1984 and 2015, what is the difference?

I think that history is a 'cycle', where its main events have been repeating during ages, and one of this cycle's characteristic is how the political power and the ideology of a person in particular is connected, and how they have establish their thoughts with arrogance, violence and injustice. We can relate this to important people, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini, so on, where they tried to implement their ideology . Their acts have mark the universal history and other acts in the future will continue to do it, since, as I said before, history is a cycle. 

1984 is about a totalitarian party that control every single citizen of Oceania. This government forbids every emotional manifestation, thus, sex is considered as a crime. In fact, there is and organization called 'Anti-sex league'. People have to worship the system to save their lives. The Thought Police is in charge of conspirators' punishments and deaths, where sometimes have to accuse innocent people in order achieve their goals. Winston, who is a member of the Outer party, knows that something bad occurs, so he goes against the government, even though he knows Big Brother is always watching him. The outer party watch everything, every daily activity. Furthermore, in every street and house there are surveillance devices, which are called television, to know every citizens' movement.

George Orwell wanted to express in her work 1984 a near future, a future without freedom and manipulated for the great big brother who represent an authority, and how the past is changed to manipulate the future. He could express what he thought about totalitarianism. Nowadays, we have the case of North Korea were Kim Jung Il is a kind of Big Brother since he is the chief, the guardian of the society, this kind of god and the supreme judge. North Korean society is isolated from the world, is controlled by the government and educated to hate their enemies, in particular USA. North Korea ideology of isolation is based on what people can do with knowledge and with thinking, they are conscious that when people think about their rights and their individual freedom, the revolution can start, so that is why they are isolating their people (Cornell, 2002; 3), for instance in the book 1984 says:


"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." (p. 74)

They want to have complete control of the power. There are similar concepts between 'Big brother' government and Kim's government since some topics mentioned in 1984 are actually part of North Korea regimen, such as brainwashing, political advertisement, physical and mental abuse, control over citizens, and of course there are more, just that the government has such power that hide information, just


According to Merriam-Western dictionary, totalitarianism is a centralized control by an autocratic authority and the political concept that citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority. That is the concept that Orwell want to reflect in his work, where the state suppress human rights and brings the chaos with miserable livings, where you are aware and conscious that in any second you can be murdered if you are not faithful to their thinking and national identity, and the freedom was  And he can see it in 1984:

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." (p. 84)

But the party will demonstrate him that two plus two can also be five. The only freedom in 1984's society was controlled by Big brother, who also controlled the truth, 

George Orwell has this thinking about politicians and power since he was young. In his explanation of his different works he express that since young he have noticed that there is no such newspaper that really tells the truth, when he was in Spain he confirmed this because news stations told a story that did not have relation with what really happened, it was totally fake. He claimed he could see how in reality the situation was completely controlled by those in charge, based on what they wanted to show. 

There are lots of works related to 1984, where there is a critic to a political entity, such as The hunger games, Divergent, Maze runner, 'V for Vendetta', so on. All these works, along with 1984, try to express the notion of corruption, injustice and power from the government in charge. Now, I am going to focus on V for Vendetta. This comic shows the same idea of 1984, where there is this supreme governor, in this case called Adam Sutler, making allusion to a dictator who want to bring peace and control over a nation that is isolated from the world since it is in war. The plot of the story is based on the truth that 'V' has about Sutler and the truth that Sutler have constructed over his government and how he has manipulated the truth. 

When reading I could not help but think on how accurate is the description of Oceania and the London described in V for Vendetta with today's society, I mean, what is the difference between those government and today manipulation of the entire world? We can see how the world is divided by different ideologies and how this ideologies control communication. What we watch on television is the result of political manipulation and we follow those ideas, we are following a world that other people have created for us, with the condition that we must follow them and be under their reigns. In the recent case of terrorism in Paris, the whole world turned their eyes to France and support it. But, what about Syria and other countries that are in the same or worst situation, the media does not inform about political crimes and human rights violation in poor countries that do not have any importance for those who want to run the world. Moreover, there is a recent case where important information has been censored. The Turkish's first minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, blocked Twitter in order to avoid the spreading of information related to fraud and corruption that affected his government. Every single time a politician or somebody that has power wants to block any kind of information source, he is being part of totalitarianism. But this has become part of our so called 'democracy'. And what about social media, where the government controls every piece of information that we give through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, so on. 

Heidi Boghosian, in her book 'Spying on Democracy', explains how the government watch every single movement that citizens do. "From the minute you wake up, your everyday activities are routinely subject to surveillance. Retailers capture consumer data and sell it to data aggregators, telecommunications companies hand over records of consumer calls to government agencies, and personal data shared on social media platforms is readily available to business that may share it with the authorities" (Boghosian, 2013; 21-22).

Also, she made a relation between today democracy and this Orwellian vision of society. "This convergence of government and business intelligence operations has created all the elements of and Orwellian mass surveillance network: a trusting and fearful public, a shift to preemptive policing justified by opportunistic citing of a nebulous enemy threat, domestic use of military equipment, and communications devices that provide direct portals into private transactions. Each component element is formidable. Together, they are a nightmare for democracy" (Boghosian, 2013; 21-22).

Orwell could see the future and gave us and an idea of what is really happening today, how communication and information is manipulated through tv shows, advertisement and political materials, where the government hide relevant information and express their ideology. Perhaps we do not live in a totalitarian system as it was in the 20th century, but now we are living in a totalitarianism of information.

References

Anonymous. (2011). Censorship and 1984. Essay .

Boghosian, H. (2013). Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Erik, C. (2002). North Korea Under Communism: Report of an Envoy to Paradise. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Rodden, J. (2007). The Cambridge companion to George Orwell. New York: Combridge University Press.

 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/totalitarianism

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35072321