Just a deterrent?

[Gladys]

Is the reason for the Inner Party's elaborate torture and token rehabilitation of thought criminals and worse, nothing more than an expensive way to deter future unrest within the Outer Party?

[rabid reader]

The thought procress that O'Brain outlines whilest toturing Winston is that the problem with Dictators of the past was there constant martyrizing of those who disagree or rebel against you. The problem always being that if someone rising against your power and you know that their points are possibly harmful toward your power, you need to get rid of them. But if you kill the man as opposed to killing the arguement, then your reason appears weak in the eyes of the population.

O'brain then states that to aviod this issue, the Party breaks the person from their ideals and manipulates them into no longer beleiving in them, thus when they do eventually kill that said person they can no longer be a martyr to their beliefs as they gave them up already. This is exemplified by them releasing Winston and allowing him to live his life for a while longer until he is eventually shot in the back of the head.

[The Atheist]

Is the reason for the Inner Party's elaborate torture and token rehabilitation of thought criminals and worse, nothing more than an expensive way to deter future unrest within the Outer Party?

Yes; although I don't think it's that expensive. It works, therefore no price is too high.

[Gladys]

Yes; although I don't think it's that expensive.

Not expensive? Think of the manpower required to sustain the surveillance and torture of Outer Party members!

Winston is closely monitored for seven years, and tortured for as many months. Most of his contacts presumably present a similar workload for the Ministry of Love: his mother, Julia, Parsons, Ampleforth and Syme. One wonders what percentage of Outer Party members enter Room 101. The majority?

[The Atheist]

Not expensive? Think of the manpower required to sustain the surveillance and torture of Outer Party members!

You need to look at it in context - no totalitarian regime has ever lasted for a sustained period, despite the investment in surveillance, secret police forces and other state apparatus. The Party is immortal and will remain so, therefore the cost is irrelevant.

The other side of the coin is that with the use of Doublethink and reducing rations, Oceania's economy can afford the expense, ergo, it's cheap at the price.

What price would you put on immortality?

[ConfusionGirl]

In addition to flawlessly sustaining the totalitarian system through the torture, the Inner Party members completely believe in the benefits of the system. They torture the Party members because they love them. Freedom is slavery is not just a slogan to them, it is an absolute truth. O'Brien takes it upon himself to suffer the costs of freedom in order to give Winston and the other party members the benefits of the unfailing system. O'Brien tortures Winston to purify him, make him clean. He ensures that Winston is perfectly at peace in the utmost conformity. That isn't hate, that's love. In a horrible way, but love nonetheless.

[The Atheist]

You got it!

[Gladys]

In addition to flawlessly sustaining the totalitarian system through the torture, the Inner Party members completely believe in the benefits of the system...O'Brien takes it upon himself to suffer the costs of freedom in order to give Winston and the other party members the benefits of the unfailing system.

To say 'completely believe' is a serious exaggeration. While two-faced Inner Party members would surely agree with your assessment, I am troubled by your language, which amounts to Newspeak. In fact, 'the unfailing system' benefits the Inner Party while offering no benefit to the likes of Winston and Julia, and few to anyone else in Oceania. O'Brien, through doublethink, sees this clearly.


They torture the Party members because they love them. Freedom is slavery is not just a slogan to them, it is an absolute truth.

More Newspeak and doublethink. The Inner Party has as much love for Winston and Julia as a psychopath has for his victim. O'Brien sees this too.


That isn't hate, that's love. In a horrible way, but love nonetheless.

It's extreme hate disguised as love, through doublethink. Hitler's elite espoused similar sentiments, and believed them as much: they 'loved' the Jews they were exterminating.

[The Atheist]

To say 'completely believe' is a serious exaggeration. While two-faced Inner Party members would surely agree with your assessment, I am troubled by your language, which amounts to Newspeak. In fact, 'the unfailing system' benefits the Inner Party while offering no benefit to the likes of Winston and Julia, and few to anyone else in Oceania. O'Brien, through doublethink, sees this clearly.

I think you're missing the fact that for Inner Party members, the system is indeed perfection.

You don't even need doublethink unless you consider other Party members or proles, and why would you?


It's extreme hate disguised as love, through doublethink. Hitler's elite espoused similar sentiments, and believed them as much: they 'loved' the Jews they were exterminating.

Godwin already?

:)

You're looking at it with your own eyes instead of Party eyes.

