'1984' Context Flashcards
‘The Ministry of Truth’ inspiration
Orwell worked doing broadcasting for Southeast Asia & India - spreading propaganda to British colonies
‘Room 101’
Conference room at the BBC Broadcasting House
Nazi surveillance
‘Dataveillance’
–> totalitarian regime - Oceania
What is totalitarianism
Form of government and political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual opposition to the state and exercises an extremely high degree of control and regulation over public and private life
What happens in totalitarian states - propaganda
Propaganda is broadcast by state-controlled mass media to control the citizenry
- Oceania
–> 5 year plans
–> “statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version”
Orwell - Spanish Civil War
Fought for the Republicans against Franco’s totalitarian Nationalists
- ‘Homage to Catalonia’ (1938)
Influences of totalitarian governments
- Hitler’s Nazi Germany
- Communism in the Soviet Union under Stalin
Why is ‘1984’ set in UK?
Perhaps ‘1984’ is set in a fictionalised Great Britain to show how totalitarianism couldn’t work - unless people resisted
Big Brother
Bears resemblance to the cult of personality built up around Joseph Stalin
The Party’s brutality
The Great Purges of 1936-38 in Soviet Union
–> similar to vaporising and ‘unperons’
Stalin’s control
Anyone that he deemed threatening to incite rebellion was arrested and executed
Goldstein inspiration
Leon Trotsky
2+2=5
Soviet communist party slogan
- lied about completing early
- propaganda & control
Thought Police
- Stalin encouraged citizens to spy on each other
- Inspired by the KGB
- Inspired by the NKVD, arrested those who made ‘anti-soviet’ remarks
2 Minutes Hate and Hate Week
Inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by the Party organs throughout the Stalinist period
