{"id":46915,"date":"2019-06-26T06:54:30","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T11:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46915"},"modified":"2019-06-26T07:07:22","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T12:07:22","slug":"george-orwells-dystopian-nightmare-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46915","title":{"rendered":"George Orwell\u2019s Dystopian Nightmare in China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/george-orwells-dystopian-nightmare-in-china-1984\/\">George Orwell\u2019s Dystopian Nightmare in China<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Beijing&#8217;s tyranny over its people is fast becoming more terrifying than anything in&nbsp;<\/strong><em><strong>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/strong><\/em><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/china_credit-1-554x350.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michael Hogue&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It has become fairly clich\u00e9 to call China\u2019s surveillance state\u2014its artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition, the new \u201csocial credit system,\u201d its cultural policing and re-education camps for Uyghur minorities\u2014\u201csomething right out of George Orwell\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Orwell\u2019s dystopian vision, first published 70 years ago this June, was informed by the fascist and communist movements that triggered worldwide military conflict and the deaths of millions of people during the mid-20th century. But Orwell\u2019s warning went well beyond the wars we knew. It cautioned,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/195275626\/Erich-Fromm-Afterword-to-George-Orwell-s-1984\">noted Erich Fromm<\/a>&nbsp;in an afterword in the 1961 edition, against the loss of humanity and free thought, and the new, increasingly centralized \u201cmanagerial industrialism, in which man builds machines which act like men and develops men who act like machines.\u201d It showed how that could be used as a tool of totalitarian ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">China convulsed in revolution during the 1940s; Mao Zedong established the one-party state of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. But Orwell, according to Fromm, had his gaze on Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union when he wrote&nbsp;<em>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>, which is set in fictional Oceania, one of three of the world\u2019s superstates. Oceania is run by one party, Ingsoc (English Socialism), headquartered in what is left of post-war London. \u201cBig Brother\u201d is the god-like, mustachioed visage serving as the party\u2019s fearsome symbol of absolute authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As rooted as&nbsp;<em>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>&nbsp;is in Orwell\u2019s own uncertain world, he could not have imagined how his predictions for humankind would morph and metastasize beyond the terrors of Mao\u2019s Cultural Revolution and into the cyber-authoritarianism we are seeing in Xi Jinping\u2019s China today (still run by the Chinese Communist Party).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George Orwell\u2019s Dystopian Nightmare in China Beijing&#8217;s tyranny over its people is fast becoming more terrifying than anything in&nbsp;Nineteen Eighty-Four. Michael Hogue&nbsp; It has become fairly clich\u00e9 to call China\u2019s surveillance state\u2014its artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition, the new \u201csocial credit system,\u201d its cultural policing and re-education camps for Uyghur minorities\u2014\u201csomething right out of George Orwell\u2019s&nbsp;Nineteen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130,3880,5570,16732],"class_list":["post-46915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-china","tag-dystopia","tag-mass-surveillance","tag-the-american-conservative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46919,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46915\/revisions\/46919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}