by Emmanuel Goldstein

Terms to Know
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Oligarchy – rule of the many by the few
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Hierarchy - the classification of a group of people according to ability or to economic, social, or professional standing

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength
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Since ancient times, the world has consisted of three kinds of people:
• the High
• the Middle
ROYALS
• the Low
BOURGEIOSIE
Dividing lines have changed, but pattern has been constant

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength
“The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable.”

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength
To be continued…

Chapter 3: War is Peace
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Division of world into three superpowers foreseen by end of WWII
All three are permanently at war
War is no longer a struggle for complete annihilation, like WWII
• Goals are limited
• Takes place only on frontiers
• Central areas of the three powers are never truly threatened

Chapter 3: War is Peace

War still includes atrocities, even more than ever, like…
• looting
• rape
• abuse of POWs
• enslavement of populations
• slaughter of children

War is fought for different reasons now.

The Nature of War
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War cannot be won
• Superpowers are too evenly matched
There is no real reason for war
• Each superpower has self-contained economy – no resources or markets needed from another power
• War fought only for control of disputed areas’ people and resources – especially slave labor

The Nature of War

Slave labor is not, however, necessary
• It doesn’t increase the powers’ wealth
• All wealth generated is used simply to keep fighting the wars
• If it didn’t exist, pace of warfare would just be slowed down

Nature of War
So what is the purpose of war?

Purpose of War

Use up production without raising the standard of living for most people
• Production generates wealth
• Wealth goes somewhere…
• Wealth generated by earlier wars raised standard of living for all
• But now, the general standard of living is much lower than pre-WWII

Nature of War
Why keep the standard of living low?

Nature of War

All-around increase in wealth threatens the HIGH group
• If everyone has a high standard of living, what difference does wealth make? What keeps the High on top?
• If people have leisure time, they have time to learn…
• And if they learn, they can think…

Nature of War
Sooner or later, an educated population with time on its hands will realize that they don’t need the High group… and revolt.
The High gets toppled.
The Middle becomes the High.
The Low remains low.

Nature of War
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

Nature of War

How to stop the advance of the standard of living?
• Halt industrial advances? War would be lost.
• Stop producing so much wealth? War would be lost.

Nature of War

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How to stop the advance of the standard of living?
• Advance industry, create products – but keep them out of the hands of the many
How?
Continuous Warfare

Continuous Warfare

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War = Destruction
$100 million spent = massive amounts of commercial goods
• general standard of living rises
OR
$100 million spent = 1 Floating
Fortress
• destroyed or discarded, and no one benefits at all

Continuous Warfare

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War effort eats up all wealth beyond most basic needs of the population
With only a few luxuries available, distinctions between High (Inner
Party), Middle (Outer Party) and Low
(Proles) are easily seen and felt by all

Continuous Warfare

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War forces privations in a
“psychologically acceptable way”
You could dig holes or erect monuments, but the masses at labor would not continually accept this
But if the masses must labor to defeat a hated, vicious, dangerous enemy…

Continuous Warfare

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It doesn’t really matter what the
Low (proles/masses) think or feel
The High need to prevent any ambition or indignation of the
Middle
What keeps the Middle feeling fear, hatred, reverence, and triumph?

Continuous Warfare

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To keep party members in a state of war frenzy, it doesn’t matter if a war is actually happening… as long as they believe it is happening
For the Outer Party members: propaganda, displays of prisoners,
Hate Week, etc.
For the Inner Party: doublethink – believe the lie even as you tell it

Continuous Warfare
Inner Party members believe more than anyone that the war is real, that it is winnable, and that Oceania can defeat its enemies and control the entire world…
…even though Inner Party members have to create and perpetuate the lies

Continuous Warfare

The Party believes that victory will be achieved one of two ways:
• Conquest of the most territory, to create overwhelming power compared to enemies
• Development of a weapon that cannot be matched

