Bokelskere.no

"all thinking the same thoughts
and shouting the same slogans" -

To Anyone Who Feels Like Winston In Orwell's 1984

“The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible,
and glittering... all thinking the same thoughts
and shouting the same slogans,
perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting -
three hundred million people all with the same face.”

That was a quote from George Orwell’s seminal work 1984 -
a masterpiece that describes life in a totalitarian state
that demands blind obedience.

The ‘Party’ controlled everything - the economy, daily life,
and even the truth.
In Orwell’s 1984, “the heresy of heresies was common sense.”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten,
every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building
has been renamed, every date has been altered.”

“And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
History has stopped.
Nothing exists except an endless present
in which the Party is always right.”

If you were ever caught committing a thoughtcrime — dissenting from
the Party for even an instant –
then “your name was removed from the registers, every record
of everything you had ever done was wiped out,
your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten.”

Now, our world obviously hasn’t become quite as extreme as Orwell’s
dystopian vision.
But Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Government certainly seem to be
giving it their best effort.

70,000 thought criminals have already been purged from Twitter.

Facebook and Reddit are feverishly removing user content.
Apple, Google, and Amazon have banned entire apps and platforms.

Undoubtedly there is plenty of wacky content all over the Internet –
misinformation, ignorance, rage, hate, violence, and just plain
stupidity.

But these moves by the Big Tech companies aren’t about violence.

If they were, they would have deleted tens of thousands of
accounts over the last few years –
like the mostly peaceful BLM activist who Tweeted
“white people may have to die”.

Or the countless others who have advocated for violent uprisings
against the police.

Then, of course, there’s the #assassinatetrump and #killtrump
hashtags that Twitter has allowed since at least 2016.
Or the #killallmen hashtag that’s allowed on Twitter and Instagram.

This is not about violence. It’s about ideology.
If you hold different beliefs than the ‘Party’, then you risk being
canceled or ‘de-platformed’ by Big Tech.

Icons like Ron Paul – who spent years criticizing the current
administration’s monetary and national defense policies, and had nothing
to do with the Capitol, have been suspended or locked out of their
Facebook pages.

The hammer has dropped,
and it is now obvious, beyond any doubt, that you better watch what you say –
your livelihood, your social life, and your safety may just depend on it.

Or else, you will be purged, canceled, deleted from the Internet,
denied payment processing by Visa, PayPal, and Stripe,
and expelled from domain registrars like GoDaddy.

The message is clear: behave and think exactly as we tell you, or
you will lose everything you have worked for, in the blink of an eye.

Sure, the ‘Party’ may give lip service to tolerance and unity.
As long as you fall in line. Otherwise it’s more rage and ridicule.

They act like you’re a crazy person
because you have completely legitimate questions and concerns –
whether about Covid lockdowns, censorship, media misinformation, etc.

It’s extraordinary that after so much deliberate misinformation and bias,
the media still expects people to take them seriously.
CNN seems to believe to think anyone who doubts their credibility
is a ‘conspiracy theorist.’

All of these trends are probably making a lot of people very nervous.
Even scared. Despair has undoubtedly set in,
much like in Winston Smith, the main character in Orwell’s 1984.

So, for all the Winstons out there, the most important thing
right now is to remain rational.
As human beings we tend to make terrible decisions when we’re
scared, sad, or angry.

( Simon Black, se artikkel )   ( oppr.versjon her )