The Morning After

“ Read the book “ As I stated earlier “ I first read the
book over half a century ago and have since reread it”

So this line doesn’t not wash which was stated earlier.

“ Control is all it’s about in the end..”

Evidently, you have not fully digested either what I wrote or what the author from those articles I cited has written.

Just to help you out here is a segment from it perhaps you will read it thoroughly this time.

As always as it seems to be with these things, there is a central piece of evidence in Nineteen Eighty Four which is so obvious that it makes one wonder that in all the time that the book has been available for a public to read, it must have been deliberately overlooked:

Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered round the base of the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother’s statue gazed southward towards the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes (the Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One.

The location is Trafalgar Square, renamed with the “propaganda logo” for all products of the centrally planned economy of Oceania. And now we understand that the whole political and societal environment in the book hangs off the fake British win in the Battle of Britain, because this is the historical event that is being alluded to.

First of all, to deal with this absolutely, we know the location is Trafalgar Square, not just because of the mention of the structure where a statue of “Big Brother” has replaced Nelson, but because of the adjacency to St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, which is established in the text. Therefore, the real military victory that was the Battle of Trafalgar is no longer commemorated (especially significant because all shades of socialist like to ignore the inconvenience of working Georgian capitalism, and 18th century gentrification and elimination of differences between the classes†), replaced instead by the phoney victory of the Battle of Britain. This is the physical landscape of the book, but it represents the psychological landscape of the wartime socialist technocratic UK Government as it waged war as a pretext to usher fundamental social change, and immediately found itself floundering.

It’s not surprising the spectre of endless war would haunt Orwell’s book. In 1942, when Eric Blair (the real person) was working for the BBC to produce war propaganda, and keeping his wartime diary, and his wife had been separated from him at days on end because of her work in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information (suggesting equivalence to Winston Smith’s own estranged wife), the world powers that would become the three of Nineteen Eighty Four would be Japan, whoever would prevail in the fight between Russia and Germany over the European landmass, and the USA/UK Anglo-globalists (even then). Before 1942 into 1943, Britain had mostly been losing, Germany had been strident. However, in 1942, somewhat in the middle of Orwell’s BBC tenure, there was exactly the same sort of situation in the war as one finds in the book. In the book, north and mid Africa, the Middle East, India, Burma and the Indonesian islands are territory up for grabs, with the back and forth of fortunes most famously demonstrated on the African Mediterranean coast. French holdings were in the process of changing sides again, this time from Vichy into the hands of the Allies – so that we must think of how the powers in Nineteen Eighty Four are said to make their most significant progress through acts of treachery (Orwell’s BBC propaganda was aimed at preventing India going over to the Germans). At last, the Germans had become bogged down like H.G. Wells had envisioned they should have in Poland when he and his ilk had been planning the war, although in Russia as things turned out. Moreover, there was no way westwards for Germany, not because of the Battle of Britain, but because it had never been possible to cross the sea in the way that was required. As for Japan, it had now butted up against the USA – and wouldn’t mix it with the Russians, please notice.

Crucially, then, transposing the very evident lesson from Nineteen Eighty Four, in the middle of World War II, with the propaganda peg of fake Battle of Britain triumph there to hang everything else on, the UK Government’s famous V for Victory emblem (via a campaign by the BBC) would be a cynical device to have people, not just in Britain, doublethink about eventual justice in the midst of a war that would not end. The Victory brand in the book stands for the same thing: suffering as a sacrifice to a greater end, with the message being, this product is bad, but that means we’re winning – and we will win. Of course, before 1943 the idea of winning the Second World War had to defy all the indicators (again, this is why the Germans had to be lured into bombing Britain, with UK Government enhancing the results, so that a spirit to continue could be manufactured). In the book, there is some very telling moments; the following is from Chapter Two:

‘Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash—-‘

Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.

Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a deflated feeling. The telescreen–perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost chocolate–crashed into ‘Oceania, ’tis for thee’. You were supposed to stand to attention. However, in his present position he was invisible.

‘Oceania, ’tis for thee’ gave way to lighter music. Winston walked over to the window, keeping his back to the telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at present.

What happens here is that a report about a famous victory is used to cushion the blow regarding food rations (a thing suffered also by World War II time Britons). Smith’s reaction is glorious: he acts as though he’s not unused to the combination: it points to the victory being a pure media invention. Please also note the mention of the distant bomb, and the frequency of enemy bombing, because towards this topic, of course, is where this is all heading.

In Chapter Five, there is a wonderful moment when the reader is explicitly told that news of military success is not to be believed:

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself–anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.

What this is pointing to is consciousness even during the war that Britain didn’t really win against Germany in an extended air warfare that took place after the fall of France. There wasn’t really a break in the sequence of continual losing.

If you contend what he states, please cite exactly the points from it you dispute and support your thesis with independent verifiable evidence.

If you can’t or won’t do this, just be gracious enough to
say do.

oh dear, you omitted the first 3 paragraphs of the segment of a series of articles relating to an analysis of 1984.

Here you are.

As always as it seems to be with these things, there is a central piece of evidence in Nineteen Eighty Four which is so obvious that it makes one wonder that in all the time that the book has been available for a public to read, it must have been deliberately overlooked:

Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered round the base of the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother’s statue gazed southward towards the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes (the Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One.

The location is Trafalgar Square, renamed with the “propaganda logo” for all products of the centrally planned economy of Oceania. And now we understand that the whole political and societal environment in the book hangs off the fake British win in the Battle of Britain, because this is the historical event that is being alluded to.

note the clauses ” there is a central piece of evidence in Nineteen Eighty Four which is so obvious that it makes one wonder that in all the time that has been available for a public to read , it must have been deliberately overlooked”

It appears that despite your insistence I read the book, which I have on a number of occasions, you overlooked this.

The author then proceeds to point out what the central piece of evidence is.

It appears it did not register with you.

So lets examine what he said ” ..And now we understand that the whole political and societal environment in the book hangs off the fake win in the Battle of Britain, because this is the historical event that is being alluded to”

What he is pointing to is that Blair based much of his book on events, experiences that happened in his life which you give scant regard to.

Now, I have chosen one small section to demonstrate how he arrived at the points he made which he has backed with evidence something you seem unwilling or unable to do.

You keep repeating your mantra ” of read the book ”

Yet your dogma appears to blinker you to a number of more subtle meanings in his book.

I suggest you read it again but minus the blinkers.

Now, I bid you adieu.