Continuous Warfare

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“Science” in Oceania explores only two things:
• Weapon development – world conquest
• Mind control – abolishing independent thought
There is no Newspeak word for
“Science”
• Scientific thought as we know it – question, test, observe, conclude – is incompatible with principles of Ingsoc

Continuous Warfare

Technology only advances when its purpose is to diminish human liberty
• Weapons of mass destruction = death
• Tools and practice of surveillance = imprisonment at home

Continuous Warfare
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The Party devotes massive amounts of resources to developing unmatchable weapons…
…but these weapons projects never even come close to completion
The war effort simply creates products of no social benefit

Continuous Warfare

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In all wars leading up to WWII…
• Massive segments of soldier populations could be killed
• Massive amounts of territory could be conquered
But in the Continuous War of the
Superpowers…
• There are not many fighting deaths
• Territory is only won and lost on the frontiers

Continuous Warfare

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The Superpowers never gain a significant advantage over each other
The Superpowers never seriously risk defeat
All three Superpowers manage the war in the same way
Life in all three Superstates is basically arranged in the same way

Society in the Superstates

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There is no contact with foreigners, except prisoners and slaves
If people knew foreign people, language, and culture, they would see that…
• Foreigners are much like themselves
• What they’ve been told about foreigners are lies
• The reasons for the war are not real

Society in the Superstates

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Eastasia and Eurasia have societies and governments much like
Oceania’s
Both have philosophies just like
Ingsoc
• Worship of leader
• Pyramidal structure
• Economy based on continuous warfare

“The three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so.

“On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up, like three sheaves of corn.

“And, as usual, the ruling groups of all three powers are simultaneously aware and unaware of what they are doing.

“Their lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory.”

The New Nature of War

In the past…
• War actually threatened ruling classes
• Danger of conquest forced ruling classes to accept physical reality
• 2+2 cannot =5 when weapons must be engineered and manufactured, and soldiers must be trained
• History had to be acknowledged to guard against military defeat

The New Nature of War

In 1984…
• War poses no true threat to ruling class
• Territory will not be conquered
• Wars will not be lost
• Superstates can exist as mini-universes unto themselves

So…
• History can be altered
• Physical reality can be redefined
• 2+2 CAN =5

The New Nature of War

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War is now a pretend version of what it once was
• Looks like “war” in many respects, but doesn’t behave like wars once behaved
Wars are now internal
• Not truly waged by nation against nation
• Waged by ruling classes against own people

The New Nature of War
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In the past…
• War’s purpose was conquest of territory and resources
In 1984…
• War’s purpose is to keep the structure of society intact
• Permanent war is just like permanent peace

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength


Since ancient times, the world has consisted of three kinds of people:
• the High
• the Middle
ROYALS
• the Low
BOURGEIOSIE
Dividing lines have changed, but pattern has been constant

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength



The High wants to remain High
The Middle wants to change places with the High
The Low wants equality for all humankind
• Usually, Low is too immersed in labor and daily drudgery to want anything political

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength
“The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable.”

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength
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Throughout history, pattern repeats:
High rules for years
Eventually, High fails to govern effectively and Middle overthrows it
Middle allies with the Low, then throws them aside
High becomes Middle, Low returns to
Low, and cycle continues

Historical Cycle of Power

Throughout history, the Middle used terms of enlightenment…
• Liberty
• Equality
• Brotherhood
• Justice

Break in the Cycle
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By the mid-20 th century, this was fading
The aim of establishing liberty and equality was increasingly abandoned
New Middle groups worked consciously against these things
Still paid lip-service to these old, respected ideals

Breaking the Cycle

High would be overthrown by Middle, but then history would freeze…
…cycle would stop
…High would remain High

Historical Cycle of Power

Throughout most of history, class distinctions were necessary for civilization
• Only the few could afford to learn, build, create
• The many had to labor in fields

