How do you think the government got the idea to become the way it is? (In Oceania)

[Vic]

Okay so the government is Totalitarian, but how did it come to be that way? How does one guy, or girl, or one group of people all of a sudden decide that, that's the kind of government there should be?

[CD]

Using an outside enemy as an excuse they gradually strip people's rights away until they are completely controlled and subdued. The United States is currently in such a decline.

[Zenaphobe67]

Fear. Fear is the currency of totalitarianism. Get people so sick with fear they'll eventually forgo their freedoms one after the other grasping for a cure.

Look at the effect 9/11 had on America. Fear gave way to more fear. High terror alerts kept people on edge with worry. Legislation soared through Congress that under ordinary circumstances would have been decried as an affront to the civil rights of our citizens. Now imagine another what another attack would do. The war hawks would beat the drums of fear more and more and people would give up more freedom for the illusion of security.

Add some nationalistic, religious, authoritarianism into the mix and it's easy to imagine people kneeling before some leader or group that promises a return to the days of strength and exceptionalism.

I don't think it's a "sudden decision" that totalitarianism is what people want, it's more like a snowball effect of more and more centralized power until all aspects of life are under control.

The safest society possible is the one in which everyone is free to do exactly what they are told.

At least, that's one route to a totalitarian regime. A military coup could conceivably achieve the same ends.

[Peter]

Wealth(Love of)? Alchohol? Stupidity? Cowardice?

[John]

The ideology itself snowballs, as successive "leaders" try to outdo each other and wrest control of the mob from the previous "leader". They try every permutation of the ideology they can think of to get a bigger reaction from the crowd, and the end result is the most radical and extreme ideology possible, because that is what excites a mob of angry people. As the ideology becomes more extreme, everyone who opposes it are attacked violently until they are silenced (libs). That is how we had an ideology of "all business must be abolished" take root last century...Communists fought with each other and accused each other of not being radical enough, until the most radical ideology possible took form and silenced all reasonable objections. And that is how we are seeing an ideology of "all government must be destroyed" take power in this century. And you can see that our current runaway ideology is getting progressively more and more extreme. We are right now in the phase where the nut-jobs are accusing each other of not being anti-government enough, and we have already seen the rise of rabid attacks on anyone who disagrees with them.

[Sal]

It's what governments naturally become as they accumulate power and control. Eventually they collapse under their own bureaucratic weight. Orwell created a world in which the government found a way keep itself from collapsing.

[Shashank]

Ben wrote: "This doesn't quite respond to the question, but what the hell...

First of all (and to state the obvious), Orwell intended the work to be an attack on the type of socialism that the British left fa..."


Amazing Insight man!

[John]

"Once you have people believing that Obama is a Muslim, or that the GOP is only interested in the filthy rich, or that pizza is a vegetable"

So the foundation of the GOP ideology, that making rich people richer "creates jobs" and generally makes the world a better place, is morally equivalent to calling Obama a muslim and pizza a vegetable?

You really have studied propaganda, haven't you?

[Jason]

If read how Hitler took over Weimar Germany , that would fill in the gaps you require. I havnt read 1984 in quite a long time , i can't remember what big brother 'scapegoated'

[Matthew]

He made that pretty clear in the text. The answer to the questions Winston was asking, which are really the questions Orwell himself was puzzling over, were all contained in the Goldstein manifesto. Slightly off topic, but apparently, Orwell wrote this part of the book (HIS manifesto) first and then built the rest of the book up around it.

Anyway, he pointed out that the bureaucracy and ideology of totalitarianism had already emerged during the 20th century. The middle rung of society who believed in transforming society so totally that it would arrest the process of history, the swings back and forth.

They believed so totally in their ways that they were prepared to sacrifice everything, including their own lives, freedoms, and even the truth itself to this goal. From there, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to becoming the kind of monsters who believed that the goal of freedom was pure BS and that the only real point was getting and keeping power. For, as Goldstein's manifesto pointed out, this is the real driving force behind history.

So really, Oceania's future leaders were already in place and already had their beliefs worked out before they ever got into power. They just needed the opportunity, which came when nuclear war broke out and society was devastated and weakened.