They’re Watching You!

“I Support an Orwellian Police State in America”

Political prankster Mark Dice asks San Diego beach-goers if they’ll sign a petition supporting “the Police State” which includes “Orwellian” and “Nazi-Style” tactics to “keep Americans safe” in this “Brave New World.”

Video SparkNotes: Orwell’s 1984 Summary

Check out George Orwell’s 1984 Video SparkNote: Quick and easy 1984 synopsis, analysis, and discussion of major characters and themes in the novel. For more 1984 resources, go to http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984.

The Comparison of Coercion Methods Between Big Brother and The Nazis

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein in the novel 1984 describes the Party’s ideology as an Oligarchical Collectivism, which “rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement initially stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism”. Emmanuel Goldstein’s theory is very significant in the standings of the novel; it was this philosophy that would be a form of doublethink.

Big Brother exemplifies the Party, as the omnipresent face relentlessly represented in posters and the telescreen, hence, Big Brother is always watching. Ingsoc (is the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania) commands the complete compliance of mental, moral and physical obedience of its people, and will persecute and punish to attain it. Ingsoc is a marvelously convoluted and complicated system of psychological dominance that induces confession to fictional crimes and the forgetting of disobedient and rebellious thought in order to love Big Brother and the Party over oneself. The objective of Ingsoc is political control, power, O’Brien explains to Winston:

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. 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. Now do you begin to understand me?”

Orwell, George. “PART THREE Excerpted from the Book 1984 by George Orwell.”http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Authors/Part_Three_1984.html. N.p., n.d. Web.

Germany’s Influence over Orwell’s 1984 depiction of Oceania

Orwell was influenced and instigated by totalitarian organizations of the time, including Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Both governments adored their respective leaders as demi-gods and redeemers, demanded the annihilation of all individuality in order to endorse the Party’s desires over the individual’s, demanded total loyalty from their citizens, and resorted to hostility and brutality whenever disloyalty was suspected. Likewise, both governments constantly criticized their enemies, just like the Party and Big Brother do in 1984, with strong examples such as the Two Minutes Hate, Hate Week, and daily mass propaganda. Other resemblances include the Thought Police as a reinvention of the Gestapo, NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which arranged large scale purges and fear. There is also the Spies and Youth League as a reinvention of the Hitler Youth and the Little Octobrists, which programmed the younger generation to the Party and encouraged them to report disloyalty detected in their elders, even among family members.

Hitler’s Transformation Into The Role of Fuhrer

After he became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Hitler had altered his democratic position into dictatorial power. He called an election and had taken advantage of the Reichstag fire, and had also gotten the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act. Later her was able to utilize the authority it gave him to create his own laws, he established the Gestapo, expelled Trade Unions and opposition parties on the Night of the Long Knives, in July 1934 and had also eradicated even the resistance within the Nazi Party.

Later when Hindenburg died, Hitler finally declared himself Fuhrer.

Brief History of Nazi Germany

Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler from 1889-1945, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into an immense movement and controlled Germany through totalitarian methods from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers’ Party, the group endorsed German pride and anti-semitism, and expressed disgruntlement with the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles was the 1919 peace resolution that ended World War I, which lasted from 1914-1918 and required Germany to make copious amounts of adjustments and compensations. Hitler had joined the party the year it was founded and later became its leader in 1921. About 10 years later, in 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon undertook dictatorial control. After Germany’s defeat in World War II from 1939-45, the Nazi Party was forbidden and several of its top officials were convicted of war crimes associated to the genocide of some 6 million European Jews during the Nazis’ supremacy.