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1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 8:59 pm
by Chris OConnor
1984 by George Orwell
Part 2


Please use this thread for discussing Part 2 of 1984 by George Orwell. There are 10 chapters in this section.

Or if you would like to create your own threads please feel free as this thread is just to help give this discussion forum some structure.

You can read 1984 for FREE here.

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 9:41 pm
by KindaSkolarly
Five chapters into Part 2.

Part 1 focused on how an individual operates in a collectivist hell. Part 2 shows how that individual tries to form a personal relationship in collectivist hell. Part 3 deals with the consequences of violating the rules of collectivist hell.

I looked up "proles" in the Oxford English Dictionary today. Wondered if Blair created the word for 1984. The book was published in 1949, and the OED says the first recorded use was in 1887. G.B. Shaw used "proles" in a letter. He used it to mean proletariat or proletarian, which is how Blair uses it.

I did a search earlier of news articles with the word "Orwellian" in the title. Lots and lots of them over the past couple of months. This book has had an enormous impact on western society.

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:02 pm
by DWill
Reading the book again, I see how it may differ from other works of speculative fiction or sci-fi. Orwell surely goes farther than other writers in showing a transforming of minds, the techniques of which are the real science the books deals with.

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 9:19 pm
by KindaSkolarly
Orwell includes parts of Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism in Ch. 19. Goldstein's lecturing tone is intrusive, breaks up the flow of the story, but why not, 2/3rds of the way through? Why not look at the world through another character's eyes for a while, before starting the nightmare ride through part 3?

Goldstein addresses "doublethink," a phenomenon that's prominent in today's world. In America the "tolerant" leftists shout down viewpoints that differ from their own. And yet they'll insist that they hold the moral high ground since they're so tolerant. They're able to hold contradicting thoughts without noticing the contradiction...doublethink.

EDIT: 1984 deals with historical revisionism. In the news today:

Robert B. Reich: Can we get an annulment instead of an impeachment?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinio ... story.html

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 12:46 am
by Robert Tulip
KindaSkolarly wrote:Goldstein addresses "doublethink," a phenomenon that's prominent in today's world. In America the "tolerant" leftists shout down viewpoints that differ from their own. And yet they'll insist that they hold the moral high ground since they're so tolerant. They're able to hold contradicting thoughts without noticing the contradiction...doublethink.
Australia has just had a change of Prime Minister from Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison, with conservatives hoping that Morrison will be more active in support of agendas such as freedom of speech, in view of this Orwellian syndrome of political correctness becoming a method of thought control. Here is an article from today's Australian newspaper on these themes.
Free speech is Scott Morrison’s chance to lead like Menzies
By STEPHEN CHAVURA
AUGUST 31, 2018
Now that we have a Liberal leadership that tends more towards the conservative-liberal tradition of Sir Robert Menzies, can we expect the protections of freedom of speech that were promised during the same-sex marriage debate?

If Scott Morrison has any hope of rebuilding the support base of the Liberal Party then he needs to recover Menzies’ liberal-conservative approach. The Prime Minister would do well to honour the deeply conservative instincts of many voters and the historic party membership base by opposing the increasingly authoritarian political correctness characterising so much of the Left. A good place to begin is freedom of speech.

Now that the new Left has ensconced itself in our culture-forming institutions — universities, schools, public service sector, corporations — it sees freedom of speech as a pernicious force that must be eradicated.

Ironically, conservatism has become the new radicalism and the cultural Marxists are worried.

The right to free speech, to the cultural Marxist, is like property rights to the classical Marxist — a mere pretext for those in power to maintain their privilege. The identity-politics Left dreams of a cultural revolution in which people no longer think in LGBTQ-phobic, racist and patriarchal ways. Of course, by LGBTQ-phobic they mean belief in traditional marriage or criticism of transgender ideology. By racist they mean being critical of multiculturalism. And by patriarchal they mean anything that questions feminism.

Political correctness, cultural Marxism, identity politics — call it what you like — can never embrace freedom of speech, because it ultimately seeks to shape and control culture, which cannot be shaped and controlled so long as one of the greatest shapers of ­culture — speech — is beyond its control.

Doctors who question transgender ideology will be harassed, activists and intellectuals who question multiculturalism will be demonised, conservative intellectuals will be no-platformed, all with the co-operation of the police, universities, and human rights and anti-discrimination commissions.