A New Approach to Hierarchy

Industrial Revolution ended this condition
• All kinds of manual labor swiftly transferred to machine processes
• More time available to the many
• Literacy had grown since Renaissance and printing press (1500s)
• Social equality was actually achievable for first time in history

The Failures of the Old Hierarchies
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All Middle groups in the past had truly believed, while they were working to overthrow the High, in equality, liberty, brotherhood
When they became the ruling class, they carried these ideas forward
Seeds of their own overthrow contained in this belief

The Newer Hierarchies
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By the 1930s, this was no longer the case
Political thought in all cultures looked to authority, hierarchy, control
These ideas were realized in totalitarianism
• Fascist Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.
• Imperial Japan
• Soviet Union

The Newer Hierarchy
“In the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages, and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

The Newer Hierarchy

Equality and liberty were abandoned just at the historical moment when they became possible
Why?

The Industrial-Era Middle
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By the early 20 th C., middle class was rising
• Industrialists
• Business interests
• Labor leaders
• Bureaucrats
• Scientists
New Middle was less concerned with pure wealth and more concerned with pure power than ruling classes throughout history

The Industrial-Era Middle
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The rising middle class understood the cycle of history as none had before
They understood that once they became the High, eventually, they too would be overthrown

The New Hierarchy

The goal became to find ways to stop the cycle, plant themselves at the top, and stay there
How?

Collectivization
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One tool was Collectivization
All property was seized from individual (capitalist or hereditary) powers
All property was transferred to the people
The people were represented by the
Party
The Party controls all things

Collectivization

Collectivization was tolerated and even encouraged in the years after
WWII
• Socialist ideals had been building for decades
• Language of “equality” and “liberty” were constantly invoked
• In reality, economic inequality was made permanent

Neutralizing Threats to the High

Ruling classes are overthrown in one of four ways:
• Weakness leads to defeat by an enemy power
• Terrible governance leads to revolt by its own masses
• A strong and discontented Middle group comes into being
• It loses willingness to govern – belief in itself

Neutralizing Threats from Without

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By the mid-20 th C., conquest was no longer a threat, as we have seen
• Superpowers cannot defeat each other
• Superpowers’ wars are not aimed at defeating each other
Threats have already been neutralized by the new structure of the global superpowers and by continuous warfare

Neutralizing Threats from Within

Revolt from within was not possible on its own, either
• Masses don’t revolt on their own, and with no standard of comparison (they never see outside their own borders), they don’t even realize they’re oppressed
• Production of goods, rising standard of living stopped by continuous warfare

Neutralizing Threats from The High or Middle
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Only two remaining potential threats:
• Rise of a motivated, discontented, under-employed Middle group
• Growth of skepticism within their own group
The special problem of the Party and other High groups: How to prevent these two threats from materializing?

Neutralizing Threats from Within
“All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived.”

Propaganda
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New ruling classes understood that mass literacy enabled propaganda – manipulation of public opinion
Radio and film carried this further, TV further still
Two-way transmission perfected the ability to manipulate the public

Mind Control
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Party Members are under constant surveillance – Telescreens, Thought
Police
• Conditions thought
• Conditions facial expressions
• Freedom of choice denied in every possible way

Mind Control
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Party Members may have no private emotions, no break from enthusiasm
• All emotions must be directed towards
Party
• Big Brother exists because it is easier to love and revere a person than an organization

Mind Control
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All discontent is turned outward
• Hate Week
• Two Minutes Hate
• Development of instinct to stop one’s own private thoughts, developed from childhood onward

Mind Control
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Party Members’ thoughts must always be perfectly orthodox
The human mind is not naturally capable of this
So Ingsoc develops techniques to develop the ability

Mind Control
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Crimestop: stopping short, by instinct, any dangerous thought before it is even begun
• Not understanding comparisons
• Not recognizing errors of logic
• Misunderstanding any arguments opposed to Ingsoc
• Being bored or repelled by any train of thought that might lead to unorthodoxy

