Tag: 1984

Orwell’s passport photo from his time in Burma.

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When did Eric A. Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, lose his virginity? Most biographers haven’t wrestled much with this particular issue. But then came along John Sutherland, a retired academic who published an entertaining book called Orwell’s Nose: A Pathological Biography back in 2016. (I briefly described this cute volume in a 2019 end-of-year Favorite Books wrap-up.)

John Sutherland, bless his soul, spends about half his book reconstructing the carnal history of E. A. Blair. (more…)

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The following is being published in commemoration of George Orwell’s 120th birthday on June 25.

George Orwell is one of those authors well worth stealing, as Orwell famously wrote of Charles Dickens. I am not the first person to start an essay like this. While rummaging through my memory files I recalled a cover piece in the January 1983 Harper’s, and 40 years later I am astounded to discover it begins almost exactly the same way. (more…)

Mizzy (right), who has been making TikTok videos about harassing random white people in London in highly illegal ways and then crying “racism” when anyone tries to stop him.

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Bad chemistry

I wrote in Counter-Currents in 2021 about Professor Kathleen Stock, a philosophy lecturer hounded from her post at my alma mater, the University of Sussex, by student activists for her comments and writings on gender identity. She has recently been “deplatformed” by Oxford University, and has now come under attack from a curious source: the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

You might assume these eggheads would be busy publishing peer-reviewed papers on enzymes, salts, and various reactions in test-tubes, but their remit seems considerably wider in these heady days of woke kangaroo courts. The RSC’s new journal, Digital Discovery, has as its mission statement to publish “theoretical and experimental research at the intersection of chemistry, material science and biotechnology.” (more…)

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By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter — one book. This was the book of the Machine. – E. M. Forster

Welcome, my son.
Welcome to the machine.
— Pink Floyd

Writers of fiction are obviously not bound to set their work in their own times. (more…)

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Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. — George Orwell, 1984

American college students have said, ‘Like 1984, man’, when asked not to smoke pot in the classroom or advised gently to do a little reading. — Anthony Burgess, 1985

I made a half-hearted New Year’s resolution not to mention Orwell’s 1984 this year, not once. Like most of these Janus-faced pledges, however, it didn’t last long. But hasn’t the book been over-visited? (more…)

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The propaganda is ripe today in my country, though it has been this way all my life. It isn’t until now, however, that it has become so flagrant and out in the open that everyone in their right mind can see it. Unfortunately, the number of insane people seems to be higher than ever, and an ever greater portion of people in the so-called “home of the brave” pretend to be asleep in the hope that, if they don’t see the monster, it won’t see them.

It’s gotten to a point where I have begun to ask myself: Do people actually believe this garbage anymore? (more…)

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Whenever a conservative or Right-winger accuses Leftists of acting like the Party from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the unerring refrain from the Leftist chorus is “Don’t you know George Orwell was a socialist!” The implication is that, especially in these politically polarized times, Orwell is the property of the Left. He wore their uniform, and so Right-wingers are, by invoking his name, committing a kind of theft.

Orwell’s best-known writings, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, are dark satires of that exact attitude: A man’s thoughts ought to belong to a political faction, and that political faction has some sort of right to them. (more…)

Winston & Julia, 1984

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Love is best. — last line of Robert Browning’s “Love among the Ruins”

He loved Big Brother. — last line of George Orwell’s 1984 (more…)

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The singer Édith Piaf famously, and throatily, regretted nothing about anything. But the poet John Betjeman wished that he’d had more sex. And the economist John Maynard Keynes that he’d drunk more champagne. Me? I regret two things much more important than recreational sex or champagne. (more…)

Soviet propaganda poster from 1931 telling the workers that the 5-year plan can be completed in 4 years with enough enthusiasm.

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Part 1 here, Part 2 here

4. Doublethink

Among the many useful concepts bequeathed to us by Orwell, “doublethink” tops the list. It is a priceless tool for understanding how “normies” function within the repressive, PC societies of the West. The novel offers us two separate discussions of doublethink, which complement each other. The first occurs early in the story, and is the most famous passage dealing with the term:

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Part 2 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

3. The Denial of Reality and the Control of Language

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Part 1 (Part 2 here)

1. Introduction

Everyone thinks he knows what’s in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Is there really anything left to say? It’s as if George Orwell’s masterpiece has been sucked dry. At least, that’s what I thought until I recently reread it, for the first time in over thirty years. (more…)