Examples Of Propaganda In George Orwell's '1984'

“We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us… We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him” (Orwell 255). When people oppose a higher power, that authority will do everything within its capability to regain control. Though they may do this by simply taking over, others go to the extreme; they take over psychologically. The authority makes sure that they are the only thought in their people’s minds. The citizen’s devotion is only to their leader’s ambitions instead of to themselves. George Orwell, the author of 1984, writes the book to warn his readers about the possible future of a tyrannical government. The Party manipulates its citizens through psychological methods to gain power.

By restricting the words of its citizens,

Winston is working in his department on “rectifying” documents the Party has assigned to him. He begins to explain how his job is to change the original information given to him, to what the government wants it to be. Winston describes just how the government is able to influence the people’s minds: “It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech in such a way as to make him predict the thing had actually happened” and later Winston says, “in no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place” (Orwell 39-40). Winston’s job is to change and delete the past in order to match the Party’s current slogan or belief. The government is creating false facts and manipulating the truth to control the citizens of Oceania. Their emotions and feelings are compelled to agree with the Party, and by controlling information and its transmission, it dictates people to accept false information. Altering or removing statistics and evidence withdraws the memory of facts from society’s minds. They are unable to know what the truth is and are forced to believe whatever the Party says. It is the reason why no one wants to rise up to change anything. Society does not feel the need to rebel because the Party tells them that life was worse before Big Brother. The government’s reasoning is the only thing the people of Oceania can believe. Disinformation in Oceania is supported by the article “The Global Organization of Social Media Disinformation Campaigns.” Samantha Bradshaw, an expert on new technologies and democracy, and Philip N. Howard, a sociologist, use their research to show how propaganda and disinformation affect society. The authors first inform the audience of what propaganda and disinformation are. They discuss how “disinformation takes many forms, but cyber-troop activity involves the purposeful distribution of fake,