Orwell's 1984:
Was Orwell Right?
Who
controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.
-- O'Brien in 1984
Every government is
run by liars
and nothing they say should be believed. -- I. F. Stone
GuluFuture.com
7th August 2002
by
John Bennett
Paper Presented to the Sixth International Revisionist Conference
Many of the predictions made by George Orwell in his book 1984 in
relation to "Big Brother" surveillance, corruption of language and control
of history have already come about to a great extent in Communist countries
and to some extent in the West.
The powers of security police in Western countries to intercept mail and
tap phones have often been extended, police agencies keep numerous files
on law-abiding citizens, and more and more public officials have the right
to enter private homes without a warrant. Many government departments
keep computerized information on citizens and there is a danger that this
information will be fed into a centralized data bank.
Attempts by law enforcement agencies to obtain more information through
informer schemes, through new law enforcement agencies, and through new
techniques such as computerization of information, are understandable,
but the cumulative effect of such Big Brother activities is to make countries
such as the United States, Britain and Australia increasingly totalitarian
societies.
The corruption of language described in 1984 is widespread in the media
today, with "Newspeak" terms such as democratic, socialist, fascist, war
criminal, freedom fighter, racist and many other expressions being used
in a deliberately deceptive, propagandistic way to whip up mass hysteria
or simply to ensure that people can never achieve even an approximation
of the truth.
Control of
the Past
The fact that almost all media commentary, book reviews and feature articles
about the book 1984 have ignored the crucial role of controlling the past
indicates that Orwell's prophecy has already been partially fulfilled.
The central theme of his book, the control of history, has already been
largely written out of references to his book and has disappeared down
the memory hole.1
The book's hero, Winston Smith, works in the Ministry of Truth rewriting
and falsifying history. The Ministry writes people out of history -- they
go "down the memory hole" as though they never existed. The Ministry also
creates people as historical figures who never existed. Big Brother, who
controls the State of Oceania, uses "thought police" to ensure that people
in the inner and outer Party are kept under control. Oceania is at perpetual
war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. Alliances between these three states
change without rational explanation. "Hate weeks" are organized against
Goldstein, the leader of an alleged underground opposition to Big Brother,
and hate sessions are organized against either Eurasia or Eastasia. O'Brien,
a member of the inner Party, pretends to Smith that he is part of the
Goldstein conspiracy against Big Brother. He asks Smith what he would
most like to drink a toast to. Smith chooses to drink a toast, not to
the death of Big Brother, the confusion of the Thought Police, or Humanity,
but "to the past." Both Smith and O'Brien, the main characters of 1984,
agree that the past is more important. Unfortunately, almost all of last
year's media commentary about Orwell's greatest book ignored the importance
of the past and control of the past as a theme in 1984. The extent of
censorship of history is indicated by suppression of the fact that Orwell
originally considered giving the title 1948 to his book because of widespread
Big Brother tendencies already in the year 1948, including control of
history.2 It is also indicated by the suppression of the fact that Orwell
queried the allegation that there were gas chambers in Poland.
Orwell wrote that
indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing off of
one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder
to discover what is actually happening. There can often be doubt about
the most enormous events... .The calamities that are constantly being
reported -- battles, massacres, famines, revolutions -- tend to inspire
in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying
the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and
one is always presented with totally different interpretations from
different sources. Probably the truth is undiscoverable but the facts
will be so dishonestly set forth in that the ordinary reader can be
forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion
... 3
Because of his experience in the Spanish civil war that media reports
of the conflict bore no relation to what was happening, Orwell developed
a great skepticism about the ability of even a well intentioned and honest
writer to get to the truth. He was generally skeptical of atrocity stories.
