• “Big Brother is watching you” - who said this phrase? Big Brother is watching you or One nation under CCTV Big Brother is watching you

    27.10.2019

    The expression about Big Brother is well known both to fans of social dystopias and not to reading fans in general. Another thing is that they also understand the meaning of these words in different ways.

    Where did the phrase "Big Brother is watching you" came from?

    The phrase "Big Brother is watching you" became famous after the release of the novel by the famous British writer J. Orwell "1984", which continued the theme of "betrayed" revolution, begun in his own work "Animal Farm", which was an allegory for the October Revolution of 1917 and subsequent development of events in Russia.

    An interesting fact. The phrase “Big brother is watching you” was first translated by V. Golyshev in the Russian edition of the book as “The elder brother is watching you”, but such a translation did not take root in oral speech, transforming into a more intense “Big brother is watching you”. The same version was used when duplicating film adaptations of the work (films).

    As it sounds in the book by George Orwell

    The Big Brother in Orwell's book is the leader of the British Revolution of the 50s, the founder of the Angsoz party and the ruler of the totalitarian state of Oceania. The image is frighteningly infernal, because none of the ordinary citizens of Oceania even knows (and many do not even think) how real this person is, whether Big Brother really exists or is it just a phantom, a product of propaganda, the personification of the party. Only one thing is known - how it looks; his portraits, painted in such a way that a person, wherever he stands, constantly feels the gaze of Big Brother, hang on every square in London. The feeling of constant close attention is further intensified by the inscription under the image - “Big Brother is watching you” and by the fact that these words are supported by an extensive network of observers and informers for the timely identification and elimination of dissidents.

    It is believed that Orwell chose Stalin as one of the prototypes for the image of Big Brother, a man and ruler whom the writer hated with all his heart, considering him a "traitor to the revolution." It was his features, a black-haired and black-mustached middle-aged man, that were used by the author of 1984 to create a portrait of the ruler of Oceania. However, in his interview with Life magazine, J. Orwell mentioned that when creating the book "he meant totalitarianism as such, having specially modeled it in English society in order to show that no society is immune from such a fate," all the more in view of the generally recognized the fact that the only state that does not look after its citizens is the one that is physically unable to provide appropriate measures.

    An interesting fact. In 1998, the American annual Big Brother Award was established for the most flagrant violation of citizens' freedom by a state or company, and in 1999, as if in mockery, the first reality show Big Brother was launched on Dutch television, in which several people , selected according to the degree of maximum quarrelsomeness with each other, live in a confined space, literally stuffed with CCTV cameras, following the orders of Big Brother, who is watching them around the clock, whose word is law. Adaptations of this show took place in several countries, including Russia.

    In modern society, the term "Big Brother" is used to refer to totalitarianism, anti-democracy and surveillance.

    An interesting fact. J. Orwell owns the authorship of a number of stable expressions and terms, for example, "cold war", "doublethink", "orthodoxy."

    Big Brother is a character in the famous novel by George Orwell "1984", the eternal leader of Oceania and the Ingsoc party. After his coming to power, the history of Oceania was completely rewritten, Big Brother became its main character, the sole leader of the party since pre-revolutionary times. Other significant participants in the events of that time were erased from memory. In the book, Big Brother is portrayed as a black-mustached man, about 45 years old, with a rude but masculine attractive face. The Big Brother's face is depicted in numerous posters posted throughout Oceania. “At each site, the same face looked from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that wherever you went, your eyes would not let go. The older brother is looking at you - the signature read. " Whether the Elder Brother really exists or is he just an image created by propaganda is unknown. The main character, Winston Smith, asks the zealous party member O'Brien: "Does he exist in the sense in which I exist?", And hears in response: "The elder brother exists and is immortal - as the personification of the party."

    In the book "The 101 Most Influential Non-Existing Personality", Big Brother, who has become a symbol of totalitarianism and government control over a person, took second place.

    In 1998, the annual Big Brother Award was established for the most flagrant violation of citizens' freedom by a state or company.

    Now "Big Brother" is a common name for a state or organization striving to establish total surveillance or control over the people. After writing the book, the theory "Big Brother is watching you" appeared, according to which the intelligence services of all developed countries organized a mechanism for total surveillance of citizens, organizations and other states, including surveillance of Internet users. However, every year we receive more and more new evidence that this is actually happening around us.

    Surveillance is carried out on the Internet, using control over cellular communications and any communications, through payments using electronic systems, video surveillance equipped with face recognition systems, through documenting movement in transport and across borders. Search services are a particularly convenient means for collecting information about Internet users: by asking search queries, the user unwittingly informs the search engine, and through it, the special services and other interested organizations, a lot of information about their interests and preferences, as well as their social circle. Other convenient means of collecting information are e-mail and instant messengers, as well as browsers and the operating system installed on the user's computer.

    Only sophisticated security methods can resist such surveillance, which include the use of cryptography, open source software, and anonymization tools.

