George Orwell's Alarm

JR., C. W. Griffin

George Orwell's Alarm by C. W. GRIFFIN JR. TVTITH THE advent of 1967, we have " passed the halfway point between the 1949 publication 1984 by George Orwell and Doom-year itself. A fresh surge of...

...Almost as readily, they approve 400 times as much for the socially irrelevant space program...
...Despite its competence, The Crystal Spirit is inferior to Richard Rees' shorter book, George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory...
...to be misunderstood is the fate of all prophets...
...Since Orwell wrote 1984, the Central Intelligence Agency has grown from a relatively innocent infant into a quasi-totalitarian monster...
...This para­noic delusion entails a compounding of myths: (1) that the revolutionary fighting of the National Liberation Front, a demonstrably indigenous South Vietnamese effort, is basically aggres­sion from the north...
...The cynical pessimism of 1984 is an appropriate response to the mid­1960s by anyone who stakes a serious claim to being more than half conscious...
...As a contemporary example of this principle, consider the following advice issued to traveling scientists in several Federal agencies' form letters: "The purpose of this briefing is to alert you to the interest of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union and its satellites in all meth­ods of gathering information neces­sary to the furtherance of their nation's interest . . . Their meth­ods, which include technical sur­veillance (use of electronic de­vices, wire taps, and infrared devices), clandestine photography, and mail censorship, are contempt­ible to those of us who are accus­tomed to life in a free society because their methods make free use of any immoral or indis­creet behavior on the part of the individual...
...for once he was insufficiently cynical...
...Although Gladwyn Jebb makes no such blatant error in Halfway to 1984, a slender book assessing world prospects for that year, he betrays a shallow com­prehension of what Orwell was trying to do...
...Moreover, in assessing 1984, Woodcock largely ignores the crucial question: Has the alarm sounded by Orwell in 1949 become more urgent in 1967...
...That Orwell's purpose in 1984 has been grossly misinterpreted is only nat­ural...
...On August 6, 1964, he had denied before the same committee that the United States was "acting specifically under the SEATO treaty...
...With the burden of proof totally on them, Administration spokesmen have pro­duced no evidence whatever for their claim that China is the true villain in Vietnam—the prime mover behind the North Vietnam "aggression...
...We were outraged by the Ethiopian war, not only because it represented naked aggression, but because the spec­tacle of well-armed Fascist bullies slaughtering outgunned, sheet-clad na­tives offended our sense of fair play and decency...
...The high pay offered for this noble work resolves most doubts about its morality...
...mili­tary intervention in South Vietnam...
...the book stands or falls on the validity of his social and political projections...
...Overt deception plays as big a part as fantastic theorizing in the Adminis­tration's efforts at self-justification...
...89 pp...
...The draft, temporarily discontinued during the time Orwell was writing 1984, has be­come an established institution, rotten in its new inequities, in a nation that once was a haven for Europeans fleeing militarism...
...This passage may display a supremely subtle sense of bureaucratic humor...
...1984 is a satire of the world as Orwell saw it in 1948...
...Bombing, napalming, and crop-poison­ing issuing in the slaughter, impoverish­ment, and uprooting of non-combatant villagers are innocently swallowed by the euphemism, "pacification...
...Yet without protest or debate, they cheer­fully appropriate 2,000 times as much for the development and production of weapons whose destructive power ex­ceeds any conceivable rational purpose...
...To insure their own status they keep the "proles" in poverty and, through continuing warfare, deliber­ately destroy the production that could make their lives tolerable...
...As Senator J . William Fulbright has re­minded us, in Vietnam we are succumb­ing to the same "fatal arrogance of power" that dimmed the brief light of Athens' pioneering democracy...
...In February, 1966, however, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization suddenly became the Administration's basis for invoking U.S...
...The debasement of language as a basic concomitant of totalitarianism was a perennial Orwell theme, and our pres­ent Administration has contributed more generously than any predecessor to this cause...
...Little, Brown & Co...
...Columbia University Press...
...by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowl­edge...
...When socialism aids the rich, as in the Federally-financed, billion-dollar supersonic transport pro­gram, a boondoggle for elite air travel­ers, it squares with rugged individual­ism...
...As well as anything I know, my child­hood memories of Mussolini's attack on Ethiopia in 1935 display the demoral­izing effect of the Vietnam adventure...
...As the basis of this mysterious commitment the Administration used to cite a 1954 letter from President Eisenhower to the late South Vietnamese premier, Ngo Dinh Diem...
...Beyond all reasonable doubt, it has...
...The rulers of his Oceania admit that power is an end, not a means...
...Throughout history a primitive, subconscious form of double­think has helped conservative moralists to reconcile things like the Crusaders' atrocities with the teachings of their pacifist prophet...
...George Orwell's Alarm by C. W. GRIFFIN JR...
...economic support, condi­tioned on "needed reforms" never un­dertaken by Diem or any succeeding premier...
...Today it is Americans who are callously slaughtering helpless na­tives, inevitably if not purposefully...
...What enables conservatives to main­tain their pose as amiable, well-meaning people is the schizophrenic device of doublethink...
