Censorship of History
One day thousands of Chinese citizens were slaughtered by their government, and the event known to the rest of the world as the Tiananmen Square Massacre was essentially erased through censorship. Victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre weren’t mourned, familys were forced to remain silent in their grief because of the government’s prohibition of the truth. George Orwell wrote his famous novel 1984 in 1948 forty-one years later the Chinese government proved to the world what could happen when there is a significant power imbalance. The Party in Orwell’s work said “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” The attempt to rewrite history regarding the Tiananmen Square
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“The state is enforcing a collective amnesia about not only recent political events but those that happened years ago” (Lim & Sala, 2019). The United States has been researching the Qing Dynasty (the last imperial dynasty), in response the Chinese Republic has published within their news media that the US is over-reaching and purposely altering history for their own purposes. The reason for China’s propaganda is that the findings of the US contradict the narrative written by the Chinese government. In their mission of “enforcing a collective amnesia” surveillance measures have been increased. “One interviewee, Tiananmen Mothers Co-Founder Zhang Xianling, said she had once managed to hold a small act of remembrance at the spot where her 19-year-old son, Wang Nan, had died from a bullet to the head. The next year a closed-circuit camera had been trained on that spot, designed to prevent any public act of rememberence” (Lim & Sala, 2019). As we read further into 1984 Winston holds acts of remembrance for the things he recalls. Unfortunately for the government (and for Winston) his memory is not under complete control. Winston purchases a journal from an old junk shop and begins to document the things he recalls. Winston, and all the citizens of Oceania, are constantly surveilled even in their homes. Winston is only able to conceal the evidence by sitting in an alcove in his flat that is not in the direct line of sight of the government’s surveillance camera and telescreen. He is further able to hide the fact that he does have memory recall by being mindful of how he communicates with others and his facial