1984 BLOG

I have been re-reading 1984. It's my third time through this book as well as Brave New World. While 1984 is supposed to be a critical fictional discourse on why communism sucks, I've always thought it had plenty to say about the ills of government in general as well.

Consider how everyone likes to talk about privacy issues in terms of Big Brother even in the USA, but when it comes to doublespeak, newspeak and accusations of thoughtcrime, which I find plentiful, no one seems to leap on those. Orwell actually produced a book that was broader in scope, I think, than even he intended. We refer to the machinations of government quite often as Orwellian. Not communist, Orwellian.

The world he created is extremely fascistic. Whether a government/economic system is communist or capitalist, it can still oppress its people. What is wagging the dog, the cold war, the war on terrorism if not a modern replica of the three-way system of continuous warfare seen in 1984?

For my money, there is every bit as much warning in those pages against the military industrial complex as there is against commies.