    Did you know that all your movements are tracked with an accuracy of a meter, and with the simultaneous connection of GPS + GLONAS S accurate to 10-15 centimeters ? That everything you say - not only on the phone, but also next to the phone - is recorded? That at home, at work, in the subway, on the street - literally everywhere - video cameras are watching you?

    You are under continuous, round-the-clock surveillance, but you are used to it and do not notice it, or you don’t know about it!

    We all buy ourselves electronics or receive a gift, with the help of which we are being watched. More precisely, we are forced to purchase it "voluntarily" - through forced brainwashing with zombie advertising. Each of us is more or less a consumer! And all the space around us is saturated with various tracking devices! Moreover, there are several levels of surveillance from the banal recording of your conversations on the phone, and absolutely everything is written, to the more sophisticated methods used by special services against competitors and secret carriers in other countries. The necessary functions can be built in at the program level or sewn into the hardware, and even the Chinese stamping microcircuits themselves do not know all the possibilities because they receive ready-made photomasks for which they perform the necessary operations. It is possible to transfer data through a regular wire that supplies electricity to your gadgets and computers. Moreover, this feature has long been worked out in Japan, an Internet cable is not needed for data transmission. There are claims that even the monitors themselves are capable of transmitting images and sound, and the LCD screen of a phone or TV can take pictures. A thin film transistor (LCD TFT) LCD is nothing more than a film with a set of transistors to switch each of the thousands of pixels in liquid crystals. The scanning frequency of the screen is about 60 Hz, i.e. the image is redrawn 60 times per second. And in the intervals between image generation, the same transistors are used as phototransistors.
    In other words, an LCD matrix is \u200b\u200balso a photomatrix, like in photo and video cameras, only much larger. And it works great, taking pictures of you and everything that is in front of the screen. And the received photos and videos are encrypted and sent. And the LCD screen itself also successfully performs the role of a highly sensitive microphone - screen vibrations caused by sounds around the monitor are recorded as sound.
    Just one monitor is enough - no computer is required. After all, the monitor also contains microcircuits with undocumented functions that can successfully encrypt sound, photo, video, and send them ...

    Although I think that all this is too complicated for mass use. Rather, it is used for targeted surveillance. For example, we will give a new telephone (monitor) to the son (daughter) of the Chief of the General Staff ...
    And for total control you yourself will post all your personal data with photos of interests, actions on the world wide web. You yourself are constantly on the Internet, but I think everyone already knows about the banal orders of beacon programs for tracking unfaithful spouses? Or how the firm's management monitors the movements of their managers and their locations? Those who work in the field of sales do not need to be convinced, they know about it firsthand, but have tested the effectiveness of surveillance on their own skin.

    By the way, if your phone is turned off, it means nothing!

    It's only really not available if you take out the battery and put it separately. Or put your phone in the microwave.

    Everything is constantly being recorded automatically! And the main difficulty is not in total tracking everyone, but in filtering colossal amounts of information. By the way, I recommend Oliver Stone's film "Snowden". There the pro tells you how we are all under the hood!
    And taking into account the new processing programs and the ability to track the visual series, our faces flickering in cameras on the streets and combining these cameras into a single network ... Remember that there are ATMs, payment terminals, advertising screens and other electronics equipped with cameras ... But how you think? Why all these 3G, 4G? It becomes much more convenient to spy on you. Recording of all your conversations, videos, files will be transferred instantly and with high quality.
    Of course, SMS, MMS, Internet traffic, email are saved and analyzed. Nothing prevents you from sending your phone book, and data transmitted via Wi-Fi, IrDA, BlueTooth, and in general all the information that only gets into the phone, computer or Internet. But judging by the fact that Snowden managed to escape, the programs for processing information and using filters are currently imperfect and this is the only thing that can please! Remember even when the monitor and the computer are "turned off", but not physically disconnected from the network, thanks to the ATX standard, the turned off computer is always connected to the power supply, so it can receive, process and transmit information. As a rule, an LED on the motherboard of a "turned off" computer is on - it indicates that the board is connected and working.
    Of course, all your files from the hard drive are sent to where they should be, although I hope that not everyone has them yet! And in vain you naively believe that PGP will save you.
    Everything that you do on the Internet is recorded, all traffic from all providers and all hosting sites. Therefore, anonymity on the Internet is nothing more than a myth. Although it is sometimes pleasantly soothing ... Isn't it?

    All encryption tools like SSL are also "foolproof." With the latest supercomputers, your email can be read without problem, whether it is encrypted or not. Classics of the genre: Want to start an email? And give us your phone number and if we suddenly need to find you, wherever you are. And we can give you the opportunity to go to mail or vice versa through social networks ... And so it is constantly and everywhere on the Internet. Or suddenly you forgot some password you want to restore, but give us your phone number ...

