Nineteen Eighty-Four [1984] (George Orwell) 1949

Ninety Eighty-Four is Orwell’s vision of a totalitarian future. Its hero, Winston Smith, is a worker at the Ministry of Truth, where he falsifies records for the party. Secretly subversive, he and his colleague Julia try to free themselves from political slavery, but the price of freedom is betrayal.

A dystopian novel and cautionary tale written by English writer Eric Arthur Blair, who wrote under the pen name George Orwell, first published in 1949.
1984 takes place in an imagined future, modelling Britian under authoritarian socialism of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The current year is uncertain but believed to be 1984. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party’s Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent mid-level worker at the Ministry of Truth who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. Smith keeps a forbidden diary, but things become bad for him when he begins a relationship with a colleague, Julia, and they learn about a shadowy resistance group called the Brotherhood. However, their contact within the Brotherhood turns out to be a Party agent, and Smith and Julia are arrested. Smith is subjected to months of psychological manipulation and torture by the Ministry of Love until he ultimately betrays Julia and is released, Smith finally realises he loves Big Brother.

Despite many attempts to ban the novel across the world, some schools successful in the US, for a period of time, Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction, with a boost in sales every time government over-reach is mentioned in the press.

1984 has also popularised the term “Orwellian” as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage today (2024), including “Big Brother”, “doublethink”, “Thought Police”, “thought crime”, “Newspeak”, and “2 + 2 = 5”.

Parallels have been drawn between the novel’s subject matter and real-life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression, among other themes. Orwell described his book as a “satire”, and a display of the “perversions to which a centralised economy is liable,” while also stating he believed “that something resembling it could arrive.”

For Thought

75 years later (1949-2024), the Australian government under prime minister Anthony Albanese is introducing a Misinformation and Disinformation Bill by “empowering the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to require digital communications platform providers to take measures to manage the risk that misinformation and disinformation on digital communications platforms poses in Australia”.

As Alex Antic (Senator for South Australia) puts it:

Thanks to a Freedom of Information request from my office we know that during COVID, the Department of Home Affairs pressured social media platforms to “shadow ban” and delete thousands of posts that contradicted the Department of Health’s advice.
Many of those posts turned out to be factually accurate.
Had this Bill been in effect during COVID, social media companies and individual Australians could have received huge fines for posting true statements.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

George Orwell

Labor’s previous version of the Bill was widely condemned as heavy-handed and Orwellian, and not much has changed in this new version of the Bill introduced in the House of Representatives last week.

If passed, this Bill would allow the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to issue fines of up to $3,130,000 (5,000 penalty units) or 2% of annual turnover (whichever is greater) for body corporates (i.e., social media platforms) or $626,000 (2,000 penalty units) for individuals.
Obviously, this places immense pressure on social media platforms to remove opinions that are not “government approved” and discourages individual users from contradicting the current Government narratives.

We must seek greater transparency and clarity so that our liberty is preserved.
We see echoes of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in this Bill, and we need to push for greater transparency and protect freedom of speech.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.

George Orwell

Is there a possibility Orwell was on to something? Ayan Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is another example of foreseeing a future with government control, out of control.

Sanity Prevails

In a statement released Sunday morning (24/11/2024) by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, the Labor government has dumped its misinformation bill to regulate speech on social media.
The bill was widely criticised by legal experts, media companies and the government’s political opponents.
The misinformation bill was flatly rejected by the Coalition, Greens and several senators on the crossbench, leaving it no pathway to be passed.

Leader of the Liberal Coalition, Mr Dutton said the government had failed an attempt to censor free speech online.
“The withdrawal of this dangerous legislation is a win for free speech and for democracy,” Mr Dutton said.
“No minister and no bureaucrat has a monopoly on truth. And yet, Labor’s legislation sought to make government and unelected bureaucrats the arbiters of truth.”