Comment by perihelions
2 days ago
I guess this is the key biographic context,
> "In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.[111] He supervised cultural broadcasts [sic] to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.[112] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...
There's quite a visible gap between his nominal role as a propagandist for Britain in India, and his private views expressed here. I mean: "quite truly the way the British Government is now behaving upsets me more than a military defeat"—wow!
(Meta: the part where Wikipedia's obviously very not-neutral editors inserted that exemplar of newspeak, "cultural broadcasts" for "propaganda", into the biography of Orwell himself is just... doubleplus).
In 1984, the office rooms for the ministry of lies were directly inspired from his work for the BBC ..
> ministry of lies
Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth.
By doublethink, internally you know there are two meanings although you can never actually do the crimethink of believing or saying any ungood connotations. Edit - added quote:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, [and remember it if necessary]. To deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.
My bad. You are of course correct.
Also I never said anything about a ministry of lies. I only spoke of a ministry of truth of course.
(That is, if the 2 h edit window would not have been already over now)
Eileen's work at the "Ministry of Information" could also be an influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(Unite...
That put me into a deep, deep rabbit hole, learning lots of previous unknown facts of WW2 along the way. Thanks for wasting my time/giving me the opportunity to learn new things ..
I wonder how he’d feel about current trends. There’s a certain honesty to just blaring out propaganda that’s kinda missing in this era of influence operations.
The winning strategy in the previous US presidential election was to scream obvious lies blaming the immigrants, minorities, or opposition for any perceived slight.
I think Orwell would find this all very familiar.
Isn’t Orwell a fed informant screwing over the left he claimed to be a part of? Can’t imagine he’d have good takes.
3 replies →
His main gripe was that government wasn't doing enough, that it was too passive. He had problems with lot of their other policies, but as most people, he understood that defeating Nazis is worth compromises.