It should be noted that Orwell worked for the BBC for a time, and the
Ministry of Truth is modeled to some extent on the BBC. Orwell noted that
the BBC put out false hate propaganda during World War II, and controlled
history by censoring news about the genocidal Allied policy of leveling
German cities by saturation bombing. Orwell's beliefs about the control
of the past, including the recent past, also derived from his experiences
in the Spanish civil war, where he found that "no event is ever correctly
reported in a newspaper, but in Spain for the first time I saw newspaper
reports which did not bear any relation to the facts."4
The popular perception of history is based on brainwashing by the mass
media, indoctrination by the education system, peer group pressure, self-censorship
and television "docudramas." Docudramas such as Winds of War; Tora, Tora,
Tora; Gandhi; Gallipoli; and Holocaust, which pervade people's 1984-like
telescreens, are a blend of fact and fiction. They give a clear and believable,
but usually completely misleading view, of historical events. Such devices
to indoctrinate and mislead people are not new. Shakespeare's docudramas,
such as Richard III, served a similar purpose. The pervasiveness of television
and widespread literacy make people more susceptible to brainwashing by
Big Brother agencies than was possible in the past. The twentieth century
is the century of mass propaganda. Due to different systems of propaganda,
people in different countries such as Russia, China, and the United States
will have quite different beliefs about history. The "Winston Smiths"
in Communist countries who query approved history are likely to be more
harshly treated than their counterparts in the West.
Book Censorship
and Treatment
of Dissidents
Many of the books mentioned in this essay are, for a variety of reasons,
including direct censorship, trade boycott and self-censorship by booksellers,
distributors and librarians, difficult to obtain. (However, many of them
can be ordered from the Institute for Historical Review.) Obtaining banned
books and access to restricted information plays a major role in Orwell's
best-known work. One of the most important developments in 1984 is when
Winston Smith obtains a book by Goldstein which had been effectively banned
by the Thought Police. Pressure from people with a thought-police mentality
inhibits freedom of speech in my own country, Australia, and has helped
to restrict the circulation of some books. Extreme cases of book censorship
in the West have occurred in West Germany, where Professor Helmut Diwald
was forced to delete revisionist portions from his History of the Germans.
Retired judge Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich had his book on Auschwitz seized, and
the University of Tuebingen, which had granted him his law degree, deprived
him of it, ironically under a law passed by the Nazis. In Sweden, Ditlieb
Felderer's writings were also recently seized and he was imprisoned for
the "thought crime" of querying the Holocaust. His arrest and detention
should alarm all people concerned with civil liberties. Mr. Felderer,
who has questioned the extent of alleged German war atrocities and pointed
out the extent of Allied war atrocities, including one million civilian
deaths from saturation bombing of German and Japanese cities, was jailed
because of his writings. Following the precedent of Soviet authorities
in dealing with dissident thinkers, he was forced to undergo psychiatric
examinations. The jailing of Felderer for querying the establishment version
of history and his harassment by psychiatrists is clearly an attempt to
intimidate him and other free thinkers who have dared to ask challenging
questions about the past. The harassment or persecution of Felderer is
part of a worldwide attempt to silence revisionist writers. An unsuccessful
effort was made to silence Professor Robert Faurisson, a French revisionist
historian, by court proceedings in 1983 involving potential penalties
of $200,000, while moves are currently being made, supported by some so-called
historians, to remove Professor Arthur Butz from his teaching position
at Northwestern University. Canadian postal authorities denied the use
of the postal system to revisionist publicist Ernst Zündel for a time.
Various West German writers have been imprisoned, while a French revisionist
was assassinated a few years ago. Many civil libertarians, such as the
distinguished Jewish intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Alfred Lilienthal,
have protested against the attempts to silence revisionist historians,
while other so-called civil libertarians have been strangely silent, preferring
to defend only the civil liberties of those whose views they agree with.
Gandhi and Bose
Henry Ford said that history is bunk, while Dean Inge noted that historians
have the power denied to almighty God of altering the past. These statements
are relevant to the film Gandhi, which was mainly financed by the government
of India and which won numerous best-film, best-actor and best-director
awards. It is widely accepted as an accurate biographical portrayal of
Mohandas K. Gandhi. The film portrays the Indian political leader as a
saintly figure virtually without fault and suggests that he and his campaign
of non-violent resistance to British rule was the reason India gained
independence in 1947. The portrayal of Gandhi in the film of that name
is a massive distortion. The film ignores Gandhi's tyrannical habits,
his hypocrisy, his appalling treatment of his wife and children, his bizarre
fixation on bowel functions, and his support for violence in various wars.
