He is emaciated, pale, the thought of striking face, deeply furrowed. His left lung is no longer in power. Outside, frolic in the waves, poking the icy storm winds down on the drafty hut. There is no hot water. It is now often cold, very cold. He coughs a lot, he is a very sick man. As the year 1948 draws to its output, not George Orwell’s life for a long time. He is only 46 years old, soon, in January 1950, he tuberculosis and the late effects of a bullet wound from the Spanish civil war to a halt. The writer has pulled back on the Hebridean island of Jura halides, in an abandoned farmhouse on the West coast of Scotland, surrounded only by the cries of the seagulls and puffins.
Eileen, his wife, died, his house in London in 1944 by a V1 rocket of the Nazis has been destroyed, the tyranny of national socialism, I want to pull still in the Die, one of your biggest enemies in your grave down. George Orwell has survived. But now, at the end of 1948, he struggles against death and against time. With a will of iron he works with, prior to now 70 years, to the book, which was to become his major work in the Canon of world literature is, as a Manifesto against lack of freedom, totalitarian oppression, and a “control freak”: “1984”. The title is an anagram on the year in which the book was written.
400 million surveillance cameras
George Orwell is experiencing today is something of a Renaissance. “1984” and “animal Farm”, the oppressive, Orwell’s fame causative parable of 1945 about the seduction by a totalitarian world-views, are near the top of the Amazon bestseller lists. His Name serves as a Synonym for the warning against state-omnipotence against the Individual. At the beginning of December even Brad Smith, General counsel of the IT giants Microsoft, stricter laws to limit the automatic face detection has requested, “in order to prevent a surveillance state in George Orwell’s novel “1984””. This is the fear of the digital spirits from the bottle left? You would just be entitled to.
Smith referred to the Regime in China, which wants to control the first country in the world via facial recognition Software its citizens in the streets fully. Never before has a state been so close to Orwell’s Vision of the “Big brother” from “1984”, the screens all by Tele and the thought police round-the-clock spies. China’s government plans to create by 2020 a “social points register” that determines the “trustworthiness” of the Chinese on the basis of their good conduct in the public space and the good from the bad citizens, separates. 400 million surveillance cameras to include in the System. What a nightmare. And he is only just beginning.
“the truth is only what is a benefit to me”
What Orwell wrote about the dark realm of 1984, was unimaginable at the time, but not yet technically feasible. Today is getting faster and faster feasible, which appeared yesterday, is hardly conceivable. The whole extent of the digitization is not yet foreseeable, but very much closer to what Winston, the tragic rebel feels in “1984”,: “Always, it has been observed by the eyes … In the waking and the Sleeping, at work, or at dinner, in the house or outside the house, in the bath or in bed – there was no Escape. Nothing belonged to any one, except the few cubic centimeters in your own skull.”
in 2017, the US journalist Thomas E. Ricks published a double biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, the one thing in common: the passionate fight for freedom. Orwell’s work has remained, with good reason, as up to date, writes Ricks: “Since 9/11, in 1984, has found a new meaning and a new Generation of readers.” The data from the NSA collections, the thousand eyes of omniscient intelligence services, the camera networks of the UK’s CCTV, but the Troll factories of Vladimir Putin – too much reminiscent of the perfect surveillance state of “1984” as Orwell describes. In all this, the greatest danger is not in democratic societies, even the state. Not as long as this constant, and often vulgar attacks by their own President, to the truth of a relationship, such as Stalin’s Apparatchiks, which Orwell said to the mirror: is an independent judiciary, separation of powers, a free media – in the USA, all objects are True only, what to me.
Dangerous Temptation
The still greater danger which threatens the freedom, today we even. We Users, Bloggers, Evaluator, Follower, Twitterer. We are parents, we buckle our children Smartwatch around your wrist, to your location at any time. Not the Internet, not the digitization itself is the Problem, but our blindness to the exponentially growing Power of digital corporations over the individual.
The human Temptation is a basic theme in Orwell’s work. Freedom is slavery, proclaimed the “Newspeak” of the Ministry of Truth in “1984”. The message of the digital liberation is exactly the opposite: slavery is freedom. Give us your data, your life, let us know when you are where and what you are communicating and with whom – and the world is better than before. It is for many people, there is no contradiction to be afraid of the state of data retention, but to spread the most personal data and the whole private life on Facebook, with Videos of their own children.
The still greater danger which threatens today the freedom, are we ourselves – as a user, Blogger, evaluator, Follower, Twitterer.
“ignorance is strength”, as in “1984” at the pyramid of the Ministry of Truth. The strength of digital is the fact that many of their customers do not want to know, what is the price you pay – even if, again, that the promises made by the companies were for data security, sound and smoke.
The Ministry of Truth, whose agent at the end of “1984” the rebellious thoughts in Winston’s head and wipe out, it would be well-liked, as the reins has managed to free digital early capitalism, any substantive criticism, and any attempt against its market-governing power of law to enforce, as the attack a case of the state on the freedom to reinterpret it. The absurd notion that freedom is also freedom from the law, stalkers, and haters of any kind – like anonymous cowards, the accost dissidents, and this seriously as a democratic act to celebrate – with some to reputable network of activists. Against Attempts of democratic governments, even in the digital world, respect for the law to demand from the fundamental rights, the Dignity of the human person. Because these rights are the freedom for which Orwell’s Name is. And these rights do not end where the digital world begins.
can be Formative experiences in Spain
How vulnerable freedom, Orwell experienced in Spain in 1936/37. In addition to the fascism of Stalin’s Soviet Union and the Communist ideology form the model for “1984”. He was a left-wing, left-wing, however, is not popular everywhere, because he dared to unmask the Stalinism. As an Idealist Orwell was fighting on the side of the coup of the fascist Franco oppressed and democratic forces abandoned the Spanish Republic. He fought in the ranks of the militia a undogmatic-Marxist party, and was, as his long body out of the ditch loomed protect from a sniper seriously wounded – what a way saved his paradoxical life.
he escaped from the Hospital in 1937, the murders, the bloody purges and Torture chambers the Stalinists, the fought full low, the anarchists and the undoktrinäre Left costume and the Republic of your soul robbed. For George Orwell it was a key experience: He fought against the ideology of evil, fascism – and also found in their ranks a murderous ideology. In his experience report, “homage to Catalonia”, he wrote: “I saw troops that bravely against the fascists had fought, vilified as cowards and traitors; I saw the story about it was written, what was happening, but about what should happen after the party doctrine.”
Lofty Ideal, it is better not
Today, most especially the right-wing, what’s the story in a similar sense, re-write. Long ago, when you signed up so raw that anyone could see, wes Ungeistes child you were. Today they pretend to be guardians of those values, which they fear, in truth and in combat. The populists from Washington to Budapest claim to speak for “the people” and to establish “true democracy” as you spot the fundamental values of this democracy and pruning.
In the Newspeak of the populists means freedom of expression, the freedom to be allowed to only own opinion, and endure to hear. Against such a reinterpretation of the values, lies, blown-up images of the enemy, fake labels, Fake News, ideological filter, the reading of George Orwell would be a blow against. He understood why we respect the freedom of never willfully miss or, of course, should consider. He knew what danger threatens it, if obsessions, irrational expectations and false promises to occupy the minds of the people, and that nothing will get better if this is done in the name of noble Ideals.
“The Ministry of love,” wrote George Orwell in “1984”, was the most frightening thing in “the fear of all. It had no window.”
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 18.12.2018, 19:19 PM
