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The global Orwellian Empire in the makingfranzjutta, Miércoles, Octubre 27, 2004 - 08:55 (Analyses | Democratie)
Franz J. T. Lee
In his classic, 1984 ... written around 1948 ... George Orwell, mutatis mutandis gave us a very precise picture of what is happening currently on a worldwide scale. Although this work could be classified as a novel or an utopia, its subject matter is an excellent prediction of the current state of world affairs. There are hundreds of erudite interpretations and commentaries with reference to this outstanding work; here we will just page through the book, and highlight some interesting predictions that concern Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution vis-a-vis the current North American Fourth Empire in the making. Now, using present tense, let us page willy-nilly through Orwell's 1984 and here and there reflect on some of his trans-historic thoughts. In embryo, what the current Republican Bush administration has in mind is ... precisely what Orwell so eloquently has described ... to create an omnipotent, elitist, Orwellian "Party" that obeys no international law, that has a complete disregard for the United Nations and that is trampling with bloody army boots on its very own democratic "Bill of Rights" and Constitution. We visit Winston Smith, the main actor of this drama, who like an orthodox Marxist, scribbles the following on a paper: "If there was hope it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five per cent of the population of Oceania could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. " (p. 60) The current Patriot Acts, the militarization of the USA, the "war of ideas," "full spectrum dominance" and global info-war see to it that no "change from within" ... from within the USA ... is possible in the immediate future. In fact, excluding some valiant exceptions, the majority of the United States "proles" are so mind- and thought-controlled, that next month indirectly they will elect their own "bushers" ... sorry ... their own butchers themselves. Concerning proletarian class consciousness, very little has survived the ideological onslaught, especially of the major mass media in the USA. Surely, the global matrix of how" 85% of the population" of Venezuela has acquired a pre-revolutionary class consciousness in April 2002 ... that is, within 47 hours, cannot be found in obsolete political propaganda, revolutionary classics or theories. Of course, like so many of us, the trans-historic Winston still dreams about educating, about conscientizing the proletariat, the working classes, the poor, the masses: "...the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. And yet - !" (p. 60) * Well, this is what happened in Venezuela, between 2002 and 2004, the millions of working masses rose up like lions from their mind-controlled slumber, and shook off the American and "opposition" flies. Nonetheless, Winston is aware of the reigning opinions of the ruling classes, of the oligarchs, living around "Plaza Francia," what they ... and their forefathers since centuries ... understand by "slave emancipation" and "liberation" ... what the Big Brothers, Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld understand by liberating the Iraqis ... and what many of our national and international scholars repeat in their academic text-books: "The Party claimed, of course, they have liberated the proles from bondage. Before the revolution they had been hideously repressed by the capitalists, they have been starved and flogged, women have been forced to work in the coal mines (women still did work in the coal mines, as a matter of fact), children had been sold into the factories at the age of six." (p. 61) And what did Plato, Aristotle, Voltaire, Montesquieu and all power-hungry rulers really think about the "mob," about the "crowd," about the "chusma," the "gentusa," the "man-in-the-street"? "But, simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink , the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors, who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules. In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose on the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult." (p. 61-62) In comparison, Winston reads Mrs. Parson's "children's history text-book" that explains what was happening in Britain, at the time of the "Glorious Revolution," at the eve of capitalism, long before the coming into existence of the "Globe," of "Oceania," of "Globalization": "In the old days ... London was not the beautiful city that we know today. It was a dark, dirty, miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under. Children no older than you are had to work twelve hours a day for cruel masters, who flogged them with whips if they worked too slowly and fed them on nothing but stale bread crusts and water. But in among all this terrible poverty there were just a few great big beautiful houses that were lived in by rich men who had as many as thirty servants to look after them. These rich men were called capitalists. The chief of all the capitalists was called the King, and..." (p. 62-63) Now, we ask: What happens when one tries to act and think independently? How does one feel? How is one being seen by the rest of the world? As we stated in a previous commentary, with reference to the deepening of the Bolivarian Revolution, what happens when the masses begin to act, think and excel independently of, by and for themselves. Well, we gave the answer, like in the case of Wilhelm Reich, the world declares one as being "insane," ripe for the "loony bin" and then one ends up as a jailbird. Winston "wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun; today, to believe that the past is unalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong." (p. 68) Here, Winston challenges religious and ideological "absolute truths," even his very own ones, and he thought that it would be better for the clandestine "brotherhood," if he should be mistaken. As madman, he would be the first to recognize his