Page 171 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

A World of Orwellian Doublethink 161

At that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing
and the sooner I chucked my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically-and
secretly, of course-I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors,
the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can per-
haps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close
quarters.7

As Hitchens explains, Orwell's support for "decolonization without condi-
tion~"~ also encompassed other rising powers other than the British, as he under-
stood the "imperial successor role that the U.S. was ambitious to play."9 In this
sense, it should be understood that the transition after World War 11 from colo-
nial to neocolonial political power and dominance was a trend that did not es-
cape Orwell's attention. As colonial acquisitions became more and more un-
popular near the end of the war, it became clear that rising powers needed to
find more indirect means of exerting their authority over newly emerging,
weaker nation-states throughout the Third World.

Misrepresentations of Omell

Seldom have novels been as misunderstood and misapplied on such a wide level
as Orwell's works, Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell's political writings have
come to mean many things to many different people, and political thinkers of all
stripes have attempted to co-opt his work in order to reinforce their political
ideologies. As Andrew Anthony explains in the Observer of London, Orwell has
"been adopted by just about every political colour in the spectrum, from revolu-
tionary red to Little-England blue, from hard-core Trotskytes to gun ho neo-
conservatives, from utopian anarchists to old-fashioned High Tories.""-The use
of 1984 in the quest to demonize Soviet bloc communism in favor of corporate
capitalist expansion is a practice that Orwell surely would have appalled. As
mentioned above, Orwell was an opponent of both state communism and capi-
talism-although he did consider himself a socialist. In the preface to the 1947
Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, Orwell denounced those who viewed the
Soviet Union as a force for economic justice and revolution: "Nothing has con-
tributed so much to the cormption of the original idea of socialism as the belief
that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused,
if not imitated."' '
In reviewing 1984, it is necessary to establish that the work, highlighting a
nightmare world of repression, empire, double standards, and power politics,
encompassed the entire globe, rather than just the Soviet bloc. Out of the three
totalitarian super-states in 1984, Oceania should be of particular interest to the
West in that it included the United States, Latin America, and the British Em-
pire. The concept of "permanent war" is employed throughout 1984, as each one
of the three main superpowers, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, is continually
changing alliances in an attempt to gain strategic dominance over the other two.
In 1984, the government of Oceania attempts to draw attention away from brutal
and totalitarian repression at home by demonizing foreign enemies. This vilifi-