...In 1984 we too have had a warning...
...Woodcock limits himself to a long-winded analysis of Orwell's work...
...366 pp...
...He recognizes Orwell as a prophet, a Twentieth Century Jere­miah, exhorting modern man to repent or face a dismal, supertotalitarian fu­ture...
...and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth...
...for most scientists it presents an irresistible inducement to doublethink...
...It pledged economic aid to the Diem regime only, and it promised no military support...
...TH E CRYSTAL SPIRIT: A STUDY OF GEORGE ORWELL, by George Wood­cock...
...honor...
...But in the intervening years the Cold War has demonstrably corroded U. S. freedom and corrupted us with the vices we profess to loathe in our enemies...
...And the peace-loving Americans' new role as arms supplier to the world is a triumph of the Min­istry of Truth's slogan, "War is Peace...
...Then, as Orwell explained, "Even in using the word doublethink it is neces­sary to exercise doublethink...
...Shortly after it was published, in a remarkable imitation of its "Min­istry of Truth's" annihilation of history, official Communist "historians" re­moved Marshal Zhukov from the battle of Stalingrad...
...In 1984, however, doublethink is a highly sophisticated feat of mental contortion, perfected through exercise...
...and Eastasia, and he dismisses Orwell's sociological prophecies as "colored by his unhappy experiences...
...Orwell failed to see how easily govern­ments could tame brilliant scientists and make a gigantic extermination industry into a way of life...
...Yet even Orwell failed to recognize the full potential of doublethink...
...A fresh surge of interest in Orwell was inevit­able, and not merely because of the dates...
...An incipient "Newspeak" vocabulary hovers over reality...
...Jebb thinks that Orwell pre­dicted the division of the world into the three superstates of Oceania, Eurasia, HALFWAY TO 1984, by Gladwyn Jebb, Lord Gladwyn...
...Can anyone who examines the Fed­eral budget seriously doubt that the same desire to keep the poor underfoot at least subconsciously motivates our power elite...
...The Eisenhower letter pledged U.S...
...But when socialism aids the poor, it is morally decadent...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk's desper­ate efforts to create the solemn, honor-bound "commitment," forever cited by Administration spokesmen as sanctify­ing our military operations in Vietnam, remind one of the record-falsifying work in Orwell's Ministry of Truth...
...Vietnam, of course, has raised dou­blethink to new heights...
...This ap­proach is better than reading Shake­speare for his geography, but not enough to matter...
...The Defense Department, with its frantic weapons research, is al­most indistinguishable from Oceania's Ministry of Peace...
...The clowns of the House Un-American Activities Com­mittee have done their inept best to institute "Thoughtcrime...
...Two isolated com­partments of the mind simultaneously accommodate contradictory proposi­tions: 2 + 2 = 4 is a logical truth, but 2 + 2 = 5 can be a political or moral truth...
...Jebb has retained the scenery and banished the play...
...foreign policy today exists in a realm of fantasy where truth and logic are seldom al­lowed to raise their ugly heads, and the only discernible faith is Big Brother's slogan, "Ignorance is Strength...
...2) that this vastly overplayed aggression from North Viet­ nam is masterminded by China, the Vietnamese enemy of 2,000 years...
...Despite its apparently pathological gloom, 1984 keeps growing into a more recognizable caricature of the modern world...
...In 1984 the exigencies of fighting perpetual wars submerged the former Western democracies to the totalitarian level of their Eurasian and Eastasian foes...
...While their ambitious, brutal, and self-destructive wars raged against the Spartans, Melians, and Syracusans, they ignored the warnings of Aristophanes and Euripides...
...A bru­tal battle fought by U.S...
...Ultimately what is at stake is whether democracy is a government for all sea­sons, or only for political springtime...
...In one of the keenest insights of 1984, Orwell explains the pervasive malice of politics...
...soldiers to se­cure Premier Nguyen Cao Ky's corrupt dictatorship is part of the ludicrous mis­named "Operation Nathan Hale...
...For by us­ing the word one admits that one is tampering with reality...
...6.95...
...The Afrikaners, Southern racists, and as­sorted militarists who claim to follow Jesus are even more mistaken than the simple conservatives who hail socialist Orwell as a defender of capitalism...
...More likely it reveals a total commit­ment to doublethink developed to its ultimate degree as described in 1984...
...Conservative Congressmen endlessly delay and denounce "spend­thrift" welfare bills that authorize, for example, a trivial $12 million annually for slum dwellers' rent supplements...
...Lured on by the Cleons and other demagogues, the ancient Athenians wrecked their glorious civilization and lost their free­dom...
...The Federal Bu­reau of Investigation, with its wiretap­ping and bugging, has adopted the basic snooping tactics of the Oceanian Thought Police...
...In the Oceania of 1984 even weapons' technology is stultified, Orwell explains, "partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not sur­vive in a strictly regimented society...
...In The Crystal Spirit, George Wood­cock correctly rejects the notion that Orwell can be judged as a geopolitical fortune teller...
...In those days, 1984 sug­gested far more of the East than the West...
...Throughout the past seven­teen centuries nominal Christians have almost unanimously reversed the paci­fist teachings of Jesus of Nazareth...
...3.95...
...Nause­ous gas is a "benevolent incapacitator...
...Secretary Rusk told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the "fundamental SEATO obligation" justified U.S...

Vol. 31 • March 1967 • No. 3


 
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