own mistakes. Yes, long live the lonely, lonesome "lunatics" of the unglobalized, uncivilized world! Now, rectifying the myopic eyes of loyal, affirmative, systemic ideologues, of the academic lackeys of corporate imperialism, that just associate Orwell's critique exclusively with Communists, Stalinists and Nazis, let us look at O'Brien's views concerning Winston's Newspeak articles in the "Times". Take note: not in the "Pravda" or in the "Volkszeitung"! Questioningly, O'Brien, the mouthpiece of "Big Brother", says to Winston: "You take a scholarly interest in Newspeak I believe?" He continued: " ... in your article I noticed you had used two words which have became obsolete. " What follows now is of great interest to those who love to declare anything that displeases them, or that does not fit in their world outlook or life style, as "obsolete." For example, Marxism or Socialism. O'Brien continues: "Some of the new developments are ingenious. The reduction in the number of verbs - that is the point that will appeal to you." This is how language is being used to manipulate and indoctrinate the masses, and why words should not think for us, for Bolivarian revolutionaries. They are just miserable tools of thought. We have to think ourselves, and there is no substitute for real, true thought. Concerning thinking and language, Winston is being informed: "We're getting the language into its final shape - the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. ... We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day". (p.45) He continues: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words (in other words, of thinking), of course, the wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of, as well". (p.45) Now, if you take a "verb" out of a sentence, obviously you can only express "peace," standstill, rest, the status quo. Everything you say is then possible, is positive, justification, affirmation and defense of universal global fascism. Furthermore, Winston has to learn: "Do you know, that Newspeak is the only language in the world, whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?". (p.46) Later conversing with Winston and Julia, O'Brien explains, what "doublethink," mind and thought control, eventually would achieve. Of course, Orwell somehow camouflaged these objectives, directing them towards the "Party." As we know, in reality, across the 20th century, this is precisely what the GESTAPO, KGB, M15, CIA, etc. were doing, and also what is being practiced today, more than ever, across the globe, using most sophisticated mind-control technology and thought-control methods. Anybody who already had applied for a job at any secret intelligence agency, surely would know how to cite the following routine questions and answers by heart. The following gives us an idea of how paramilitary personnel are being recruited, trained and smuggled into Venezuela to violently overthrow the Bolivarian democratic government. Here is the CIA recipe: "You are prepared to give your lives? Yes. You are prepared to commit murder? Yes. To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people? Yes. You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases -- to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party? Yes. ... You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your life as a waiter or clock worker? Yes. You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so? Yes. " (p. 142) Concerning the everlasting existence of "Big Brother," who can only be toppled from within, in total desperation, Winston asks O'Brien the following questions: "Does Big Brother exist? Of course, he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party. Does he exist in the same way as I exist? You do not exist. ... I think I exist. ... It is of no importance. He exists. Will Big Brother ever die? Of course not. How could he die?" (p. 214) Big Brother will never die. This is exactly the opinion of all staunch believers in the capitalist system, that fervently believe in the current New World Order, in Globalization; that believe that "Power," "Labor Power" would never die. But let us allow O'Brien to explain "Power" -- i.e., Capital, to Winston: "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. " This is what the coming North American "Fourth Reich" is all about ... this is the belligerent hegemony that the USA is exercising currently on a world scale. * If we don't stop Bush and Kerry, this is where we are heading. In its emancipatory quintessence, the major task of the Latin American Bolivarian Revolution is precisely to stop this global fascism. And then O'Brien let Schrödinger’s Cat out of the capitalist-imperialist Pandora Box: "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. ... Power is not a means, it is an end. ... The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. " (p. 217) Well, is this not what the Bush administration, the CIA and the Pentagon are practicing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, Palestine, and elsewhere. Is this not what the "Opposition" in Venezuela had in mind with their coup, in 2002, fostered and financed by Washington. Then O'Brien informs Winston about the future projects of "Big Brother": "We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation - anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. ... We make the laws of nature." (p. 218) This is what we warned about Mind Control, about the current abuse of the technology of Nikola Tesla and Wilhelm Reich, about HAARP, about scalar and ELF waves, about the dangerous arms of mass destruction, about a probable, planned genocide of billions of obsolete, global labor forces. This is not a crazy "Big Brother," not a Hitler or a mad Stalin speaking here. It is a highly probable, stark, dark, coming reality. Iraq is just a premonition of worse things to come. Hence, Orwell has warned us about our limited knowledge concerning our "reality," about our "Governments," about our "Party," about the "Illuminati" and about the level of contemporary scientific-technological secret projects. He