    And now a little more about the Internet.
    The Internet penetration rate worldwide is 28.7%, in fact, it is higher. Consequently, every third - fourth inhabitant of the Earth has access to the World Wide Web.
    Ways to track a user on the Internet:

    What happens when you visit the site?

    Tracking, information collection, espionage from the side of the browser - then the provider and the Internet provider.
    1. Browser side spying
    In the description, the following browsers are as the most popular:

    - Google Chrome
    - Internet Explorer
    - Opera
    - Firefox

    Google chrome
    Google companies. This browser is called the king of espionage.
    The transmitted information is divided into two types:

    Information related to this installed product - its version, date of last update, frequently used browser functions, etc.

    Personal information - resources you visit, search queries, programs installed on your computer, DirectX version, etc. The company itself does not deny this, it assures that no analytical processing is done with this information, but only uses it to develop new functions for its browser ... It's funny, although rather sad ...
    It's no secret that this data has long been of particular interest. insurance companies, recruiting agencies and other potential advertisers and, most importantly, intelligence agencies. After all, anti-terrorism laws in the US already now oblige companies whose activities are related to the provision of Internet services to provide data that aroused the interest of the government or special services. Google directly. has successfully resisted attempts to declassify its database through the courts. However, how long it will last is unknown. Moreover, the very fact of concentrating such large amounts of information in the hands of one company makes one fear the consequences.
    Result: Data is sent to US A.
    When using the browser version 14.0.797.0, the firewall shows the sent information to the western domains. The conclusions are up to you.

    Internet Explorer
    Who does not know Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer is known to everyone, the brainchild of no less famous than the browser, Microsoft. Browser 8 calls its own during its installation. When asked why Internet Explorer collects data about users, Microsoft representatives responded that this is due to the need to obtain information about the user's functions in demand. But why they need information about the hard disk, processor and RAM is not yet clear.

    In addition, Internet Explorer 8 collects user information using the SmartScreen tool. This filter is designed to protect against phishing, but after activating it, data about which sites you visit and how much time you spend on them begins to be transmitted to Microsoft. The corporation does not exclude that information entered by the user when filling out web forms, including passwords, can also be transmitted in this way. And although Microsoft swears that this data is transmitted exclusively in encrypted form and does not pose any threat of leakage of confidential information, experts still recommend disabling the SmartScreen filter and using special programs to protect against phishing.
    Result: Data is sent to US A
    Another spy browser full of useful features for the user. Now we see how you have to pay for it.

    Opera
    A popular browser among Runet users from the Norwegian company Opera software. Starts spying when using Turbo technology. Its essence lies in the following: all traffic between the site and the user is again passed through the Opera software. At the same time, no data encryption occurs, which also raises great doubts about the degree of confidentiality of this kind of surfing. By default, this feature is turned off, and you can turn it off at any time if you want, which cannot be said about Internet Explorer.
    Outcome: information goes to Norway
    But the fact that she doesn't stay in her homeland darkens the picture.

    Firefox
    It is in the last place in this review, because, in comparison with the already mentioned programs, it shows the least spyware curiosity. In general, this browser, during installation, did not send data to its homeland, and the only time when it could be suspected of this was when the program was first launched. And he is not without sin.

    Test: when you first start the program, sending data to USA .
    When working in a network with Firefox, after sending data was not noticed, to some unsolicited server.
    Summing up in all of the above, we can observe different policies for the use of confidential user data, each has its own, but one thing is clear that there is no need for normal operation of the browser to request the used sites each time you switch to a new address.

    2.Information collection on the side of the ISP

    This control is of the highest quality and complete, all Internet traffic passes through the providers, more than one kilobyte does not pass unnoticed. Based on the decrees of government agencies, providers monitor outgoing traffic, maintain a database of used resources.

    For example, in Belarus there is one main Internet provider, to which the rest, smaller ones are connected, that is the law!
    Here is an excerpt from Directive No. 60 of the head of state:

    6. Internet service providers are required to identify subscriber devices * when providing Internet services, record and store information about subscriber devices, as well as information about the Internet services provided.

    * For the purposes of this Decree, a subscriber device means a technical device of a user of Internet services designed to connect to a telecommunication line in order to provide access to Internet services.

    And here's another:
    The storage of the information specified in parts one and two of this clause is carried out within one year from the date of provision of Internet services.

    Do you want to know the principles and methods of regulation? You can open the curtain, not such a mystery.

    Each Internet user has an Internet passport or ID-card. It contains a database of resources visited by a specific user. The binding is carried out to a specific phone, and the phone is the connection point. If it is not possible to bind to a person, for example, in places of collective use of the Internet, then his passport data is taken from the user. In institutions where the Internet is free, internal records of Internet visits are kept, he himself personally participated in the implementation of automated systems based on keeping a journal "accounting for Internet use in the workplace." In general, everything has been done so that in the event of an offense on the network, it would be possible to find a defendant for this offense.