The film ignores Gandhi's views that sexual attraction between men and
women is unnatural and that he demanded celibacy between even married
members of his entourage. He was so fanatical about his views on sex that
he disowned his son Harilal for wishing to marry, and repeatedly tested
his own will by sleeping nude with young women. The film Gandhi ignores
the Mahatma's elitist attitudes. He is portrayed as a champion of freedom
and individual rights, but in real life he was steadfastly opposed to
granting additional rights to India's millions of Untouchables. The film's
portrayal of Gandhi as a pacifist is incorrect. He supported the British
military in the Boer War and World War I. The so-called pacifist gave
his approval to men who, as he put it, were "using violence in a normal
cause." He gave his blessing to the Nawab of Maler Kolta when he gave
orders to shoot ten Moslems for every Hindu killed in his State. Gandhi's
hypocrisy and double standards (not mentioned in the film) are also indicated
by his opposition to modern medicine and his refusal to allow his wife
to receive a life-saving shot of penicillin when she was dying of pneumonia.
When he contracted malaria shortly afterwards, however, Gandhi accepted
for himself the alien medicine of quinine, and when he had appendicitis
he allowed British doctors to operate to save his life.
Perhaps the most serious distortion of history in the Gandhi propaganda
film is the total suppression of the role played by Subhas Chandra Bose
in the events leading to the independence of India. (This subject was
examined in detail by Mr. Ranjan Borra in an essay published in the Winter
1982 issue of The Journal.) At the time that India attained independence,
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee regarded the armed insurrection
led by Bose as a far more important factor leading to independence than
Gandhi's activities. However, Bose is not even mentioned in the Gandhi
film. The eminent Indian historian, Dr. R.C. Majumdar, wrote: "There is...
no basis for the claim that the civil disobedience movement (led by Gandhi)
directly led to independence. The campaigns of Gandhi... came to an ignoble
end about fourteen years before India achieved independence."5
There is ample evidence to substantiate the fact that the armed assault
on British India by Bose and his Indian National Army (INA) during World
War II was the decisive factor that forced the British withdrawal from
the Asian sub-continent. The exploits of this army, when they became known,
undermined the loyalty of the Indian soldiers, or sepoys, of the British.
These men were the mainstay of colonial rule in India. Bose and the INA
ignited the spark of a potential military revolt within the country, which
the British dreaded above all else. This forced their decision to quit
India honorably, while there was still time. As Majumdar wrote: "In particular,
the revelations made by the INA trial, and the reaction it produced in
India, made it quite plain to the British, already exhausted by the war,
that they could no longer depend upon the loyalty of the sepoys for maintaining
their authority in India. This had, probably, the greatest influence upon
their final decision to quit India."6
Perpetual War
for Perpetual
Peace
The changing alliances between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia described
in 1984 are similar to the changing alliances between the United States,
Russia, and China. The state of perpetual war described by Orwell is also
reflected in the three hundred wars since 1945, the thirty-seven armed
conflicts under way in 1980, and recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Lebanon,
Central America, and Grenada. Perpetual civil war also seems to prevail
in various multi-racial societies.
"Doublespeak" propaganda terms are used in these conflicts. "Peace-keeping
forces" are used to make war, invasions such as in Grenada are described
as "landings," planning for aggressive war is described as "defense strategy."
The book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace edited by Harry Elmer Barnes
describes the permanent war economy of the United States, the trickery
employed by the U.S. government to enter World War I and World War II,
and the censorship of dissident historical views by the media, the book
trade, libraries, the curricula sections of education departments, and
book reviewers. The Dynamics of War and Revolution by Lawrence Dennis
discusses the need for preparation for perpetual wars to overcome unemployment,
boost profits, and use up excess capital. Foreign markets are secured
through war and foreign aid. Huge loans are made which cannot be paid
back by debtor nations such as Poland and Brazil.
