 
• “____splain”: Any counterargument that is made by a person who falls into a demographic that’s targeted by Social Justice devotees — no matter how eloquently presented — is quickly dismissed by attaching “splain” at the end of a chosen adjective (e.g. “cisplain,” “whitesplain,” “mansplain”). This one-word deflection is meant to shut down debate, because again, remember, they don’t want to debate. Debating is scary and involves the risk of losing.
• “Wrong side of history”: The notion that human events over time are on a trajectory toward an ultimate utopian “right,” and that the person making the accusation knows exactly what that “right” is. Of course in reality there is no “right” and “wrong” side to history. History just is, and the future is a blank slate. Ironically, those who often make the statements “right/wrong side of history” are normally folks who believe in moral relativism and are also big into postmodern philosophy (which argues that there is no objective truth or morality). [1]

This language is constantly changing and goalposts are always moving so that you cannot win. That is the point. It’s designed to rigidly enforce dogmatic control over others. People become too scared to speak up or question the narrative. Those who have the privilege to keep up with these ever moving goal posts are considered “in the know” and superior and those who cannot are considered “ignorant” and “unlearned.” The intellectually and morally superior look down on the “unwashed and unclean”, and attempt to re-educate them in order to “cleanse” and “purify” them.

Religious Zealotry

The neoliberal empire is maintained by manufacturing consent, and creating zealots and fanatics. There needs to be occasional moral panics, with the concomitant purity spirals and tests (throw her in the water! Does she float? Burn her at the stake!). Noam Chomsky wrote a seminal book called Manufacturing Consent that describes in great detail how this is done. In 1997 in an article for Z Magazine, he summed it up:

What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controlled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.

What about their institutional setting? Well, that’s more or less the same. What they interact with and relate to is other major power centers—the government, other corporations, or the universities. Because the media are a doctrinal system they interact closely with the universities. Say you are a reporter writing a story on Southeast Asia or Africa, or something like that. You’re supposed to go over to the big university and find an expert who will tell you what to write, or else go to one of the foundations, like Brookings Institute or American Enterprise Institute and they will give you the words to say. These outside institutions are very similar to the media.

The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it’s generally true of corporations. It’s true of Fascist states, for that matter. But the institution itself is parasitic. It’s dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don’t do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society. The elite institutions like, say, Harvard and Princeton and the small upscale colleges, for example, are very much geared to socialization. If you go through a place like Harvard, most of what goes on there is teaching manners; how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on. – Noam Chomsky [2]

This is exactly how religious zealots and fanatics are created who love the regime and will do anything for it. They will literally fight to protect the very regime that keeps them enslaved. Social justice is a perfect example of how these zealots are created via a complex mix of propaganda and indoctrination and a system of rewards and punishments.

Rewards and Punishments

The West today no longer operates under the Anglo-Saxon common law system that existed since the 1500s. We no longer have our constitutional legal systems that guided America and the West for hundreds of years. What once distinguished us from the governments of the rest of the world, as it was intended to provide us with due process, maintained our human rights, dignity, etc. is no longer the case today and is now a joke. We have a two-tiered system of injustice now. We have kangaroo courts and show trials, cancel culture, public humiliation, and shame rituals. Good slaves get rewarded with things and get extra goodies. If you are a good little neoliberal, you get a nice corporate or government job and access to perks. You are praised, coddled, doted upon, etc. If you are an independent thinker or a dissident you get publicly humiliated, defamed in the media or on social media, called awful names like “extremist” or “dangerous” and might be fired from your job.

Corporate Reality Shapers

Big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon now essentially shape reality. With the assistance of liberal academics, mainstream media journalists and Hollywood, they maintain a stranglehold on the narrative. They have privilege and access through their symbiotic relationship with the regime. There is often a revolving door between these companies and the government. The corporate media effectively runs our country but no one elected them. They are the judge, jury and executioner. They can prejudice your case if you ever get into legal trouble, dox you, defame you and dehumanize you.