    In other countries, everything is built according to the same scheme, the only difference is in technology.

    “No state will leave without its control any of the spheres of human life. There are now different ways observing the processes that take place on the Internet and the people who are active there. And new control methods will appear in the future. "
    3. Collecting information on the server side

    Recording information about a user, collecting all kinds of statistics about him, ip, along with him your location, monitor resolution, browser and its version, and much more. You can find out up to the date of installation of the operating system.

    Facebook

    Everyone remembers the interview during which Julian Assange said: “Facebook is the most complete database of people, their names, addresses, locations, family ties, relationships and communication with each other. All this data is accumulated in the United States and is available to American intelligence. " He added that Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and other US-based Internet giants have dedicated online interfaces designed for use by US intelligence. “It's not about enforcing court orders - they have interfaces designed for intelligence. What if Facebook was created by American intelligence? Hardly ... It's just that intelligence has the ability to exert political and legal pressure on the company. It is too expensive for them to issue personal information for each individual request, so they automated the process, ”Assange said openly.
    Facebook itself denies this information. The conclusions are yours.

    Forbes writes that today, justice uses all modern methods in the fight against criminals. Therefore, representatives of justice have to increasingly turn to social networks and IT companies, which store a huge amount of personal data, as a source of evidence of the investigation. Telecommunications company Sprint has confirmed that it has a special interface for official requests for information, as it receives millions of such events every year and is forced to put their satisfaction on the conveyor.

    In contact with

    About VKontakte, the latest innovation "You can become a VKontakte user at the invitation of one of the participants." Who is a frequent user, he probably knows about this, having a confirmed mobile phone number, it is easy to determine the identity of a person and his location. Having the user's phone number Vkotakte "by default" will not be difficult to organize additional paid services with payment by SMS, which can cover almost all user actions. The well-known Mail.Ru Group followed the same path.

    The secret services do not need your passport data and place of study, they need your personal characteristics, hobbies, hobbies, favorite movies and music, and search queries on the site? Ltd! Vkontakte knows more about you. than your own mother, I think many will agree! Quite recently, after terrorist attacks in one country, with the help of VKontakte, persons who had acquaintances with the perpetrators of the incident were identified, who, in turn, wrote their characteristics, in general, everything that they know about them. Like this!

    And finally, an anecdote on the topic:

    Putin online:
    - A good question just came over the Internet:
    "Didn't you, Vova, answer anonymous questions on the Internet?"
    I answer the owner of the IP (such and such) who asked this question, the host (such and such), the provider (such and such) Ivanov Sergey Vasilyevich, who lives on Ivanovskaya, house 13/2, apt. 24 - you know, NOT LOST!

    Written on the basis of publicly available materials. The information concerns each of the US. _))).

    P.S. What is your opinion about total surveillance?

    George Orwell and his immortal works "Animal Farm" ("Animal Farm") and "1984" are real monuments that can serve as an indispensable tool for learning the basics of a totalitarian regime and contain a description of all its key methods and practices. Each of them is the traits of the contemporary world, suffered through his own experience and bitterly perceived by the author. Today we will talk a little about what made Orwell create his dystopias, study the main features of totalitarian regimes using the example of the novel "1984" and try to apply the knowledge gained in practice, drawing analogies with the realities of today.

    Great hopes and disappointments for George Orwell

    George Orwell (or Eric Arthur Blair is his real name) is a British citizen who was born in India. It was England that became the country that inspired Marx to study the labor of factory workers and became the laboratory for the famous Capital. Orwell was an ideological follower of his teachings, who considered it his duty to ensure the possibility of fair remuneration and guarantees of recreation for the working people and to make a feasible contribution to the establishment of world domination of the proletariat. To this end, Orwell participated in the liberation war in Spain. It is unlikely that he regretted his everyday life at the front, but these days became the hardest experience in his life, which forced him to reconsider his idealistic views on socialism and communism. The brightest events of this segment of Orwell's biography, he captured in the novel "In Memory of Catalonia" (1937), as well as his essay "Memories of War" (1942, hereinafter - essays).

    War is devoid of any kind of romance, war is hard, thankless work, it is dirt in every sense of the word.

    “Lice are lice, and bombs are bombs, even though you are fighting for the fairest cause in the world” (1).

    The first thing that the author recalls in his essay is "everywhere you are haunted by disgusting odors of human origin." Orwell describes the barracks outhouse in detail and confesses that he "contributed to the destruction of my illusions about the Spanish Civil War." Toilets, sweat, blood, decay, injuries, corpses ... What could be worse than these military attributes? Moral impurities cause even greater disgust and physical rejection. Propaganda, injustice, global lies - this face of war is becoming the most unbearable for Orwell. He bitterly realizes that the most just cause can use the most unjust methods, and is not at all ready to put up with this - he tirelessly writes about this:

    “As for the broad masses, their opinions, which are changing unusually quickly today, their feelings can be regulated like a stream of water from a tap, all this is the result of the hypnotic influence of radio and television. Among intellectuals, such metamorphoses, I think, are more likely caused by concerns about personal well-being and simply about physical safety. At any moment, they may turn out to be “for” the war and “against” the war, neither in either case clearly not realizing what it is ”(2).

