When I read Orwell’s “1984” in grammar school back 40 years ago, I believed this was a fictionally tale. My view was, this can never happen in our real world because constitutional protection of personal rights would never allow something even close to this. But, it seems to happen in the US now and elsewhere, too.
Let’s recap a little bit and refresh our minds:
In George Orwell’s “1984” the lead character is Winston Smith, who works for the party leader Big Brother in his Ministry of Truth. This Ministry of Truth controls news, entertainment and education among other channels of culture and communication. His job is to “rectify” historical records so that everything that Big Brother says is true. If a certain individual is treated as a hero and is later singled out as an enemy of the people, Smith finds all prior newspaper and other records mentioning the victim as a hero and feeds them into the “memory hole” which is basically an incinerator that destroys the records. When Smith has done his job, there is no remaining record of the former hero. Another government agency is the Ministry of Love, which monitors and arrests dissidents and uses torture until the victim decides to love Big Brother.
US president Joe Biden has now created his own Ministry of Truth, called the Disinformation Governance Board. It is directed by Nina Jankowicz, an ideologue who has been responsible for disseminating disinformation. So, with other words, the female incarnation of Winston Smith, perfect for Biden’s own “Ministry of Truth”. This should be taken very serious, as absurd and ironic it seems.
Constitutional protections are at risk or even already mostly gone. It looks like the Disinformation Governance Board (Ministry of Truth) identifies the political dissidents and then hands over names and the Justice Department (Ministry of Love) will punish them. Big Brother, here we come!
Sven Franssen