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Propaganda In 1984

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The Surprising Power of Propaganda in Dystopian Fiction:
By Trinity Goodwill.
Propaganda has become prevalent globally with countries like China, North Korea and Russia misinforming and lying to their citizens to gain a sense of complete control. Russia to this day continues to produce anti-Ukraine propaganda by creating mocking deep fakes of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to justify their invasion (V. Bergengren, 2023). It is within these uncertain times we turn to the media for reflections of our current struggles.

1984 is a novel written by the English author George Orwell in 1949 following the protagonist Winston Smith in a dystopian society set in Oceania dictated by “The Party” and an all-encompassing ruler called Big Brother. …show more content…

Indoctrination is represented in 1984 through the concepts of ‘Newspeak’ and ‘Doublethink’ which aim to limit language and thought, to prevent scepticism of the regime and thereby teaching the masses to accept their present life uncritically. In Chapter 5 Syme an employee in the Ministry of Truth explains the true political nature of Newspeak before he was vapourised for ‘thoughtcrime’, the quote is as follows; “… 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.” INGSOC (Newspeak for the totalitarian regime) through the use of propaganda such as ‘Newspeak’, a limited, expressionless and difficult to understand language with the purpose of limiting a person’s ability to think indoctrinates Oceania by eliminating political and ideological individuality which is reflective of Orwell’s views of totalitrainsim. As a consequence characters such as Winston Smith are unable to think critically due to the restriction and education placed upon them by the Government. As further evidenced by a quote from chapter 9 where Winston explains in his journal about ‘Doublethink’, …show more content…

Misinformation is promotively represented in 1984 through the ‘Ministry of Truth’, which distributes propaganda and falsifies historical events to uphold the party’s values. In chapter 5 Winston who is an employee in the ‘Ministry of Truth’ and regularly falsifies books and newspapers to align with the party, tries to explain to his co-worker and lover about the lies of party. In which he states that “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, … Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” To complement in Jojo Rabbit Winston revealing the truth about the ‘Ministry of Truth’ is paralleled by Captain Klenzendorf an officer for the Nazi party. Like Winston, Captain K is aware of the misinformation spread by the Nazi party as he states at the introduction to the Hitlerjugend camp “And even though it would appear our country is on the backfoot. And there really isn’t much hope in us winning this war, apparently, we are doing just fine.” Indicating awareness of the misinformation of their respective parties by government officials. George Orwell and Taika Waititi illustrate how totalitarian Government will routinely lie to its citizens to present itself as idealised and to maintain absolute control, this can be seen in modern day with countries such as China

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