{"id":49762,"date":"2019-11-22T08:43:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49762"},"modified":"2019-11-22T08:43:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:43:10","slug":"the-origins-of-the-thought-police-and-why-they-scare-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=49762","title":{"rendered":"The Origins of the Thought Police\u2014and Why They Scare Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Origins of the Thought Police\u2014and Why They Scare Us<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In a sense, “1984” is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel 1984<\/em>. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith\u2019s varicose ulcer, apparently<\/a> a symbol of his humanity (or something), which always seems to be \u201cthrobbing.\u201d Gross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it\u2019s not the worst thing in 1984<\/em>. To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn\u2019t keep Big Brother out of your head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in 1984<\/em> aren\u2019t that interested in controlling behavior or speech. They do, of course, but it\u2019s only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will,\u201d O\u2019Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith near the end of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Big Brother\u2019s tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved thoughts. We see how this works when Winston\u2019s neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was my little daughter,” Parsons tells Winston when asked who it was who denounced him. “She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Origins of the Thought Police\u2014and Why They Scare Us In a sense, “1984” is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power. There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel 1984. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin […]<\/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":[1212,14991,22348,643],"class_list":["post-49762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-1212","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-jon-miltimore","tag-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49762","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=49762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49763,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49762\/revisions\/49763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}