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislative power, the executive, and the judiciary. And one would then like to ask: By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?” – Solzhenitsyn, 1978 Harvard Address 

If You Disagree You Aren’t Human

Since the beginning of the faux pandemic, this is something that has become increasingly suggested. Because people are isolated at home, and faces are hidden behind masks, it is really easy to dehumanize others. This is the process of demonizing anyone who dissents from the ruling elites and the empire. You are the enemy, you are dangerous, you have horrible ideas, you are bad, you are the “other.” Basically, you are not seen as a human being deserving of compassion, respect and dignity because you are not in the club. You are seen as an unclean animal that must be cleansed or put down.

If You Disagree You Are Mentally Ill

This is how they pathologize anyone who disagrees with the “new normal”, the new reality and the regime’s narratives. You must have some mental defect, you just don’t understand, you are sick, you are ill, you are not right in the head, you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist, etc. This ties in with dehumanizing dissenters. PsyPost lends credibility to this thesis in an article entitled “Psychopathic traits linked to non-compliance with social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic” [3] which implies anyone who disagrees with how the fake pandemic is being handled by the government or authorities is actually mentally ill and potentially dangerous.

The Enforcers

The zealots enforce the will of the regime on others. This can take the form of neighbors, friends or even family who report people for not wearing a mask, for having too many people at a family gathering, for staying up too late, for not being enthusiastic about the regime enough, for failing to show proper deference to the regime, for questioning the narrative, etc. — all are enforcers. They can be doctors who try to force you and/or your children to be vaccinated against your will via coercion. It can be something like the corporate media doxing and demonizing you, a relative or a co-worker. This is what happened in East Germany – the STASI turned one-third of the country into “informers” for the state.

Capitalism or Crabitalism?

Political Ponerology 

This is the idea that psychopaths tend to gather into positions of power in the world. This notion was first coined by Andrew Lobaczewski who lived under communist occupation and repression. He has written an entire book on the matter and essentially created an entirely new field of study. It can best be summed up from an article entitled “Why Does the World Feel Wrong” [4] from 2009:

Overt criminality by leaders and passive, unclear thinking by the proles have become the norm. The two go together, creating a symbiotic ecosystem of tyranny. Fraud, theft, and murder have become widespread, just as the scale of lies told and believed have reached new heights. Irresponsibility has become socialized while people in the honest pursuit of good get thwarted.

Those of us who want little more than peace and freedom don’t run the world. Pursuing freedom contradicts controlling others, so we can reason that people who pursue power have some motivations separate from our own.

I have not fully comprehended the implications of this until recently. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I had assumed that the people who wield power feel similarly about moral issues as I do. I just couldn’t see why they commit and justify unethical behavior. I already knew that states operate according to a code that the rest of us don’t follow in our own lives. Nevertheless, I assumed that a man who acts without regard to moral laws must feel guilty about it. Then, one day, I stumbled onto this idea: Suppose he doesn’t.

With only small ambitions, he probably behaves like a common criminal, a predator. He lies to gain advantage, uses force to get his way, and steals without conscience. Not feeling guilty about unethical behavior motivates him to instigate further criminal acts.

It turns out this personality type has a scientific name: psychopathic. Lest you think I merely kid you, I quote from Scientific American:

Superficially charming, psychopaths tend to make a good first impression on others and often strike observers as remarkably normal. Yet they are self-centered, dishonest and undependable, and at times they engage in irresponsible behavior for no apparent reason other than the sheer fun of it. Largely devoid of guilt, empathy and love, they have casual and callous interpersonal and romantic relationships. Psychopaths routinely offer excuses for their reckless and often outrageous actions, placing blame on others instead. They rarely learn from their mistakes or benefit from negative feedback, and they have difficulty inhibiting their impulses.

This seems like a nearly perfect description of those who seek political power. That same article goes on to say that fields over-represented by psychopaths may include ‘politics, business and entertainment. Yet the scientific evidence for this intriguing conjecture is preliminary.’ It turns out that much stronger evidence for this exists than the article lets on.

In the book Political Ponerology, Andrew Lobaczewski claims that about 6% of the people within a population have psychopathic characters. The implications of this, which he recognized soon after World War II, stagger the mind. Moreover, he suggests that another 12% of the population has high susceptibility to psychopathic thought. In a world dominated by hierarchical structures, these people sieze control of the key positions and create a so-called ‘pathocracy.’ Lobaczewski continues, writing in ways that clearly anticipate the current reality:

Within this [pathocratic] system, the common man is blamed for not having been born a psychopath, and is considered good for nothing except hard work, fighting and dying to protect a system of government he can neither sufficiently comprehend nor ever consider to be his own. An ever-strengthening network of psychopathic and related individuals gradually starts to dominate, overshadowing the others.

