By George, Part II

Only some of the essayists in What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, edited by Andras Szanto for PublicAffairs Books, which I will review soon, think George Orwell (1903-1950) is the man for 2008. After all, their thesis is in the title.

Any other George you can think of already has one foot in the presidential library, as he’s a lame duck.

Human nature is over the centuries is constant. It’s consistent through mere decades as well. The New Media is still communication. Marketing tries to dupe us, but that goes back to the ancient bazaars. These essayists, writing in the last six-nine months, generally say propaganda is succeeding because it’s more sophisticated, forgetting in 2006 the balance of power in Congress cycled back toward Democrats and this year that direction seems likely to continue. If one side’s freedom fighter is the other’s terrorist, then the straw hats’ plea for common sense by citing the facts is the felt hats’ propaganda that manipulates facts. You travel left far enough you find the right coming toward you.

Even as I recommend revisiting Orwell’s 1984 to enjoy the surprise that Orwell was a skilled storyteller not a mere sermonizer, I can note without surprising anyone that the hero, Winston Smith, is arrested and tortured. He’s not waterboarded, but what is said about torture and confessions shows Orwell’s astuteness.

In this section of the novel, we are persuaded that everyone confesses under torture. Everyone betrays under torture. No exceptions, and skilled torturers know this. And they know that the subject will confess to both truth and lies to stop the pain. So cruelty is useless — if its purpose is information. So another reason has to exist.

1984, Book 3, Chapter 3 from george-orwell.org. Orwell is all over the Internet; there must be a place with his works with fewer typos.

The Party official O’Brien talking to the tied-down Winston.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

This made me understand the so-called interrogation techniques U.S. representatives have done to people who may be linked to al-Qaida. Six years after 9/11, and the results of the questioning have not led any agency or any ally to bin Laden. Orwell explains why: “The object of torture is torture.” “D’oh!” to quote another philosopher.

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