    “I saw little atrocities in the war in Spain<…>... What struck me, and continues to amaze me, is the habit of judging atrocities by believing in them or questioning them according to the political preferences of the judges. All are ready to believe in the atrocities perpetrated by the enemy, and no one in those perpetrated by the army, which they sympathize with; the facts are simply not taken into account ”(3).

    “I remember that I once said to Arthur Koestler:“ History stopped in 1936, ”and he nodded, immediately realizing what it was about. We both meant totalitarianism - in general, and especially in those particulars that are characteristic of the Spanish Civil War. Even from a young age, I was convinced that there is no event that a newspaper would tell truthfully, but it was only in Spain that I saw for the first time how newspapers manage to cover what is happening in such a way that their descriptions do not have the slightest concern for the facts - it would be even better if they openly lied. I read about major battles, although in reality not a shot was fired, and I did not find a line about the battles when hundreds of people died. I read about the cowardice of the regiments, which in reality showed desperate bravery, and about the heroism of the victorious divisions that were miles from the front line, and in London newspapers picked up all these fictions, and keen intellectuals concocted profound theories based on events that never happened ... In general, I saw how history is written, proceeding not from what happened, but from what should have happened according to various party “doctrines” ”(4).

    All these events left an indelible imprint on Orwell's memory. From now on, he became an enemy not only of capitalism oppressing the proletariat, but most importantly of the hypocritical and perverted forms of pseudo-socialist states - fascism and Russian socialism, which are based on true terror and oppression of the personality of their citizens.

    It was these motives that served as the starting point for the creation of his immortal works "Animal Farm" and "1984". If the first novel in paints describes the revolutionary process of regime change and the establishment and gradual perversion of the dictatorship of the welfare state, then the second novel describes the life of a totalitarian state in its prime.

    A significant amount of evidence suggests that the Soviet Union is the prototype of Oceania, and that Big Brother (or "Big Brother" - in V. Golyshev's translation) is Joseph Stalin. Both contemporary to the author and to us, the illustrations depict a tireless observer, without fail "with a mustache" and with an obvious resemblance to Joseph Vissarionovich.

    It was the ideological enemy that the English writer was portrayed by Soviet intelligence as well.

    However, let us leave this peremptory charge of Orwell's exposure of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet past. Undoubtedly, Orwell hated with all his heart the regime that had been established in the Soviet Union and drew a huge number of horrific examples from Soviet reality. But he hated fascism, Spanish communism, and degenerating English socialism no less. In one of his letters, Orwell explains his motivation for creating 1984:

    “My new novel is not an attack on socialism or the British Labor Party, which I support ... I am sure that totalitarian ideas have roots in the minds of intellectuals and have tried to carry these ideas to their logical end. The events of the book take place in Britain precisely to show that the English-speaking countries are no better than any others, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, will triumph everywhere ”(5).

    The goal of his work was not so much to denounce the existing and contemporary regimes for the author, but to send a warning to posterity in the distant future about what the best and most liberal intentions in building a state of general welfare and justice may “degenerate into”. He did not count on the understanding of his contemporaries, feeling himself a stranger in his time. He admitted this in his "Little Poem" ":" ... I wasn’t born for an age like this "(A little poem, 1935).

    It seems that Orwell was right, because in the 21st century his work has become especially popular. Indeed, today many of the terms introduced by the writer have become not only capacious designations of the key attributes of a totalitarian state, but also firmly entered the everyday lexicon to describe the everyday phenomena of modern politics. With the words of the characters in 1984 and quotations from the work, we will describe the “very juice” of totalitarianism. We hope this will encourage you not only to refresh your memory of many moments of the novel, but also to reflect on this topic.

    Totalitarian patchwork

    Big Brother or Big Brother

    “At each site, the same face looked from the wall. The portrait was executed in such a way that wherever you stood, your eyes would not let go. THE BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU - read the signature "(6) Hereafter, page references to Orwell, George. 1984: [novel] / George Orwell; [lane from English. - V. Golysheva] - Moscow: AST, 2015. - 351 p..

    "From every noticeable angle, the face of a black mustache looks out."

    “On coins, on stamps, on book covers, on banners, posters, on cigarette packs — everywhere. Everywhere you are haunted by these eyes and enveloped by a voice. In a dream and in reality, at work and while eating, on the street and at home, in the bathroom, in bed, there is no salvation. Nothing is yours, except for a few cubic centimeters in the skull ”(7).

    “Big Brother is the image in which the party wishes to appear before the world. Its purpose is to serve as a focal point for love, fear and reverence, feelings that are easier to convey to one person than to an organization. Under the Big Brother - the inner party; its number is limited to six million - a little less than two percent of the population ... ”(8).