Normal people have not considered the possibility that some people who seem ordinary could have no moral inhibitions. They default to believing that their leaders have good intentions. Employees of psychopaths thus carry out plans of their bosses blinded to the reality. No matter the scope of the ‘failure,’ the leadership can always point back to their stated good intentions and shield themselves from the gallows. In fact, the more harm they create, the stronger the call becomes to vest more power in their failed agency so they can ‘prevent’ anything of the sort from ever happening again.

Their MO focuses on figuring out how much they can get away with, and we see no signs they have begun to approach the limits the public will accept. Irrespective of the ordeals they create, the vast majority of people give them the benefit of the doubt time and time again and continue in their support of the system. This belief among good people led to the democide of the 20^th Century that continues unabated today. – Will Groves [4]

I think this can explain how it is that all the governments of the world so quickly accepted the new totalitarian Covid lockdowns and imposition of medical tyranny. This also means there is nowhere to run, there is no escape because this is now a worldwide authoritarian structure.

This kind of tyranny typically leads to mass murders of millions of people. This is how you end up with the killing fields of Cambodia, the concentration camps of Germany and the Gulags of the Soviet Union. Unlike Germany during WWII, the new totalitarian regimes are not opposed. The governments of the world are all on the same page and colluding behind the scenes to institute a “Great Reset” that will change the world order into a new world socialist totalitarian empire. There are no countries that will come and “liberate” us from this tyranny, and there is no country to provide your safe escape. In any case, you would need a vaccine passport. The only thing we can do is try to reach the zealots and fanatics of the regime and try to educate them and explain why what they are supporting and complicit in is evil and wrong. Think about this also, when a government that has been waging war for decades no longer has any other country to fight, do you think they just stop being militarized? No, when you are a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. You simply look for the next enemy to wage war upon, even if that is your own citizens.

Final Thoughts

I didn’t want this to be a really depressing or negative article, and this is perhaps why I have taken an extended leave from my usual long form writing. I see things getting worse before they get better. I think it will take people experiencing the horrors of any other totalitarian regime before we can all break free of this. I want to include a few quotes in closing that I want you to read carefully and consider.

The first quote from Nobel Winner in literature Harold Pinter’s speech when he accepted his prize:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States’ actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer. 

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America’s view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: ‘Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.’

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.’ There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: ‘But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?’

Seitz was imperturbable. ‘I don’t agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,’ he said. – Harold Pinter [5]

Harold Pinter was not treated very well by the establishment after he made such a statement, but he was absolutely correct in his sentiment.

Pam Weintraub explains how cults work in an article called “How Totalism Works” [6]  and obviously totalism and totalitarianism are related. Pam highlights her own personal experience as part of a cult called The Organization, or The O for short.

Although The O had been a small group numbering no more than 200 at its peak, it was Arendt’s work that illuminated most clearly what I came to see as a diminutive totalitarian movement. Like the movements Arendt profiled, The O operated at the whim of a charismatic, authoritarian leader wielding an exclusive belief system to isolate each individual in order to dominate us.

In that first class, I also learned something about teaching. At his last session, the somewhat unassuming, almost doddery Kliger, in the context of discussing why people become passive in the face of totalitarianism, revealed to us that he knew personally the power of induced powerlessness. He stood up and quietly unbuttoned his sleeve. As he rolled up the fabric, the not-very-faded inked number appeared on his arm, and he explained that as a teenager he had survived Buchenwald concentration camp.

Inspired by Kliger, I entered the Masters of Liberal Studies program at the age of 45. There, I learned about Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments of the 1960s, which showed that two-thirds of ordinary people were willing to administer severe electric shocks to complete strangers when ordered to do so by the experimenter. I also learned about the conformity experiments of the 1950s by the social psychologist Solomon Asch, who demonstrated that, when faced with obviously incorrect information, 75 per cent of participants publicly denied clear evidence before their own eyes rather than buck the majority opinion. However, when just one other person disagreed with the majority and broke the unanimous bloc, the conformity effect almost entirely disappeared.

