"Read it
as a warning." It's 1978 and my eighth-grade
English teacher Mr. Duran- dressed in wide-wale
corduroys, a plaid flannel shirt, and age-old
moccasins- is handing out copies of George Orwell's
searing, ominous novel of a negative utopia, 1984.
Mr. Duran was fond of haranguing our English class,
and he just finished a tangential rant about how some
day soon, cash would be obsolete. I listened hard,
but thought of my parents, who always paid for what
we needed in soft, worn bills directly from my
father's paycheck, and found it hard to imagine
Duran's prediction coming true.
So it follows that 1984 was lost on me in a similar
way back then. I understood the Cold War symbolism
and allusions to Nazi Germany as Mr. Duran taught the
text. Orwell published the novel in 1949 when residue
of World War II was still thick, particularly in
Europe. However at 13, I had not grasped the
existence and magnitude of the military-industrial
complex. Literally, 1984 stood a mere six years away
from 1978 and Orwell's future was vastly different
from the reality I perceived as a teenager.
After all, I had studied the Constitution and the
three branches of government, our cornerstones of
democracy. There was a system of checks and balances,
and a proud and determined free press in place that
would keep our country from becoming like Oceania,
home to the novel's protagonist, Winston Smith.
Oceania is a place where, in the end, even your
thoughts do not belong to you. The essence of who you
are belongs to the Party, to Big Brother. In the
U.S., on the other hand, people think freely and
openly and we come and go as we please. Even in our
small city, we had several newspapers and many
television or radio stations, not a Ministry of Truth
where Winston revised history and the news. For me,
Orwell's 1984 loomed far off in the future or on some
distant planet, and there I left it.
In the wealth of alternative op-ed pieces that
surfaced after September, I happened on two
references to 1984, that inspired a second reading of
the classic. One was simply the title of a passionate
anti-war essay by Arundhati Roy that appeared in
Outlook on October 18. She called it "War is
Peace," a phrase which- along with "Freedom
is Slavery" and "Ignorance is
Strength,"- are the main slogans of the Party in
1984. Then in early November, a short piece by Martha
Gies appeared in The Sun Magazine describing the
Orwellian metaphor between George W. Bush's boundless
and vague war on terrorism and the never-ending,
murky wars fought by Oceania against Eurasia and
Eastasia, the alternating enemies.
This time, revisiting Orwell's stark and engaging
prose, I am a 36 year-old woman. I am older and
perhaps wiser- whatever that means- but surely I have
experienced, witnessed, and learned more than I had
in 1978. Today, I understand how the negative legacy
of divide-and-conquer colonialism gave way to the age
of corporate globalization. I see how the executive
branch of government, the military machine, and the
largest corporations are essentially one ruling
entity, as Thomas Jefferson warned may come to pass
in American democracy. I see a tainted, sullied press
bought off by wealthy individuals and corporations.
Indeed, amid the post-September 11 brouhaha that's
given way to the dismantling of core principles of
justice dating back to antiquity and a rapid revision
of essential civil liberties, Orwell's depiction of a
grim, totalitarian existence does not seem
far-fetched.
In Oceania, war provides both the emotional and
economic basis for the hierarchy of Big Brother and
the Inner Party. "The essential act of war is
destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of
the products of human labor . . . Even when weapons
of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture
is still a convenient way of expending labor power
without producing anything that can be
consumed." Consider that the U.S. leads the
world in arms and weapons exports. The U.S. has had
what Seymour Melman termed a permanent war economy
since World War II. A Department of Defense website
currently describes the Pentagon as "not only
America's largest company, but its busiest and most
successful."
Also consider the list of countries that the U.S. has
bombed or been at war with in the past 50 years:
- Korea
(1950-53);
Guatemala (1954, 1967-69);
Indonesia (1958);
Cuba (1959-60);
the Belgian Congo (1964);
Peru (1965);
Laos (1964-73);
Vietnam (1961-1973);
Cambodia (1969-70);
Grenada (1983);
Libya (1986);
El Salvador (1980s);
Nicaragua (1980s);
Panama (1989);
Iraq (1991-99);
Bosnia (1995);
Sudan (1998);
Yugoslavia (1999);
Afghanistan (2001).
Never-ending
war with alternating enemies.
For internal control throughout Oceania, the Party
creates an almost full-proof surveillance and
mind-control system in the ubiquitous
"telescreen," a device that disseminates
Party propaganda around the clock and contains a
built-in microphone and camera. "The instrument
could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it
out completely."
Here in post-September 11 America, the military has
refused to allow journalists to accompany troops and
pilots fighting in Afghanistan, or even interview
military personnel after their missions. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is essentially the only
source available to the US media for covering the
Afghan War.