The role of international banks in financing wars and revolutions has
been documented in numerous books, few of which are available in bookshops
or libraries. Dr. Anthony Sutton documented the link between international
finance and the Russian Revolution in Wall Street and the Russian Revolution.
The American Red Cross mission to Moscow in 1917 had more financiers than
medical doctors. Wall Street banks helped finance the revolution. This
has been almost entirely swept under the rug by historians since it cuts
across conventional ideas about the political left and right. Uncovering
the Forces of War by Conrad Grieb deals with the role of international
financiers in simultaneously bankrolling both sides in wars.
Organized Incitement to Hatred
The media in all countries are a vehicle for whipping up hatred against
Goldstein-like figures. The aim of hate-week incitement is to divert attention
from domestic problems, promote national unity, and, where necessary,
motivate people to kill other people in wars. Hate-week campaigns in the
Soviet Union direct invective against the Chinese and Western "imperialists."
In China hatred is whipped up against the Russians, sometimes the Vietnamese,
and, until recently, the Americans. Iran and Iraq use their media outlets
to control history, including recent history, and to keep their respective
captive populations in the psychological state of hatred required to maintain
their current war. Other countries at war or on a war footing use similar
tactics. Hate propaganda is used in the civil-war conditions which prevail
in many multiracial societies such as Zimbabwe, Chad, Sri Lanka, Zaire,
Ethiopia, Burma, Uganda and Cyprus, which are paying the price demanded
by the fallacious belief that multi-racial societies are viable.
The most pervasive hate campaigns in the West are still directed against
Hitler, who died almost forty years ago. Hitler is treated in the Western
mass media as a Goldstein figure with no redeeming features. Hate sessions
directed against Hitler and the Nazis are so pervasive that a visitor
from Mars might think that World War II was still in progress. More than
four hundred feature films have been produced since 1945 with negative
stereotyping of Germans, as well as numerous television series and countless
books. (By contrast, the Nazis made only two or three anti-Semitic feature
films between 1933 and 1945.) Recent films include Sophie's Choice, Playing
for Time, The Boys from Brazil, Marathon Man, and The Odessa File. Recent
television series include Winds of War, Holocaust, Kessler, and The Secret
War. Many more films, television series, and books are in the pipeline.
The cumulative effect of this media avalanche of negative stereotyping
of Germans is to incite ethnic hatred against people of German extraction
of whom there are more than twenty million in the United States. Civil-rights,
human-rights and church groups which have been quick to oppose racism
and anti-Semitism have done almost nothing to stem this incitement to
ethnic hatred.
The 18-hour Winds of War television saga is a good example of the docudrama
blend of fact, fiction and fantasy ("faction") which is accepted by many
viewers as objective history. The Winds of War film is an instructive
example of gross distortion of history, of incitement to ethnic hatred,
and of the use of the electronic media as a vehicle for propaganda. Winds
of War was written by Herman Wouk, a devout Orthodox Jew. It's an American-Jewish
version of the last world war in which the persecution of Jews is a dominant
theme and war atrocities committed by the Allies, such as the terror bombing
of cities, are almost completely ignored. A Washington Post reviewer wrote
"if you miss the Winds of War you will be adding 18 hours to your life,"
while another critic called the series "essentially a cartoon, a child's
history of the war with all the stock characters of a Hollywood propaganda
movie."
Wouk tries to make the Jewish people the axis around which American and
world history revolves. Without exception, he portrays Jews as warm, sensitive,
admirable people who are innocent victims of mindless persecution. The
Germans are stereotypes of evil who are barely recognizable as real people
at all. The German people are portrayed as suffering from a national character
disorder to explain why they admired and supported Hitler, who is portrayed
by Wouk as a raving comic-book lunatic. If an 18-hour television series
were to be shown at peak viewing time with comparably derogatory portrayals
of Jews, there would be a massive protest about "anti-Semitism." The argument
that films such as Winds of War are made because of popular demand is
incorrect, since much of the demand is created by massive advertising
and promotional campaigns, often as expensive as the films themselves.