    In oina

    “The war, however, is not the same desperate confrontation as it was in the first half of the 20th century. These are military actions with limited goals, and the opponents are not able to destroy each other, they are not financially interested in the war and do not oppose each other ideologically ”(9).

    “The essence of war is the destruction of not only human lives, but all products of human labor. The main goal of modern warfare is to use up the output of a machine without raising the general standard of living. Even when weapons are not destroyed on the battlefield, manufacturing them is a convenient way to waste human labor and not produce anything for consumption ”(10).

    “At the same time, thanks to the feeling of war, and therefore danger, the transfer of all power to the small top seems to be a natural, necessary condition for survival” (11).

    "As an administrator, a member of the inner party often must know that this or that military report does not correspond to the truth, often he knows that the whole war is a fake and either is not being waged at all, or is being waged for a completely different purpose, which is declared" (12) ...

    “In the past, the rulers of all countries, although they understood the commonality of their interests, and therefore limited the destructiveness of wars, nevertheless fought with each other, and the victor robbed the vanquished. They are not at war with each other these days. The war is being waged by the ruling group against its subjects, and the goal of the war is not to avoid the seizure of its territory, but to preserve the social order. Therefore, the very word "war" is misleading. " We probably will not sin against the truth if we say that, having become permanent, war has ceased to be a war ”(13).

    D thinking

    “The party says that Oceania has never entered into an alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knows that Oceania was allied with Eurasia just four years ago. But where is this knowledge stored? Only in his mind, and he, one way or another, will soon be destroyed. And if everyone accepts the lie imposed by the party, if all documents contain the same song, then this lie settles in history and becomes true. “Who controls the past,” says the party slogan, “controls the future; who controls the present controls the past. " And, however, the past, which is changeable by nature, has never been changed. What is true now is true from time to time and forever and ever. Everything is very simple. All you need is a continuous chain of victories over your own memory. This is called "conquering reality"; in Newspeak, doublethink.

    “Knowing, not knowing; believe in your own truthfulness by telling a deliberate lie; hold simultaneously two opposite opinions, realizing that one excludes the other, and be convinced of both; kill logic with logic; reject morality by proclaiming it; to believe that democracy is impossible and that the party is the guardian of democracy; forget what needs to be forgotten, and recall it again when it is needed, and immediately forget again, and, most importantly, apply this process to the process itself - this is the very subtlety: to consciously overcome consciousness and at the same time not be aware that you are doing self-hypnosis. And even the word “doublethink” cannot be understood without resorting to doublethink ”(14).

    Demonstrations

    “The workers left factories and institutions and marched through the streets with banners, expressing gratitude to the Elder Brother for a new happy life under his wise guidance ”(15).

    Ministry of Truth (see also "The Past")

    “In the largest section of the documentary department there were people whose only task was to find and collect all copies of newspapers, books and other publications that were subject to destruction and replacement” (16).

    “And somewhere, it is not clear where, anonymously, there was a leading brain that drew a political line according to which one part of the past had to be preserved, another falsified, and the third destroyed without a trace” (17).

    We are a crime

    “It seemed to him that only now, having regained the ability to express thoughts, he made an irrevocable step. The consequences of any action are contained in the action itself. He wrote:

    Thought crime does not entail death:
    thought-crime IS death. "

    “As we have already seen with the word 'free', some words that previously had a harmful meaning were sometimes kept for convenience's sake - but cleared of unwanted meanings. Countless words such as honor, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, religion, science have simply ceased to exist. They were covered up and thus canceled out by a few generalizing words. For example, all the words grouped around the concepts of freedom and equality were contained in one word "thought crime", and the words grouped around the concepts of rationalism and objectivity were contained in the word "old thinking". Greater precision would be dangerous. According to his views, a party member should have resembled an ancient Jew who knew, without going into details, that all other peoples worship "false gods." He didn’t need to know that the names of these gods were Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Astarte, etc .; the less he knows about them, the more useful it is for his faithfulness ... ”.

    “We are enemies of the party. We do not believe in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thought criminals. "

    H ovoyaz

    “You probably think our job is to come up with new words. Not at all. We destroy words in dozens, hundreds every day. Don't you understand that the task of Newspeak is to narrow the horizons of thought? In the end, we make thought crime simply impossible - there will be no words left for it. Each necessary concept will be expressed in one single word, the meaning of the word will be strictly defined, and the secondary meanings are abolished and forgotten ... Every year there are fewer and fewer words, everything is narrower and narrower the boundaries of thought ”(18).

    “There will be no thinking in our modern sense. A true believer does not think - does not need thinking. Orthodoxy is an unconscious state ”(19).

    Related Videos

    Victory

    "The coming victory is an article of faith" (20).