[kiki1982]

It is only an observation because I never read this book, but it seems to me that the system in 1984 is more like the Communist one than the Nazi one. At least not the Hoocaust. Maybe National Socialism for the Germans then, if you want.

It is not so short-sighted to say that they did it because they loved them. The communists made everyone the same because they thought competition ruined the people (made them hungry, made serveral classes who did not care about each other, legitimised a king who had way more money than the poor who were starving). They did not realise that competition is in all of us and that it is natural to want more than your neighbour. Although this thing againt capitalism was not the only ground (I ould even say certainly not the main ground) for the Revolution in Russia (the main cause was the absolute monarchy with a tsar who did not have a clue due to his bad advisors, sitting his Ivory Tower), it played a big role in the perception of people.

Other than that, a system that starts in benevolence (or at least for some, in the communist system. Not mentioning of course the confiscation of goods in favour of 'the people'. Not asking what it did to the people that had those goods before and lost their living because of a confiscation), ends in oppression, because 'it is for your own well-being'. Anyone who thinks differently is a thread to the good of society as a whole and needs to be silenced. But those are oppresses for their ow good. Out of loveso to say.

The Holocaust does not compare to this, because the Nazis never claimed to do good to the Jews. They did claim to undo society of Jewish rot (excuse the term), but they never oppressd the Jews because they loved them. Their extermination would benefit society but the Nazis never claimed that it would do the Jews (and others that were persecuted) any good. Other than the National Socialists and Communists who loved the People and were going to force them in a certain direction because they deemed it a good one... There is a distinction between the dictatorships and mass-killing.

[Gladys]

You're looking at it with your own eyes instead of Party eyes.

Yes, and intentionally so, through mine and Orwell's.


I think you're missing the fact that for Inner Party members, the system is indeed perfection.

No, I saw the fact clearly: perfection for some.


You don't even need doublethink unless you consider other Party members or proles, and why would you?

O'Brien very much needs doublethink in the Ministry of Love, as he ruthlessly annihilates all Winston's hopes, including retaining sanity, surviving to old age, and inner fidelity to Julia.


Godwin already?

Orwell began writing 1984 in 1947, the year after the notorious Nuremberg trials, in which more than one Nazi defendant seemed to share O'Brien's wretched world-view.

[Gladys]

The Holocaust does not compare to this, because the Nazis never claimed to do good to the Jews. They did claim to undo society of Jewish rot (excuse the term), but they never oppressed the Jews because they loved them.

Commonalities between 1984 and the Nazi Holocaust include:


1984 describes totalitarian atrocity approaching the scale of the Holocaust: the Inner Party is carrying out mass extermination. Winston and Julia are just two of probably millions of victims.


O'Brien loves Winston as much as the Nazis the Jews. O'Brien annihilates, and later kills, out of 'love': Love for the Inner Party. Love for the Nazi Party, plays a similar role in the Holocaust. For some, to kill is 'to do good' - a loving kindness.

[kiki1982]

There is a difference between the Nazi dictatorship in Germany (National Socialism) and the Holocaust.

The two are connected, but are not the same.

Nationalsozialismus was a model, typically of dictatorship, that was going to make life better for everyone (read: the working classes and lower middle classes). The intellectual elite (political and cultural elite) did not agree with that, but the working classes and the lower middle classes did because they had severe problems with the recession, which the elite did not have (they did not lose their jobs, their money in most cases).

Nationalsozialismus is a subdivision of fascism which is profoundly racist in its views. As such they decided that, as the Jews were part of the cultural and political elite, they would get them out of the way. Of course not telling that there wer at least as many, if not more, Jews who were only working class.

O'Brien, as far as I can see, is brainwashed and a spy for Big Brother. As in the Stasi in the former DDR, he is employed to become a friend of Smith and see what the danger in that guy is. Obviously they have spotted him somehow. Later becomes clear that O'Brien was everything but a friend and that he made out to be one just to get information out of Smith. Much like the Stasi-practices

The torture in the end is a manner of brainwashing Julia and Winston. If they tell Winston he is going to be executed anyway (even if accepting the reality as Big Brother tells it), then there is no harm in accepting or not accepting. But telling you accept it is a good start to really accepting it. It is the first step, getting used to the idea and finding peace.

There is for a start no evidence of killing as such. Only metaphorical killing.

