The dystopian novel 1984 is famous for the tyrannical maxims — war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
These maxims represent the omnipotent state’s most powerful psychological weapon employed against its citizens, namely the inversion of reality. Although the state in George Orwell’s classic story is by no means averse to employing physical power, it is the psychological manipulation of the masses that is key to its dominance.
1984 is a critique of the totalitarianism of Stalinist Russia. Little could Orwell have known that it would be the post-war liberal West that would be the vanguard of state totalitarianism and mass psychological manipulation.
The reality is that the propaganda of what are commonly referred to as totalitarian states — Russia and China for example — tends to be rather blunt and unsophisticated. This is because in those countries power is not hidden; it is widely understood that the state is the ultimate political power and that power is instantiated in the country’s leader.
In liberal democracies, however, real power is at work behind the scenes. The puppeteers who hold the strings of state are at work in the shadows manipulating our politicians who put the interests of their masters above those of their electorate.
In our liberal democracies we see the fictional inversion of reality in 1984 made manifest. The people of the West are propagandised into believing that diversity is our strength, multiculturalism is superior to homogeneity, LGBT degeneracy is a moral good, miscegenation is normal…all subversions which weaken European societies to the benefit of hostile elites.
The liberal democracies of the West have perfected the art of subverting the healthy instincts of Europeans.