    “The three powers not only cannot conquer one another, but they would not receive any benefit from this. On the contrary, as long as they are at enmity, they support each other like three sheaves. And, as always, the ruling groups of the three countries are both aware and at the same time not aware of what they are doing. They devoted themselves to the conquest of the world, but at the same time they understand that the war should last constantly, without victory ”(21).

    “War has always been the guardian of sanity, and, in terms of the ruling classes, probably the chief guardian. As long as the war could be won or lost, no ruling class had the right to behave completely irresponsibly. But when the war becomes literally endless, it ceases to be dangerous ”(22).

    Victory personifies not only the unattainable ideal and dogma of faith, but also all other immoral stimulating, intoxicating substances. Coffee, cigarettes and gin - all as one bear this proud name - "Victory" - this is all that motivates you to keep courage and vigor to live on.

    P rolls

    Of course, "proles", in the English version "proles" - is nothing more than an abbreviation for "proletariat". It will be helpful to remember the origin of this word. From lat. Proletarius - the have-nots, having only "proles" - from the Latin "offspring". It is precisely such, the have-nots, that Orwell paints most of the population of Oceania.

    "If there is hope (Winston wrote), then it is in the proles" (23).

    “If there is hope, there is nowhere else for it to be: only in the proles, in this mass swirling in the state backyards, which makes up eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, can a force be born that can destroy the party. (…) Prolam, if only they could realize their power, conspiracies are useless. It is enough for them to get up and shake themselves - like a horse shakes off flies. Should they want to, and tomorrow morning they will smash the party to pieces ”(24).

    "They will never rebel until they become conscious, and they will not become conscious until they rebel" (25).

    “Hard physical labor, taking care of the house and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, cinema, football, beer, and most importantly - gambling - that's all that fits into their horizons. It is considered undesirable for the Proles to have a strong interest in politics. All that is required of them is primitive patriotism - to appeal to it when it comes to lengthening the working day or reducing the rations. And even if discontent overtakes them - this has also happened - this discontent does not lead to anything, for due to the lack of general ideas it is directed only against small concrete troubles ”(26).

    "As the party slogan" Proles and animals are free "" (27).

    P rosh or "shaky" past

    “If a party can throw its hand into the past and say about this or that event that it never happened, this is more terrible than torture or death” (28).

    “Who controls the past,” says the party slogan, “controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past ”(29).

    “Every day and almost every minute the past was adjusted to the present. History, like old parchment, was scraped clean and rewritten - as many times as needed. The Times number, which, due to political adjustments and erroneous prophecies of Big Brother, was reprinted perhaps a dozen times, is still dated in the filing with the same number, and there is not a single refuting copy in nature ”(30).

    Statistics

    “Statistics in their original form is the same fantasy as in the revised one. Most often it is required that you suck it out of your finger. For example, the Ministry of Plenty planned to release 145 million pairs of shoes in the 4th quarter. It is reported that 62 million were actually produced. Winston, while rewriting the forecast, reduced the planned figure to 57 million - so that the plan, as always, would be overfulfilled. In any case, 62 million is no closer to the truth than 57 million or 145. It is very likely that the shoe was not produced at all. It is even more likely that no one knows how much it was produced, and, most importantly, does not want to know. Only one thing is known: every quarter, an astronomical amount of shoes are produced on paper, while half of the population of Oceania walks barefoot. The same is with any documented fact, large or small. Everything is blurred in a ghostly world, and even today's number can hardly be determined ”(31).

    “The telescreen kept spewing fabulous statistics. Compared to last year, there is more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more newborns - more than disease, crime and madness. Every year, every minute everything and everyone is rapidly rising to new and new heights ”(32).

    T elecran

    “The telescreen worked for both reception and transmission. He caught every word ... (...) Of course, no one knew whether they were watching him at this moment or not. You had to live - and you lived by habit, which turned into instinct, with the knowledge that your every word is overheard and your every movement, until the light goes out, is watched ”(34).

    Economy and shortage of goods

    "... there was no food at home - except for a slice of black bread, which had to be kept until tomorrow morning" (35).

    “In the party stores, first one household item, then another, always disappeared. Now the buttons will disappear, now the darning, now the laces ... ”(36).

    “As far as he can remember, there was never enough food, there were never whole socks and linen, furniture was always shabby and shaky, rooms unheated, subway trains overcrowded, houses dilapidated, bread dark, coffee disgusting, tea - a rarity, cigarettes - few: nothing cheap and in abundance, except for synthetic gin. Of course, the body ages and everything becomes wrong for it, but if you feel sick from an uncomfortable, dirty, meager life, from endless winters, from hardened socks, ever-faulty elevators, from ice water, rough soap, from a cigarette disintegrating in your fingers , from the sharp taste of food, does this mean that such a way of life is abnormal? ”(37).

    Orwell and modernity

    Rereading Orwell, one wonders how accurately and firmly many things have entered our modern life... It can be considered that the search for an analogy of the considered concepts is fiction or even paranoia, but Orwell can be considered a prophet.