Love for the Nazi-party did not induce people to kiling, on the contrary. That is myth in my opinion. What happened in the concentration camps was so secret even the US Army did not believe the Jews when they told them (true! They refused to help with the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto under the pretext 'that thngs [couldn't] be that bad'.). It only became clear how true the rumours were when the camps were liberated. Post that came out of the camps was censured so no-one would suspect (seen post firsthand myself). It only tells of, ironically, how good it is there and that one is 'healthy and happy'. (If only...)

When you got there as a soldier, you were compelled, like any other soldier, to carry out your duties, and your illusions about the good the Nazi Party was doing quickly went away after seeing what they did to those people. Although, people were brainwashed, as they are under any dictatorship to an extent, in thinking that for example the prisoners who went on the death-marches in the latter stages of the war, were dangerous criminals. Not true of course, but it was certainly not love for the party that prevented them from helping them. It was rather fear, induced by the Party, that compelled them not to help (if that was possible at all after being ordered to stay in your house). In addition to that, one is not supposed to oppose, so soldiers complied with their orders and killed people. Apart from the people who were the brains behind Die Endlösung and a few very much indoctrinated people in the SS, I would be very suprised that there were many who actually stood really behind this, who had experienced first-hand what it was like. Let's say it was not 'love' as suh that compelled them to kill, it was the System that did it.

A soldier is not allowed to refuse orders because he gets court-marshalled for it (in war-time gets shot). So he has to. Whether he agrees or disagrees. Some of them, as young boys who have seen nothing of the world and society, did agree with it and went voluntarily to the army and SS (as the elite-corps (imagine what an honour)), but they did not realise the full extent of the System Nationalsozialismus, they had only seen the surface (happy people, with jobs (das Witschaftswunder), great motorways, the Arian Race (beautyful blond maidens)) and everything. Once they saw the nasty side, that was it. Sadly they did not have he possibility to step out of it.

That is why I think that 1984 does not have a lot in common with Nazism. Nazism was a system that had a very ugly side, but that on the surface provided everything a society needed: culture, history, diversion, science... And that is what was not included in 1984 because people should focus on The Party. Communism did that in a sense. Still providing culture and science, but on a very small level so that people could certainly not start thinking against Communism (they kept people local in an attempt to keep them stupid). Nazism rather dwelled on the great history of Germany (great-Germany that is) and on the sueriority of German art. They created their own (ghastly) art and provided eve their (Germanic) religion.

There might be a little unconditional love for the Party there in O'Brien, but more like Goebbels's wife who murdered her children when the Russians were approaching because she thought there was no life beyond Nazi-Germany. So, if seen in that light (and not in line with the Holocaust) O'Brien either had to kill Julia and Winston physically if they did not wish to comply with the rules, or he brainwashed them, killed them mentally. Clearly they chose the latter. Certainly, though, Julia and Winston are not part of a prosecuted race, but rather dangerous critical subjects like the Communists used to put in mental asylums.

[Gladys]

There is a difference between the Nazi dictatorship in Germany (National Socialism) and the Holocaust.

Absolutely! As a pure blood German myself (my descendants migrated downunder in the 1850's) and having recently read and enjoyed The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass on German mentality on the Polish border before, during and after WWII, little you've written, Kiki, about Nazi Germany surprises me.

Clearly, Oceania in 1984 is a far more radical environment than either Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. Set in London, once the jewel of democracies, Oceania (along with Eurasia and Eastasia) has learned from the flaws and failings of past totalitarian regimes. Unlike Nazi Germany, the broad population subsists in near poverty, is monitored more closely than the Starsi in the GDR, and dissent is ruthlessly crushed.

O'Brien - as an elite and pampered Inner Party member - can't be compared with your average Nazi or Gestapo policeman, but rather to the exclusive intelligentsia consisting of privileged and informed individuals like Adolph Eichmann and his superiors. O'Brien after all wrote Emmanuel Goldstein's subversive book and appreciated the mythical nature of Big Brother. And like Eichmann, O'Brien orchestrates the atrocity that continues to annihilate millions of Outer Party members and precocious Proles. Whether this 'killing' is literal or metaphorical matters little.

[kiki1982]

It is clear that 1984 is an anti-totalitarian work and in that, The Party does better than any regime before.

I think the difference between metaphorical and real killing matters hugely because the first is sadder than the second.