Take the case of David van Gend, a Queensland GP who has come under scrutiny by the Medical Board of Australia for tweeting against transgender ideology.

The board received a complaint against van Gend’s views and is demanding he explain how his views promote the health of members of the LGBTQ community.

The board has gone from a committee that scrutinises the credentials of doctors to one that scrutinises their thought and speech on public issues. In other words, criticism of transgender ideology falls foul of the diversity revolution and therefore must be stamped out by destroying the livelihoods of outspoken opponents.

The University of Western Australia refused to allow a talk by a prominent critic of transgender ideology on the grounds that the event could result in violence perpetrated by leftist protesters.

Just as Marxist revolutions pushed forward regardless of whether or not they were good for the poor, so the diversity revolution seeks to silence its critics despite the fact that gender-confused children can only benefit from ­robust debate regarding treatment within the medical community.

The same sort of thugs’ veto that was allowed at UWA has been imposed by Victoria Police on the organisers of the recent Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux speaking tour. The organisers were presented with a bill for $67,842.50 for the police personnel required to subdue Antifa. That’s right, the organisers, not the violent mob, were pursued for the costs imposed on the police budget. Victim blaming, anyone?

These cases are not, strictly speaking, examples of speech rights being abrogated, but they are examples of speech rights being heavily taxed to the point of being nearly impossible to enjoy without significant cost to career and livelihood. Conservatives have the right to free speech just as long as they are prepared to be bankrupt or unemployed. As long as the identity-left sees the great problem of modern society in terms of oppressive thoughts and speech directed at a class of victims, then the Left will see freedom of speech as nothing more than mere pretext for continued white heterosexual male oppression.

For conservatives, freedom of speech promises governmental accountability, robust public debate for sound public policy, and a more rational civic culture where a true diversity of views may be expressed for the sake of a considered and informed public. And yet just as communism needed to eradicate property rights to bring about its economic uniformity, so the new Left needs to eradicate freedom of speech to bring about the thought uniformity that, ironically, constitutes its diversity utopia. Freedom of speech and thought conformity coexist no more easily than property rights and economic equality.

The looming crisis of freedom of speech in Australia — nay, the liberal-democratic West — is a tremendous opportunity for Morrison or any leader of the Coalition who wishes to recapture the conservative support base that carried John Howard through four election victories. Political correctness is a form of leftist puritanism very much at odds with a still lingering Australian antipathy to wowser authoritarianism.

Although Morrison cannot necessarily intervene in the medical board or in universities, he can send a strong message to the nation that the trend of suspicion ­towards free speech is both pernicious and unacceptable.

A good start would be to speak out for the liberal right to religious freedom once the Ruddock review is released. Furthermore, taking the next opportunity to either amend or abolish 18C would send a strong message to the historic Liberal support base that the party is no longer happy to stand by and watch traditional liberal-conservative values such as freedom of speech be trashed by an increasingly authoritarian Left.

If Morrison can move the Liberal Party in such a direction then he has every right to place his leadership firmly within the best legacy of Menzies.

Stephen Chavura is an author and lecturer teaching history at Campion College, Sydney.

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 7:25 am
by DWill
KindaSkolarly wrote:Orwell includes parts of Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism in Ch. 19. Goldstein's lecturing tone is intrusive, breaks up the flow of the story, but why not, 2/3rds of the way through? Why not look at the world through another character's eyes for a while, before starting the nightmare ride through part 3?

Goldstein addresses "doublethink," a phenomenon that's prominent in today's world. In America the "tolerant" leftists shout down viewpoints that differ from their own. And yet they'll insist that they hold the moral high ground since they're so tolerant. They're able to hold contradicting thoughts without noticing the contradiction...doublethink.

EDIT: 1984 deals with historical revisionism. In the news today:

Robert B. Reich: Can we get an annulment instead of an impeachment?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinio ... story.html
I'll engage in some whataboutism here. How should we look at the millions of evangelical voters who preferred Donald Trump? Was it for his devotion to biblical values like showing charity to all, loving his enemies, welcoming strangers, speaking the truth, and being faithful to his wives? Trump embodies none of those values upheld by evangelicals, yet they support him as strongly as any other voting group. What we have here and with your example is the cognitive dissonance that Noah Yuval Harari identifies as an inherent part of human cognition, essential, in fact, to the dynamism of our culture. I don't know that I agree with that last part, but it's certain that the appearance of hypocrisy is as old as our species. Orwell takes this capacity and fashions a specific tool used by totalitarians to control reality, called doublethink.