    Endless war has long been a reality, since the world learned about such phenomena as terrorism, organized crime and corruption. They can endlessly declare war, direct colossal funds to combat these phenomena, justify many impartial political decisions with them, but it is impossible to win.

    The annoying telescreen pours out tons of information every day, far from reality and politically biased, and new historical facts or revelations have long shaken the picture of the world that seemed to be firmly established in school history lessons. "Doublethink" enslaved the employees of the media - ministries of truth, and those who were just scientists-historians yesterday, today sink to third-rate talk shows in which they renounce history, science, and truth.

    Video lectures

    Everyone decides for himself - whether to accept this reality as a given and adapt to these manifestations of the modern world or fight them. If you have chosen the path of Don Quixote, then let the same Orwell encourage you, although his hero could not save himself and was "corrected" by the system ...:

    “If you feel that it is worth remaining human, you have conquered them anyway” (38).

    “If you are in the minority - and even in the singular - it does not mean that you are insane. There is truth and there is untruth, and if you adhere to the truth, even in spite of the whole world, you are not mad ”(39).

    The hero of 1984 Winston dedicated his diary to future generations with hope:

    “For the future or the past - a time when thought is free, people differ from each other and do not live alone, a time where truth is truth and the past does not turn into fiction. From the era of the same, the era of the lonely, from the era of the Big Brother, from the era of doublethink - hello! ”(40).

    We will send our greetings to the bright future!

    Links to sources

    Remembering the war in Spain // Orwell, George. Barnyard. In Memory of Catalonia. 1984 Essays / George Orcell. - M .: AST: Astrel, 2011.S. 504 Ibid. P. 506. Ibid. S. 508. Ibid. P. 513.

    Orwell's letter to Francis Henson dated July 16, 1949. Quoted. Quoted from: A. Golozubov. The Wolf and the Sheep: The Myths of George Orwell // Orwell, George. Barnyard. In Memory of Catalonia. 1984 Essays / George Orwell. - M .: AST: Astrel, 2011.S. 17. P. 4, p. 31, p. 233, p. 206, p. 212, p. 213, p. 214, p. 222. S. 40. S. 65. C. 45. S. 48. S. 58-59. P. 60.P. 214.P. 219, 220.P. 221 S. 77.P. 78.P. 79.P. 80.P. 81.P. 38.P. 39.P. 45. 46, p. 67, p. 4, p. 5, p. 7, p. 55, p. 67, p. 184. P. 244.

    Orwell, George. 1984: [novel] / George Orwell; [lane from English. - V. Golysheva] - Moscow: AST, 2015. S. 32.

    Cover: Still from the film 1984 (1956).

    From 1922 to 1927, the future writer served in the colonial police in Burma, after which he lived for a long time in Great Britain and Europe, earning himself a living by odd jobs, at the same time he began writing fiction and journalism. Blair's first novel, Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London, was released in 1933. A year later, two more books were published: "The Daughter of a Priest" and "Burmese Days". In 1935, the writer took on the pseudonym " George Orwell"and left for Spain to take part in the Civil War - later the story was devoted to this period "In memory of Catalonia" (1936) and the essay "Remembering the War in Spain" (1943).

    In his famous book "Barnyard" (1945) Orwell showed the rebirth of revolutionary principles and programs. A kind of allegory for the 1917 revolution and subsequent events in Russia, it is still being reprinted and enjoys continued success. Dystopian novel "1984" (1949) became an ideological continuation of Animal Farm - the book depicted a totalitarian hierarchical system based on sophisticated physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear, hatred and denunciations. The terms used in the novel, such as doublethink, newspeak, and orthodoxy, are still used today.

    During his relatively short writing career Orwell wrote eight novels, 16 poems, as well as a great many essays and articles of a social, critical and cultural nature.

    "Evening" brings to your attention a selection of famous quotes from the works of the classics of modern literature.

    "Absolutely white, like absolutely black, seems to be some kind of visual defect. "

    "All animals are equal, but some animals more equal than others".

    "There is truth and there is untruth, and if you hold on to the truth, even in spite of the whole world, you are not insane."

    "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. Serious sport is war minus murder".

    "A totalitarian state establishes unchangeable dogmas and changes them from day to day."

    "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

    "In nine cases out of ten, a revolutionary is rock climber with a bomb in his pocket".

    "A hierarchical society is possible only on the basis of poverty and ignorance."

    "Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."

    "Each generation considers itself to be smarter than the previous one and wiser than the next."

    "If the main goal in life is not the number of years lived, but honor and dignity, then what difference does it make when to die?"

    "People can only be happy if they don't see happiness as the goal of life."

    "Life can give just one relief - intestines ".

    "Individual possesses power as much as he ceased to be an individual. "

    "Big brother is watching you".

    Similar articles