How to be a Totalitarian State by Big Brother

1984 by George Orwell

Some critics have called 1984 a how-to manual for totalitarianism—and it is certainly true that the book represents quite well a totalitarian government assisted by technological advancements in control of human society. Yet it is not Orwell’s first how-to manual: Animal Farm offered a similar reflection of how a totalitarian government comes to be. But what Orwell does differently in 1984 is this: he creates terms like newspeak and doublethink to show how invasive and devastating the totalitarian tools of Big Brother can be. As Batra points out, language can be used in a controlled manner to achieve a loss of privacy, dictatorship, and cognitive control. Orwell illustrates how the power of the word can be used to influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. In this sense most of all, 1984 can be described as a how-to manual for totalitarianism for it cuts straight to the heart of how a government can control human behavior—and that is through control of language.

One of the most repulsive attributes of Big Brother in Orwell’s novel is the fact that it promotes doublethink. The government uses doublethink as a way to indoctrinate characters and to get them to adhere to two conflicting ideas as the truth. Doublethink often goes against the characters' sense of reality and memory. It manipulates them into disavowing their own ability to think critically. In the novel, doublethink is used to restrict perception, expression, and to spread propaganda. It is through the twisting of language into the corkscrew of doublethink that Big Brother prevails over people: it divorces words from reality and because all people need language but many can do without reality the government accomplishes its totalitarian aim of controlling the minds and hearts of people and turning them into a totally unthinking lot. Orwell understands as much when he writes that “until they become conscious they will never rebel” (257). Language is the gatekeeper of consciousness; if the gatekeeper becomes lax or falls asleep—as it does in doublethink—consciousness is lost. Orwell thus concludes that the poor people of the novel, trapped in doublethink, trapped in the totalitarian grasp of Big Brother, can only break free if they become conscious. And yet Orwell also notes that because they are already trapped in doublethink they cannot rebel because they lack the consciousness to rebel. In other words, he shows clearly that the way to control people is through control of the language—because the language controls ideas, and ideas control people.

The people have no words or ways to express themselves or to discover a way out of their situation. Thus, Winston turns to eroticism with Julia, thinking it will be the way to break the Party and free him from its grasp. He believes sexual liberation is the only pathway out. Of course he is wrong, and his failure to stand up to Big Brother in the end proves as much. But even Julia uses eroticism with Winston as a personal rebellion against a system who wishes to erase her sexuality. It is nothing more than the shaking of a fist in the face of a much more powerful entity—a defiant sneer that is soon enough wiped off her face by Big Brother, just as Winston’s delusions of grandeur about the orgasm saving the human race are quickly annihilated under O’Brien’s heel, with Winston emerging from re-education to profess his love for Big Brother. Winston’s original hope that passion could lead to individual freedom is dashed. He believed naively in “not merely the love for one person, but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces” (Orwell 126). But it is almost as though Big Brother wanted him to have exactly that thought because the government knew it was a vain thought that would only lead Winston back into the arms of Big Brother in the end: for when animal passion failed to prove enough, he would despair, having planted his hope in nothing higher. And that is exactly what happens: the government wins because the government allows its slaves to put their hope in useless beliefs, knowing full well that these beliefs will be shattered and make the slaves even more slavish than they were before.

But one can empathize with Winston—after all, if the evil government suppresses it then it must be good, right? And Claeys notes that “with even eroticism suppressed in the name of war-fever and leader-worship” it made sense that Winston should see the erotic as a doorway out of the Party (124). But it’s a trick, a trap. If it were really a way out, it would be erased entirely—cut out completely—but it’s a false way out, permitted only so as to catch in a snare those who might actually be thinking about leaving Big Brother behind. It’s no real way out, and the Party knows that.

The way to really crush any kind of opposition is to remove it completely from the mind, to flush it down the memory hole. That is why the Party disappears people: “In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared… Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out…” (Orwell 21). If you are a threat to the Party’s power, the Party simply annihilates you. That is how a totalitarian government succeeds at maintaining power—and Orwell knows it and shows it. Big Brother controls the news, hushes events, silences opposition, and rewrites history—and in this way evinces total control, dictatorial power as Fardila points out. In Orwell’s novel can be seen all the traits and characteristics of every totalitarian government that ever existed, Fardila as much as states. There is no real power of the people, no real democracy—only illusion on top of illusion. Larson explains that authoritarian leaders can never admit their mistakes because if they did so it would be akin to admitting weakness. This was true of the Soviet leaders in Russia in the 20th century during Stalinism, and it is true of political leaders in the West today, from Trudeau to whatever administration is in the US White House to the dictators of Europe. None will admit mistakes; none will show weakness; every wrong step or mistake must be explained away so that no fault is every admitted. Totalitarian governments never make mistakes—that is one of the first rules Orwell underscores in his how-to manual for totalitarian beginners.

One can even see many more rules for totalitarian beginners throughout the novel and how those rules are applied here in the West today. For instance, there are the two-minute hate campaigns that keep the people inflamed in hatred for their supposed enemy—just as now audiences in the West are subjected to the same kind of two-minute hate campaigns against Russia for invading Ukraine. There is no balanced analysis, no questioning of narratives, no thoughtful discourse on why Russia attacked. There are only the images of bombed buildings and hysterical narratives blasted across TVs by talking heads to remind everyone in the West that there is a new enemy, a new Hitler, and his name is Putin; he is so vile and evil, he attacks without reason or cause; he lives simply to kill and main innocents. This is the playbook of Big Brother and it is used today, as though the people of today were being subjected to the Party’s pedagogy of unlearning, as Lofgren puts it. Just as few know how to love today, no one in the novel is allowed to love—for love just gets in the way of what Big Brother wants to do. Love instead is turned into something false: the citizens of Oceania love the Party in spite of the fact that the Party makes their lives harder. They are gaslighted into thinking this slavish devotion to an unjust State is love—that is the real tragedy. It follows on the deconstruction of language and on the memory-holing of knowledge. Once reason and memory are gone, there is little left in the will or soul of the people. When they are broken in this manner, it is easier for the State to divide and conquer—and that is another rule for totalitarian beginners that the novel shows clearly.

As Naufal points out, the Party promotes classism because classism keeps the people from uniting against the Party. It is similar to the way racism is promoted today: everything has to be seen through the lens of race, because the more people are divided the easier it is to conquer them. If they unite, they will turn against the unjust State, so the State simply follows what Orwell showed a good totalitarian government does: it makes the people think ill of one another on some pointless and totally superficial ground.

And it does not matter what the administration is. Qin argues that the tactics of the Party were reflected in the tactics of the Trump Administration, with the way it used propaganda to convince people of certain ideas. But every administration does this. One can see it in the 21st century from Bush II to Obama to Trump to Biden. Propaganda is used to control narratives and Big Brother uses propaganda to keep certain stories and myths alive because it is easier to control people when they believe that reality is a certain way and that belief plays into the preservation of the Party. But whereas Qin argues that this use of propaganda as a tool was especially prevalent during Trump’s administration, it is silly to believe it only happened from 2016 to 2020. Indeed, Orwell’s book has been compelling for readers from day one because it reflected a world that was at the time of its writing already in existence. In other words, the totalitarianism of the novel was already a reality.