All of this became key to my own study of the social psychology of extremist political organizations. These scholars understood the power of extreme social influence to corral and corrupt even the most ordinary of individuals. Totalism works because ordinary people – at least those without prior knowledge of the controlling methods of totalism – are subject to the coercive manipulations that leaders employ. If the situation is strong and isolating enough, without any clear escape route, then the average person can cave in to the traumatizing pressures of brainwashing…

…People in totalistic organizations are pressed so tightly together that their individuality is erased – as are any trusting interactions among them. Everyone is a ‘friend’ but true friendship is suppressed as a diversion from, and a threat to, attachment to the cause, the leader and the group. In fact, far from finding true comradeship or companionship, followers face a triple isolation: from the outside world, from each other within the closed system, and from their own internal dialogue, where clear thinking about the group might arise. – Pam Weintrub [6]

When people ask how regular Germans could have become Nazis and watched wickedness and even participated in it, but did nothing to stop it, look at how people are reacting to all Trump supporters being labeled “domestic terrorists,” and how they jeer and shriek at anyone not wearing a mask inside a store. This is how it begins, and sadly, we already know how it ends…

A yellow star one day, a “non-vaccinated” label the next.

Any consideration of Orwell’s writing cannot ignore the fact that he chose the literary genre as the most congenial for giving expression to his views. Writing was for him a tool for changing social reality, and the literature he wrote was political. In fact, it often seems as though the narrative interferes with his attempt to set forth his views about modern capitalism (and about democracy, on the one hand, and fascism, on the other). Indeed, when he encountered difficulties in plot construction, he was known to deal with them by devious literary means, so as to retain his political point.

A vivid example of this is his insertion of a completely theoretical text running to dozens of pages in “1984,” by means of a literary stratagem of introducing a fictitious book-within-a-book. The text, “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism,” is manifestly a sociopolitical analysis of trends in modern industrial society and a historic description of the phenomenon called “government.” Some people advised him to remove the “book” from the book. Happily for us, he ignored them.

In his view, this state of affairs was not the result of a mistake, a “hidden hand” or a government of fools; it was a deliberate policy advanced by an exploitative elite. And it isn’t by accident that the masses don’t grasp what is happening: “In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.” In other words, there are forces whose vested interest is to preserve “high” and “low.” The rationale for this was explained as early as the 17th century by the French statesman Cardinal Richelieu in his “Political Testament”: “All students of politics agree that when the common people are too well off, it is impossible to keep them peaceable… It would not be sound to relieve them of all taxation and similar charges, since in such a case they would lose the mark of their subjection and consequently the awareness of their station.”

Already in the opening of the book-within-a-book, “Oligarchical Collectivism,” Orwell explains that rule, enslavement and exploitation are a phenomenon that has characterized human society “probably since the end of the Neolithic Age.” In other words, in the period of the agricultural revolution some 10,000 years ago, the social structures were created that institutionalized exploitation of the community by a ruling elite. In terms of Homo Sapiens, this is a new phenomenon.

Herein lies the heart of the matter of “1984” and of the “why” – the reason for the continued existence of a hierarchical society, of an exploitative minority and an exploited majority. Orwell noted that the growth in social wealth (which already was a fact at the time the book was written, and remains so today) and the way that wealth is distributed is destined to wreak destruction on the class society. Why? “It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.”

This is why continuous war is needed, why rule by fear is essential. And this is where Orwell’s greatness resides: in his horrifying account of the everyday existence of a person living in a society where fear rules and war never ends. “‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever,’” O’Brien tells Winston near the end of the book. – Adam Raz [7]

Sources:

1. https://areomagazine.com/2016/12/07/social-justice-how-cults-use-language-to-enslave-adherents/
2. What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, Noam Chomsky
3. https://www.psypost.org/2020/06/psychopathic-traits-linked-to-non-compliance-with-social-distancing-guidelines-amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic-56980
4. http://www.strike-the-root.com/91/groves/groves1.html
5. Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture 1995
6. How Totalism Works, Pam Weintraub

7. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Revisited: What Oceania and Israel Have in Common, Adam Raz