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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1983)
As 1984 rapidly approaches, the prophecies of author George Orwell are being examined anew. Big Brother, Thoueht Police, Newspeak, Double Think. Some of the concepts cre ated by Orwell in his book "1984 , ' — written in 1948 — have become standard phrases in American life. The phrase Big Brother has become synonymous with oppression and thought Police conjures up visions of KGB-like government agents and brain washing. In the book. Big Brother was a symbol for the oppressive gov ernment of Oceania. Big Brother saw everything (with the help of telescreens that that essentially spied on people while broad casting information), heard ev erything, knew everything and controlled everything, includ ing thought, speech and writ ing. The Thought Police spied for the Party and enforced thought-control and brain washing. "1984'' chronicles the efforts of Winston Smith, the central character, to rebel against the government, think for himself and fall in love — something not approved by the Party. Winston fell in love anyway, but he feared capture and torture. Eventually, the Thought Police caught up with him. Aiter extensive emotional and physic al torture, Winston's rebellion was gone. He accepted what the Party told him. He loved Big Brother. Following Winston's experi ences with Big Brother may make the hackles on your neck rise. It's scary to think people can be controlled that way. But in some places, on a smaller scale, some of this control already exists. In the following articles, we've provided inst ances and incidents that bring to mind "1984." Is it here? You be the judge. History: can it be altered? by Lauri Reese Battalion staff "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed —if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into his tory and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite sim ple. AM that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality con trol,' they called it; in News- peak, 'doublethink.'"—George Orwell, "1984." The "Party" is the political, social and economic group in Oceania, the setting of the novel, to which all people above lower class belong. Newspeak is the official lan guage of Oceania. In "1984," Winston Smith works at the Records Depart ment "rectifying" newspapers. He corrects "slips, errors, mis prints, or misquotations which it is necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy." Smith is part of a continuous alteration applied to newspap ers, books, periodicals, pam phlets, posters, leaflets — "to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or idealogical significance." Couldn't happen today. Couldn't? Except for the time when those people in the Soviet Union who owned a particular Soviet encyclopedia were sent in the mail an article about the Bering Sea to paste over the entry about Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria. This is rewriting history in the classic Orwellian sense, says Dr. Chester Dunning, an associate professor of history at Texas A&M. Beria attempted to seize pow er at the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and was shot by Commun ist leaders. Or what about when Leon Trotsky, a former Russian war minister, was totally wiped from Russian history? Dunning asks. He says Trotsky was a very important man but because of his rivalry with Stalin and even tual murder, his contribution is not mentioned and he is blacked out of official pictures. Dr. Donald Pisani, associate professor of history, says that in the late 1950s, a period characte rized by anti-Stalin sentiment in the Soviet Union, Stalin all but disappeared from the pages of Russian history. In 1961, Stalin's body was re moved from Moscow's Red Square, a place of great honor, and was reburied within the Kremlin walls among the graves of lesser heroes. His name was removed from public buildings, streets and factories. The city of Stalingrad was renamed Vol gograd. Dunning says that in the Soviet Union, there are fulltime historians doing nothing but re writing history to show the peo ple coming to power, to show the Communist Party leading the people, and to show the in evitability of the revolution. See HISTORY page 14 Rights questioned by Lauri Reese BttUlion stiff Freedom of expression — guaranteed for all in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In ''1984" by George Orwell, Emmanuel Goldstein is the "commander of a vast shadowy army, an under ground network of conspir ators dedicated to the over throw of the State." He is the "enemy of the people," an "object of hatred," because he is filling minds with "pitiful rubbish," he is "advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought." "We tend to take freedom for granted," says Dr. Donald Pisani, associate professor of history at Texas A&M. Many people would rather be slaves than free, he says, as long as they are enslaved by the right leader. The instinct for freedom is not at all clear when placed beside the need for security. Dr. Chester Dunning, asso ciate professor of history, says that many freedoms have been given up out of fear. Pisani says the responsibil ity of freedom includes using your brain rather than letting the state make decisions for you. The constitution of the Soviet Union guarantees almost all the same freedoms uaranteed in the United tates Constitution, Dunning says. "It's all there in print," he says, "but in reality, it 7 s pure fiction." The freedom of travel is res tricted and the freedom of the press is almost nonexistent in the Soviet Union because it never has existed, he says. A large segment of the popula tion doesn't demand it luce in the United States, Dunning says. "It is convenient and possi ble to impose the official view in the Soviet Union and the people don't care that they are not hearing the full truth be cause they have never known the full truth," he says. In a country where the peo ple have never had the chance to vote and censorship has al ways been the norm, freedom is defined very differently than in the United States, he says. Dunning says Americans may lose their freedom by de fault. When people are not paying attention, freedom slips away, he says. Dr. Edward Smith, associ ate professor and head of the communications department, says less than 10 percent of other countries have freedom of expression similar to the United States, he says. The norm is substantial gov ernmental control. Smith says the more un easy and paranoid a country is, the more fears of freedom of expression exist. In "1984," the main charac ter "had set his features into the expression of quiet optimi- sim wnich it was advisable to wear." "To dissemble your feel ings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reac tion, Orwell says. One history professor at Texas A&M tells of the time she travelled to the Soviet Un ion and decided to relax for a few minutes in Moscow's Gorky Park. She sat on a bench next to an older woman and began speaking to her in halting Russian. The professor told the woman how beautiful she thought Russia was and how much she loved the subways and the park. Trying to bait the woman, she said, "Every one seems so happy with the resent situation. I haven't card anyone complain. Everyone just seems so con tent." The older woman turned to look at the professor and said, "And if they weren't, how would you know?"