In addition, many media outlets have practiced
self-censorship. As the Washington Post reported, CNN
Chairman Walter Isaacson ordered news staff to limit
reports of Afghan's casualties and use World Trade
Center deaths to justify the killings. Meanwhile, the
nation's largest owner of radio stations, Clear
Channel, issued an internal memo listing songs the
stations were forbidden to play, including John
Lennon's "Imagine." To the optimists, this
at least amounts to a media blackout. To the more
cynical among us, it is genuine propaganda.
As for increased surveillance, the USA Patriot Act,
passed into law by overwhelming majority in both the
Senate and House on October 26 (and with not so much
as a peep from the American public or the corporate
media), seeps into many spaces that Americans once
guarded as private and sacrosanct. Police can now
obtain court orders to conduct so called "sneak
and peak" searches of homes and offices without
immediately, if ever, presenting owners with a
warrant. Also broadened under the new law is the
FBI's use of Carnivore, an aptly named invasive
monitoring system that allows the federal government
access to every piece of electronic correspondence
coming through Internet Service Providers. Big
Brother would be proud.
At his job in the Ministry of Truth, Winston spends
all day altering records and press articles rendered
"incorrect" by latest developments in the
Party's agenda and goings-on. For example if Big
Brother announces that there is no chocolate ration
for the year, but later rescinds this decision,
Winston must locate any evidence of the earlier
declaration and change it to reflect the new order.
He then deposits the old evidence into a "memory
hole" so that no proof of the original speech
exists anywhere.
On October 29, President Bush issued an executive
order governing the release of presidential records.
The order reverses the premise of the Presidential
Records Acts- which provides for a systematic release
of presidential records after 12 years and permits an
incumbent president to withhold a former president's
papers, even if the former president desired to make
them public. The Washington Post reports on November
1: "The proposed order grew out of a decision by
the Bush administration early this year to block the
release of 68,000 pages of confidential
communications between President Ronald Reagan and
his advisers that officials at the National Archives,
including the Reagan library, had wanted to make
public."
Yanking information from public domain has not been
limited to just presidential records. Due to
heightened concern for national security, 15 federal
agencies pulled surveys on hazardous waste sites,
dams and reservoirs, nuclear power plants from the
Internet, or eliminated certain web sites altogether.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Government
Printing Office had begun ordering "about 1,300
libraries nationwide that serve as federal
depositories to destroy government records that
federal agencies said could be too sensitive for
public consumption." Destroy government records?
Toss them down the memory hole!
If these parallels aren't disturbing enough, ponder
the Justice Departments refusal to provide the public
with any information regarding the 1,147 individuals
being detained in the anti-terrorism investigation,
except to admit that only a small number are
suspected to have any links with the September 11
attacks. In the fearful climate of 1984, people who
fall out of favor with the Party are
"vaporized.." Occasionally great purges
involving public trials eliminate thousands of
so-called criminals, but "more commonly, people
who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply
disappeared and were never heard of again."
Secret trials are the order of the day in Bush's
latest creation of military tribunals to try those
suspected of links to terrorism. Military tribunals
are purely courts of convictions and not justice. The
Secretary of Defense will appoint the judges, most
likely panels of military officers who will side with
the prosecution. These "kangaroo courts"
dismiss the essential codes of law such as due
process and principles of evidence. The order covers
all noncitizens- both outside and inside the U.S.-
and there are nearly 20 million in the U.S. today
including immigrants on their way to full citizenship
and visitors.
The time has come to indeed read 1984 as a warning, a
warning written in red with a panic button close by.
I will not give it away, but the novel's ending is an
abysmal one. Our ending, however, has not yet been
written. There's still time.
Sources:
Orwell,
George. 1984. New American Library, 1949.
Roy, Arundahti. "War is Peace." Outlook,
October 18, 2001.
Gies, Martha. "The Empty Sky: Reflections on
9/11/01." The Sun Magazine, November 2001.
Kirk, Gwyn and Okazawa-Rey, Margo
"Neoliberalism, Militarism and Armed
Conflict." Social Justice Journal, Winter 2000.
Melman, Seymour. The Permanent War Economy: American
Capitalism in Decline. Simon & Schuster,
1995.
Pittman, Alan. 'Stop the Presses." Eugene
Weekly, November 21, 2001.
Harrison, Ann. " Behind the USA Patriot
Act." AlterNet, November 5, 2001
Lardner, George. "Bush Clamping Down on
Presidential Papers" Washington Post, November
1, 2001.
Lichtblau, Eric. "Rising Fears That What We Do
Know Can Hurt Us." Los Angeles Times, November
18, 2001.
Harrison, Ann. "Detained for Terror."
Alternet, November 7, 2001.
Lewis, Anthony. 'Wake Up, America." New York
Times, November 30, 2001.
