Examples Of Totalitarianism In 1984 By George Orwell

Throughout human history, there have been countless examples of powerful tyrants and dictators. A notorious example is Genghis Khan, who seeked to take control of the entire world, killing millions in pursuit. A common motive between many tyrannical rulers in history was to have total control over a certain region or group of people. In the novel 1984 written by George Orwell, the totalitarian government, under the “INGSOC” ideology, achieves complete and utter control of its people living in Oceania. The Party, led by Big Brother, utilizes extensive means to make and keep its people subservient in ways that historical figures like Khan have tried on many occasions. The government inhibits, manipulates, deceives, and exploits its people.

The first way that the government keeps its people in line is by implementing fear tactics. This is done to keep people from openly rebelling and gathering rebel groups out of fear of certain death. The citizens are always aware of their need to avoid illegal acts such as thoughtcrime or facecrime, the punishment for such being not only death, but torture and more as well. The fear of making a slightly inappropriate facial expression or murmuring INGSOC heresies in one’s sleep makes people afraid to even think against the Party. Fear mongering propaganda such as “Big Brother is watching you” being plastered everywhere and public hangings are few of the many ways the people are made to be scared of any wrongdoing. Another way the Party catches thought criminals is through the idea of the “brotherhood”. It is unknown whether the brotherhood or Goldstein is real, however in Winston’s case, he was finally caught after he joined O’Brian who was pretending to be part of the brotherhood. It is likely that the brotherhood is not real, a fake underground group that is created so that the Party can apprehend anyone trying to join. The last way that the Party keeps its enemies to a minimum is through perpetual surveillance. Every move that the citizens make is scrutinized and suffocatingly watched, any deviations from orthodoxy will be known. When a person

The first and largest course of action to establish complete dominion over its people is the Party’s implementation of Newspeak. This is done slowly and methodically to strip the English language into a scarce dictionary. The government does this so that there will be minimal ways to articulate speech. As the government has planned, people in future Oceania would likely not even have the means to rebel, the Minitrue worker, Syme explains it perfectly, “the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." (Orwell 52) By the time Newspeak is fully established, there will be no means of self expression. Similar to children, the people will be limited to a certain number of words with no deviating or unique ways to speak. Everyone would be forced to speak the same and therefore, think the same. Lastly, the idea of doublethink is implemented as a way for people to then begin to manipulate themselves. The idea of doublethink is to believe and accept lies from the media that contradict your own prior knowledge. When a person has been conditioned their whole life and made to think and act a certain way, it would not become difficult for them to feed into it themselves. The people