The book Dealing in Hate by Michael Connors examines anti-German hate
campaigns in both world wars. Falsehood in Wartime by Arthur Ponsonby
deals with the Allied propaganda lies against Germany in World War I.
Second World War propaganda lies are still being churned out on an almost
daily basis. If the Germans had won the last world war, and had influence
in the media, we would doubtless be having a series of hate sessions against
England, America and Russia. If there is another world war, the victors
will once again write the history books and cowardly court historians,
acting as thought police, will ensure that the history of the war is not
objective. Finally, to make a fairly trite but important point -- if the
conditions described in Orwell's 1984 actually existed in the United States
and Australia today, we would not be able to publicly attack official
security agencies or query establishment history. Western countries are
still the most free and, fortunately, freedom of speech is still widely
respected.
The Ministry of Truth and World War II
The attempt to portray the Second World War as a conflict between total
good and total evil is slowly breaking down. Despite decades of brainwashing
by the media, censorship of revisionist historians, and the cowardice
of establishment court historians, a more balanced history of the origins
and course of the war is slowly emerging. The Origins of the Second World
War by A.J.P. Taylor establishes that Hitler did not plan the war and
that the Allies bore important responsibility for the outbreak of the
conflict. Germany's Economic Preparation for War by Burton J. Klein establishes
that Germany was spending a smaller percentage of its GNP on war preparations
than either Britain or France in the late 1930s.
The extent of Allied war crimes is slowly being documented. Bomber Command
by Max Hastings shows that saturation bombing of cities was initiated
by the British and that some 600,000 German civilians were killed in the
levelling of German cities. A review of Hastings' book in the London Spectator
was headlined "Devastating and Exterminating" and described the aerial
destruction of German cities and the killing of 600,000 German civilians
as "the greatest war crime of the Second World War."7 Other Allied war
crimes such as bombing of Japanese cities, the execution of more than
12,000 Polish officers and other leaders at Katyn and elsewhere by the
Soviets, have also been documented, although the Katyn massacre is still
not widely known in the West. The forced repatriation of millions of Russians
and other Soviet subjects back to the USSR, resulting in many deaths,
has also been set out in books such as The Last Secret. The Nuremberg
trials were illegal and yet another Allied crime. This is discussed in
Failure at Nuremberg, Profiles in Courage by the late President John F.
Kennedy, and Dönitz at Nuremberg by H. Keith Thompson.
However, for every book and film about Allied war crimes there are literally
thousands of books and films about German and Japanese war crimes, particularly
those dealing with the concentration camps. The greatest war crime of
the war, the bombing of German cities, is never dealt with in films, apart
from very rare exceptions such as Slaughterhouse Five.
The central allegation made against the Nazis is that they exterminated
six million Jews during the war, mainly by gassing in gas chambers. This
claim has been established as false by Professor Arthur Butz in The Hoax
of the Twentieth Century, by Dr. Charles Weber in The Holocaust, by Walter
Sanning in The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, by Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich
in The Auschwitz Myth, by Dr. Robert Faurisson in The Problem of the Gas
Chambers, and by Professor Paul Rassinier in Debunking the Genocide Myth.
Due to thought-police pressure and self-censorship by the media and book
trade, these books are not readily available. These books demonstrate
that there was no plan to exterminate Jews in World War II, no mass gassings
in gas chambers, that fewer than 500,000 people died in concentration
camps and that most Jewish deaths were due to diseases such as typhus.
Numerous Jewish writers, including civil libertarians such as J. Cohn-Bendit,
C. Karnoouh and J. Assons, accept the revisionist view of the Holocaust.
Most academics dealing in modern European history are too cowardly even
to investigate the revisionist evidence.
The Holocaust story is repeated ad nauseam to drum up emotional support
for Israel, and Zionist Jews have accurately described it as "Israel's
number one propaganda weapon." Anti-Zionist Jews such as Dr. Alfred Lilienthal
describe the constant Holocaust drum-beating as "holocaustomania" and
point out that the Holocaust has become a kind of new religion among Jews.
Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky described Dr. Rubenstein's reactions
to Professor Faurisson's claims that there were no gas chambers as the
reactions of a religious fanatic. The Holocaust is so important to Zionist
Jews that Professor Friedlander has said that "the Revisionist School
of historians, those who say the Holocaust never existed, that it is a
Jewish invention, are more worrying than countries' political positions,"
while Professor H. Littell has said "you can't discuss the truth of the
Holocaust. That is a distortion of the concept of free speech. The United
States should emulate West Germany which outlaws such exercises." Despite
cogent evidence that revisionists are censored and persecuted, one so-called
intellectual recently stated that it is fashionable to claim that Hitler's
gas chambers did not exist.8 A five-page attack in the Australian magazine
Quadrant described revisionists such as Professor Butz, Professor Faurisson
and myself as "lone wolf malcontents," the "John Hinckley Juniors of the
intelligentsia," and possibly more evil than Himmler and Pol Pot.9 As
is customary with such attacks, no right of reply was allowed.
Down the Memory Hole
Chairman Mao, once the Big Brother of China, has almost vanished down
the Chinese memory hole. He has been virtually written out of Chinese
history. A similar fate has befallen Stalin in official Soviet history.
Hitler, on the other hand, has not been written out of history. He is
larger than life, appearing on our 1984-style telescreens on a regular
basis as a Goldstein hate figure He is needed to assist in the portrayal
of World War II as a war between total good (the victors) and total evil
(the vanquished). Hitler is also useful for the Hollywood World War II
industry which churns out a mind-boggling number of films and TV series
about the war. Dr. Alfred Lilienthal has pointed out in The Zionist Connection
that the three major television networks (NBC, ABC and CBS), the major
film companies, book distributors, and influential newspapers such as
the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as influential news
magazines such as Time and Newsweek, are owned and controlled by Zionist
Jews who use the evil Hitler image and the Holocaust as propaganda weapons
for Israel.
Some aspects of popular history are shrouded in secrecy and receive little
publicity. Thus, collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists in World
War II, revisionist evidence about the treatment of Jews during that war,
the role of Subhas Bose in the struggle for Indian independence, massacres
by the Soviets at Katyn, Vynnytsia and elsewhere, and the sinking of the
passenger ships Wilhelm Gustloff, General Steuben, and Goya, in each case
with greater loss of life than the Titanic, are seldom mentioned in the
controlled media of the West. Collaboration between the Nazis and the
Zionists is established by Jewish writers in books such as Perfidy by
Ben Hecht, The Holocaust Victims Accuse by M. Shonfeld, Eichmann in Jerusalem
by Hannah Arendt and Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner.
The massacre of Polish leaders by the Soviets in 1940 is documented in
Katyn by Louis Fitzgibbon, while the massacre of some 10,000 Ukrainians
at Vynnytsia is covered in The Crime of Moscow in Vynnytsia. The sinking
of three passenger ships in the Baltic in 1945 with more than 18,000 deaths,
mainly German women and children, is dealt with in The Cruelest Night
by Dobson. Anne Frank's Diary, A Hoax by Ditlieb Felderer, which proves
that Anne Frank did not write the famous "diary," has been given the silent
treatment by the media. In case after case, historical truth has been
consigned to the memory hole.
There has also been a fairly successful cover-up in relation to the American
entry into the Pacific war in 1941. The largest ethnic group in America
is of German origin. Resistance from this and other groups had to be overcome
to get the United States into the First and Second World Wars. The attack
against the Lusitania was used as a pretext for entry into World War I.