Mind Control
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Simply stopping unorthodox thought is not enough
All Party Members must truly believe that Big Brother is omnipotent and the Party is infallible
But these things are not true
So Ingsoc includes techniques to deal with this, too

Mind Control

Blackwhite: Two meanings…
• Applied to an opponent: the habit of claiming that black is white, in contradiction of plain truth
• Applied to a Party Member: the loyal willingness to say that black is white, even though it’s not, when it’s what the Party requires
• Also, the ability to believe and know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed anything else

Mind Control
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Doublethink: the system of constantly altering the past that makes blackwhite possible
• Central technique of Ingsoc
• Necessary to achieve the altering of history

Mutability of the Past
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The past must be altered for two reasons
• Party Members must have no standard of comparison for how they live
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Comparison to the past’s superior standard of living can lead to discontent
Discontent can lead to rebellion
• The infallibility of the Party must be protected

Infallibility of the Party
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If the Party has ever been wrong, then its future words and actions may be doubted
If Big Brother has ever made even a small error, then he could make one again
If a future error is possible, anything he does could be that error – skepticism is unavoidable

Infallibility of the Party
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If the Middle doubts the wisdom of the High, it may be motivated to revolt
If the High doubts its own wisdom, it may lose the will to rule
The Party can never have been wrong – it is infallible, and Big
Brother is omnipotent
To make this lie true, the Party must control the past

Mutability of the Past
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If Oceania is at war with
Eastasia, it must ALWAYS have been at war with Eastasia
All documentation must be altered to confirm this
All minds must be subjected to doublethink to believe it

Mutability of the Past
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This is the central tenet of Ingsoc
There is no objective reality
Reality is whatever documentary evidence and our own minds say it is
If Big Brother points to the blue sky and says it’s red, and every shred of evidence in existence confirms that it is red, and every mind believes that it has always been red, then it is red

Mutability of the Past
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To control the past, the Party must control evidence and memory
The Party fully controls all evidence
• Ministry of Truth
The Party fully controls all minds
• Ministry of Love

Mutability of the Past
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In order to alter the past, one must be able to actually remember things as they’re being altered
In order to remember what wasn’t, it’s necessary to forget what was
Doublethink is the technique of rearranging records or one’s own memory, then instantly forgetting that one has done so

Doublethink
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The power to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time, and believe them both
To alter the past requires a conscious act of the mind and will
To truly believe that an altered past is true requires an unconscious process of the mind and will

Doublethink
“Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.
For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

Doublethink
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I alter the truth, then forget that I altered it, then forget that I forgot, then forget that I forgot…
The truth keeps moving and the lie fades away
Yesterday’s
News
(I never changed it…)
Yesterday’s
News , Altered
(I never forgot that
I changed it…)

Doublethink
“Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able – and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years – to arrest the course of history.”

Doublethink
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The best practitioners of doublethink are those who invented it and use it at the highest levels
“The greater the understanding, the greater the delusion”
World conquest is believed in most fervently by those who know it to be impossible

Doublethink
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The Party vilifies very objective of
Socialism, yet calls itself Socialism
It preaches a disdain for the working class unseen for centuries, but dresses itself in the guise of workers (as they might have dressed in the earliest days of the
Revolution)
It undermines the family while worshipping a leader whose name is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty

Doublethink
“For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be for ever averted – if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently – then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.”

Ignorance is Strength
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Party members lie and believe the lie
Deliberate failure to know the “real” truth…
…and at the same time,
No consciousness that there is a
“real” truth
Willful ignorance eliminates all threats from within to the Party

Motives?
“But there is one question which until this moment we have almost ignored.
It is: why should human equality be averted? Supposing that the mechanics of the process have been rightly described, what is the motive for this huge, accurately planned effort to freeze history at a particular moment of time?”

Winston realizes that Julia has fallen asleep. He has not learned much that he didn’t know, although he no longer feels insane as a minority of one. He would continue to discover the motives behind abolishing equality another time, perhaps…