The beauty of 1984 is that it doesn't lend itself to our usually arbitrary categories of left and right. This nonpartisanship is evident in the two precursor regimes he names in The Book, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Nazis have always attracted rightward elements (National Socialism being a quite irrelevant term) while the Soviets have attracted the leftward. His message really could not be clearer: we have to watch out that our freedoms are not stolen by either of the polar factions.

You'll have to say what point you intended with the Balt Sun link. It isn't clear to me.

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 7:33 am
by DWill
While I'm here I thought I'd mention something from Part Two that made me uncomfortable. Smith agrees to commit any form of terrorism if it would ever so slightly weaken the hold of the Party. Objectively, he has no choice but to agree, because there is no other path open to anyone. To rid the planet of the obnoxious regime, many innocent people would have to die. Is the way Islamist terrorists see things?

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 11:29 am
by DWill
While we're at this, why not reconsider Orwell's famous essay, "Politics and the English Language." The essay lays out the discipline of good speaking and, especially, writing.

https://faculty.washington.edu/rsoder/E ... nguage.pdf

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 10:47 pm
by KindaSkolarly
I'll engage in some whataboutism here. How should we look at the millions of evangelical voters who preferred Donald Trump? Was it for his devotion to biblical values like showing charity to all, loving his enemies, welcoming strangers, speaking the truth, and being faithful to his wives? Trump embodies none of those values upheld by evangelicals, yet they support him as strongly as any other voting group....

...You'll have to say what point you intended with the Balt Sun link. It isn't clear to me.
Evangelicals are forgiving. Trump says he's changed, and they're giving him a chance. It's what Jesus would have done. Also, Trump espouses personal responsibility, and Evangelicals like that.

Robert Reich (the writer of the Baltimore Sun piece) essentially wants to "unperson" Trump, as they do to people in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Reich used to be fairly levelheaded. It's a shame to see him lose his mind.

So many articles and videos make me think of Nineteen Eighty-Four now. The video below is good. At about 3:15 is something that reminded me of the Eurasia/Eastasia war switch. Comey of the FBI was hated by Hillary supporters, but then Trump fired him and Hillary supporters had to be re-educated to think of him as their friend. An excellent example of brainwashing using mass media:

Groupthink and Why They NEED to Censor Us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7wc4z2QGKU

Re: 1984 by George Orwell - a discussion of Part 2

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:16 pm
by DWill
KindaSkolarly wrote: Evangelicals are forgiving. Trump says he's changed, and they're giving him a chance. It's what Jesus would have done. Also, Trump espouses personal responsibility, and Evangelicals like that.
Oh come on, I don't even recall him saying he's changed, but regardless, the clear fact is that he has been acting counter to supposed Christian values ever since coming onto the national scene. Trump "espouses personal responsibility" might be the most astounding claim I've seen from you yet.
Robert Reich (the writer of the Baltimore Sun piece) essentially wants to "unperson" Trump, as they do to people in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Reich used to be fairly levelheaded. It's a shame to see him lose his mind.
Reich's a powerless former labor dept. secretary who was expressing his opinion, an extreme one. He wasn't proposing erasing Trump from the history books, though. I guess you can make a stretched analogy here to 1984, but you are ignoring the very fertile ground for such analogies involving the Trump administration and its supporters. Enforced political correctness and one voice advocating annulling Trump's presidency are small stuff compared to LIES, which are the very heart of the uber-totalitarian system of 1984. I'd refer anyone else to the Wash. Post's tally of lies Trump has told, but know you'd claim that was a lie itself.
So many articles and videos make me think of Nineteen Eighty-Four now. The video below is good. At about 3:15 is something that reminded me of the Eurasia/Eastasia war switch. Comey of the FBI was hated by Hillary supporters, but then Trump fired him and Hillary supporters had to be re-educated to think of him as their friend. An excellent example of brainwashing using mass media:
There was an article on Jeff Sessions, liberal hero. The hero moniker seemed to be tongue-in-cheek, but it's true that some folks--and whole departments--that formerly got no liberal love now receive liberal sympathy and even admiration. To call this brainwashing is way over the top.

Really, nothing about Trump and his administration gives you the 1984 willies?