also indicated why then, in the 1940s, the Party did not wish to make public Tesla and Reich Technology. Also note that Big Brother or the Party are neither "Communist" nor "Nazi"; they form a global "Brotherhood": for them, "Oceania is the World"! (p. 218) Finally, showing the dangerous limits of our knowledge about current global realities, already applying Tesla Technology, O'Brien lets more cats out of his bag; concerning space travel, communities and colonization, he explains: "What are the stars? ... They are bits of fire a few kilometers away. We could reach them if we wanted to. or we could blot them out. ... The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. ... Have you forgotten doublethink? " (p. 219) According to Big Brother, Winston Smith is the only "human being" left on Planet Earth, and the drama is about the destruction of this last historic ray in the "fatherland". As can be seen below, some of Orwell's "prophecies" were more accurate than those of the Oracle of Delphi, or of any modern "Horoscope": "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," "Ignorance is Strength." Concerning mind and thought control, Winston writes: "To the future or to the past, to a time, when thought is free, when men are different from one another, and do not live alone - to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone" (p.26). Hereby, Winston is protesting against the declaration of Big Brother, that thinking, thought, theory and philosophy are capital crimes, especially in a world of action, of cement, of concrete, of activism, where theory and philosophy have been sent to the ideological asylum. This is why Lenin stressed: Without Theory (not without Ideology), no Revolution! Winston confirms that he had been taught, been mind-controlled, that: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death, thoughtcrime IS death." Concerning the national and international conspiracy against Venezuela, the lies propagated in the mass media, in the news of CNN, of Globovision, of Venevision, in brief, in the Illuminazi News, already from Orwell, we can learn the following: "The Party said, that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew, that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist?" (p.34). Interesting, here we can already see the Petro-Dollar Zone against the future Petro-Euro Zone, the United States ("Oceania") versus "Eurasia," which is the economic essence of Bush's current "New World Wars." Iraq is just the "collateral damage" of this coming world conflagration. For sure, in Big Brother's Empire, the truth disappears from all the data bases and "new knowledge" is being fabricated - surely, this will be changed again tomorrow, depending on the global and "globalized" interests of Big Brother, who teaches: "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past." Then the Party member unveils the objectives of Mind Control, of Thought Control, of Ideology, of Newspeak: "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." (p.46) Concerning the current completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, in the field of language, ideology and mind control, Winston is being told: "The Revolution (sic!) will be complete, when the language is perfect. ... By the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive, who could understand such a conversation as we are having now." (p.47) Winston immediately wants to mention an exception, that the proletariat will still understand us, but the Party member suspects his train of thought and instantly says: "The proles are not human beings." (p. 47) This is precisely what the oligarchs think about the impoverished masses, about the "recogelatas", about the "tin-collectors of Venezuela and the Caribbean. So we see, the rulers have never considered the poor or the workers as human beings; all that they considered human along "history" were only themselves. Aristotle considered the poor, the slaves, to be "speaking-tools"; Big Brother considers them here to be "newspeak-tools". How Big Brother, how Globalization, how Post-Industrial Society, will complete the process of controlling the billions of "proles", Winston himself gets a taste of it: "We shall crush you down to the point, from which there is no coming back. ... Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves." (p.211). Then O'Brien, the Party member, explains the "world of fear and treachery," of Corporate Capitalism of the 21st Century to Winston: "A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless, as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. ... In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy." (p.220) Finally, when Winston claims to be a "man", a human being, O'Brien corrects him: "If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct - we are the inheritors. Do you understand,, that you are ALONE? You are outside history, you are non-existent." (p.222) In total capitulation, finally Winston asks: "Tell me, how soon will they shoot me?" Cynically, O'Brien answers: "Don't give up hope ... in the end, we shall shoot you." (p.226). Studying Orwell and Huxley very carefully, gives us an inkling of an idea what is currently happening in Globalization. This commentary is intended to wake us up, at the eleventh hour, to understand Trotsky's clarion call: dum spiro spero -- as long as I breathe, I hope. However, as my university teacher, the Marxist philosopher, Ernst Bloch, has taught us: Hope is made of stern, adamant stuff, is making, thinking and surpassing the permanent world revolution, is victorious emancipation. See: George Orwell, 1984, The New American Library of World Literature, New York, 1961. Franz J. T. Lee Franz John Tennyson Lee, Ph. D (University of Frankfurt), Author, Professor Titular & Chairholder of Philosophy and Political Science, University of The Andes, Merida (Venezuela) -- http://www.franzjutta.com ; http://www.franz-lee.org ; http://www.geocities.com/juttafranz/publications00001.html More VHeadline.com commentaries by Franz J.T. Lee:
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