The attack against Pearl Harbor was the excuse for entry into World War
II. Both of these attacks involved gross deception of the American public.
The Watergate cover-up was nothing compared with the cover-up over Pearl
Harbor. Roosevelt incited the attack with an oil embargo, and knew that
the attack was coming. It was not a surprise attack. The Pacific war began
in deception and cover-up and ended the same way. The Japanese offered
to surrender prior to the bombing of Hiroshima on condition that the office
of Japanese Emperor be retained, and after the bombing the war was concluded
with that condition accepted. Why then was Hiroshima bombed? Most people's
understanding of the Pearl Harbor attack is based on popular portrayals
such as the docudrama film Tora, Tora, Tora, which presents the attacks
as a surprise. The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor by Rear Admiral Theobald,
which examines the days immediately preceding the attack, shows that it
was not a surprise. It shows instead that Washington authorities had ample
foreknowledge of the time and place of the Japanese attack, and that the
failure to warn General Short and Admiral Kimmel was due to Roosevelt's
order that no warning be sent lest their preparations for defense might
deter the Japanese from attacking. Theobald also shows that Pearl Harbor
was denied a "Purple" decoding machine lest the commanders there might
independently decode Japanese messages and take steps to ward off the
attack.
Similar deceptions were used by the U.S. government in the Gulf of Tonkin
incident, the bombing of Cambodia, and in military interventions in the
Middle East, Central America and Grenada.
Some of Simon Wiesenthal's activities have likewise gone down the memory
hole. His wartime collaboration with the Nazis was discussed by the former
Chancellor of Austria, Bruno Kreisky, himself of Jewish origin, and others.
Wiesenthal's criminal "Nazi hunter" role in persecuting innocent individuals
such as Frank Walus and wrecking their lives has been amply documented
but has received only minimal media coverage.
Down With
Big Brother
Control of the past, Big
Brother surveillance, and the use of "doublethink" are much more extensive
in Communist and many third world countries than in the United States,
western Europe or Australia. People in the West can help combat Big Brother
control in Communist and other quasi-totalitarian countries by supporting
Amnesty International and by helping human rights groups in those countries.
Unfortunately, effective human rights groups can be established only in
countries where basic civil rights are already relatively secure. Individuals
who attempt to establish such groups in repressive countries are often
persecuted and imprisoned.
Although civil liberties
are entrenched in the West, there are still some areas of concern. Control
of the past, the central issue of Orwell's 1984, remains pervasive, especially
with regard to World War II history which is, to use Napoleon's phrase,
"lies agreed upon by the victors." The lies are repeated to justify the
carnage of the war and to explain the Allied policy of unconditional surrender
in the war. The six million Holocaust allegation, the hoax of the twentieth
century, is used as a propaganda weapon to promote support for Israel.
Uncritical support for Israel, particularly by the United States, could
contribute to starting World War III.
Challenging the official
version of anything may be a civic responsibility and even great fun,
but it is still difficult for those who dispute the establishment version
of history to have their views heard. The best way to combat Big Brother
control of the past is to ask questions and challenge the claims put out
by the high priests of sanctioned history repeatedly. People should ask,
for example, whose interests are served by the repetition of particular
atrocity stories? What real evidence is there for various mass murder
allegations? Who controls the media? And so forth.
Citizens
should support bona fide civil liberties groups and actively oppose government
measures restricting basic freedoms. Freedom of speech is a basic civil
liberty and people should fight to retain it. They should defy group pressure,
think for themselves and speak out. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Notes
- See, for example: New
Society, 12 May 1983; Commentary, May 1983; New Republic, December 1982;
Commentary, March 1983; Harper's January 1983.
- New Society, 5 October
1978.
- Orwell, Notes on Nationalism.
- Orwell, Homage to Catalonia.
- R.C. Majumdar, Three Phases
of India's Struggle for Freedom.
- ibid.
- The Spectator, 29 September
1979.
- Quadrant, (Australia),
August 1983.
- Quadrant, October 1981.
See also: New Statesman, November 1979, and Commentary, December, 1980.
Bibliographic information
|
Bennett,
John |
|
Orwell's
1984: Was Orwell Right? |
|
The
Journal for Historical Review (http://ihr.org/index.html)
Spring 1986 Volume 6 number 1, Page 9, 0195-6752
"Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739,
Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year;
foreign subscriptions $60 per year." |
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