Russia and the other communist countries of the USSR are still profoundly affected by communist idealogy. Sure, they are now free but their way of life is still very much directed towards the environment directly around the home. TV is very big. The differences between the classes were gone in that middle classes wre working classes and vice versa. The only people one could really deem middle class were the party-members. The others (no matter what profession they had) were cramped in little appartments. They are still and intelligent people who would be middle class in our free world, still have a working-class-type feel to them. The Nazi dictatorship could have had the same implications, but that was only 10 years.The largest amount of people who went through that still knew the times before. With the communists the largest amount of the population had grown up in this atmosphere of seemingly non-opression (but don't be fooled). They are now still so. Odd.

O'Brien seems to me as a very much indoctrinated, hard-line Party-member. Someone who believes in the ideology (there are still neo-Nazis and convinced communists, more to find in China (up to the point that they say 'It never rains in China, only at night' (true))). I think O'Brien kills the two (Julia and Winston) metaphorically, which is worse than an execution, because now they believe in the ideology they so much despised. That is a violation of the human soul, of humanity itself, of free thinking. Locking someone up and killing him,is despicable, but making someone believe in something different, someting that harms them in their humanity, is even worse. Their free-thinking having been taken away, they are reduced to robots. They are no longer human.

[Gladys]

I think the difference between metaphorical and real killing matters hugely because the first is sadder than the second.

A literal execution likely follows the metaphorical killing, perhaps after a year or two. In 1984 the ultimate killing of Outer Party dissidents is probable, since we are repeatedly told: 'Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford men who were executed'. Men, or rather 'only the shells of men', who Winston saw but once at the Chestnut Tree Cafe.

From the viewpoint of Winston, his humanity similarly shattered, 'The long hoped−for bullet was entering his brain' almost matters as a release from incomprehensible pain. Metaphorical annihilation and real killing seem to merge.

From the Inner Party's perspective, metaphorical killing is a crucial step in maintaining power over Outer Party members. The eventual execution of dissenters can take place leisurely, once the political impact of human annihilation and subservience has had its sobering effect on bystanders.


The Nazi dictatorship could have had the same implications, but that was only 10 years.

Interesting it is that 1984, written on the brink of the cold war, is set in London the heart of democracy.


O'Brien seems to me as a very much indoctrinated, hard-line Party-member. Someone who believes in the ideology...

Does he believe? I'm not sure that O'Brien's doublethink amounts to belief. It may be something more pernicious like the fanatical worship of power and self-interest.

[kiki1982]

But were those people really executed, or was it a propaganda-rumour that was just used to frighten the people?

Metaphorical killing and literal killing seem to merge, but do they? I think if Orwell had intended to really kill Julia ad Winston he had not left them at the end of the book, in a sad robotic state of believing in the party and no longer their own ideals.

But you are right in saying that metaphorical killing is a crucial step in both frightening the dissident citizens and the Outer Party members.

The place was London, the place of democracy in an undemocratic Europe with Germany (great-), fascit Spain, Vichy France, Musolini Italy, and other fascist states in the east of Europe (Hungary, Slovakia etc). Despite London having al governments of the invaded nations on its premises, democracy was far to seek. If you were a foreigner you were not allowed to leave the UK, you regularly had to report at the police station, if you were German you were deported to the Isle of Man (if I am right about the place, anyway, you got deported to a place where you would not be able to contact your fellow countrymen. Even people who were immigrants and had been living there for years were deported with families and everything. You were not famished though, the whole thing was much like a holiday, but still, it is hardly fair), being a dissident (whether communist, anarchist or fascist) was dangerous as they could spy on you. After the war, we could imagine that the problems were over and that everything went back to normal (a state of war always needs more precautions for national security), but that wasn't true. Anarchists and communism was still a risk. Up to files of the MI5 (Inland secret service) (true. Mr Wannamaker, who was an immigrant from the US got watched as he was deemed a threat by the US. The only thing the man ever did was build The Globe Theatre...). So, London place of democracy... Yes and No. That was probably what Orwell was getting at. We were reproaching the Russians and Nazis, but we ourselves were not much better.

O'Brien is a spy and comes in contact with dissident people. If he was not convinced of the ideology, he would be a very dangerous spy because he could be captured by dissident beliefs and then start to act as a double-spy (Big Broter thinking he is his spy while all the while he is been spying for the resistence). He might be able to make out that he can think diferently, but he should believe in the ideology strongly enough to be able not to be converted as it were. Worship of power and self-interest is a very dangerous thing in a totalitarian regime, at least for the subordinate members. Because of that they could start to ask themselves why that one is the leader and not themselves... The only one who can be that narcistic is the leader himself (Big Brother), and he'd beter do so because only being worshipped (as The Higest Power) saves him from having his place usurped by another.