By Megan Attwood
Big Brother is already watching, but does the warning in George Orwell’s 1984 still hold true in the twenty-first century? In 1984, the ministries of Truth, Love, and War controlled Oceania by lying to the public, monitoring their actions and thoughts, and maintaining a constant war no matter the enemy. Today, those ministries do not exist per se, but the contemporary world would not be identical to one envisioned in a work created in 1949. In the United States, alternative facts have undermined the integrity of news reporting, personal information is being sold to the government legally, and the country has been in a constant state of warfare since the technology was developed to wipe out a large city with a single weapon.
The Ministry of Truth controls the propaganda in Oceania with the goal to restrict and edit information in the country so that no contrary evidence to what is currently being disseminated can ever be found. Winston explains, ‘”Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.”’ In the United States currently, the terms “Alternative Facts” and “Fake News” were created during the 2016 presidential election in reference to political stories with no legitimacy. George Lakoff, a Berkeley linguistics professor, warns that putting alternative and fake as adjectives to facts and news undermines the media’s ability to hold the government accountable for its actions (“With Fake News” 2). The article, Alternative Facts and the Coming Constitutional Crisis, cites Thomas Jefferson who declared that “a despotic government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of news writers who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth…put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers” (1). With reporters who write what they are told without referencing the truth and the public’s loss of faith in the media’s reports, it is evident that the security of the citizens in the United States is becoming more compromised.
The Ministry of Love controls law enforcement in Oceania by monitoring the actions and thoughts of the citizens and rallying support for the nation through the execution of traitors. Winston observes, “The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, or within half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests.” Rulings were established in 1967 and 1979 to determine the legal information and metadata that judicial organizations could use with and without a warrant, but these were out of date by the late 1980’s (Bellovin, Blaze, Landan, and Pell 3-4). Legally, information sold by third parties, for example Google, to the United States government can be used in court cases and investigations due to those proceedings that do not pertain to the modern era of technology. In 2006, the President admitted that the NSA had been collecting data without the use of warrants and the director of the NSA stated, “the decisions were easily within my authorities…under Executive Order 12333, singed in 1981” (Hayden 1-3). Laws that no longer apply to the contemporary world are being used as justification to monitor the citizens in the United States without their consent or knowledge since before the internet was developed. The purpose of this monitoring is to protect the United States from threats that developed because of constant military involvement abroad since the 1940’s.
The Ministry of Peace controls warfare throughout Oceania with the goal of keeping the citizen’s focus on the enemy and maintaining a large workforce building weapons. Winston notes, “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war.” Our enemy has changed from the Axis powers to Communism to terrorist organizations around the world but each grew from the previous enemy without real peace since before 1945. In 1949, the War Department became the Department of Defense due to international reactions after the deployment of two nuclear bombs (Rearden 3). The Ministry of War and the Department of Defense both make decisions without the public’s consent or knowledge and classify almost all knowledge of mission objectives and results. It seems that a war with no end is on the horizon as more organizations arise to take the place of the enemy. The parallels to 1984 are becoming increasingly apparent.
George Orwell wrote of a dystopian world with totalitarian morals as his worst nightmare. It is an overwhelmingly dire message that relates to the twenty-first century. The truth is becoming difficult to discover and the media’s reports are often distrusted and viewed as subjective and biased. Privacy and security are considered opposing ideals that can no longer coexist in the United States while the government collects information on its citizens using outdated laws. Warfare has become the norm through the decades without an end on the horizon, and with an ever evolving but never changing enemy. 1984 is slowly becoming the modern reality just paralleled to the current level of technology and international relations.
Works Cited
Bellovin, Steven M., et al. “It’s too complicated: how the Internet Katz, Smith, and electronic surveillance law.” Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Fall 2016, p. 1+. Academic OneFile, db24.linccwe.org/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com.db24.linccweb.org/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=lincclin_spjc&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA480286648&asid=2206d90d212644453332b63b91fcf257. Accessed 29 Apr. 2017.
Hayden, Michael V. “Wiretapping Will Protect America from Attack.” National Security, edited by David M. Haugen, Greenhaven Press, 2007. Opposing Viewpoints. db24.linccweb.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010273252/OVIC?u=lincclin_spjc&xid=c6302a46. Accessed 29 Apr. 2017.
Malone, Matt. “Alternative facts and the coming constitutional crisis.” America, 6 Feb. 2017, p. 3. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, db24.linccweb.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A481161005/OVIC?u=lincclin_spjc&xid=f2c474bc. Accessed 29 Apr. 2017.
Rearden, Steven L. “Department of Defense.” Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, edited by Richard Dean Burns, et al., 2nd ed., vol. 1, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, db24.linccweb.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010308032/OVIC?u=lincclin_spjc&xid=930e285b. Accessed 29 Apr. 2017.
“With ‘Fake News.” All Things Considered, 20 Feb. 2017. Opposing Viewpoints in Context,db24.linccweb.org/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A483254234/OVIC?u=lincclin_spjc&xid=3503cc08. Accessed 29 Apr. 2017
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