“A lot of people are noting that Orwell was a socialist and [Newt] Gingrich doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but I’m much more appalled that Gingrich thinks a dystopic piece of fiction was “proof” that “that centralized planning inherently leads to dictatorship” and an argument against health-care reform. That’s like me saying “The Shawshank Redemption” is proof that prison walls are too weak and we should invest serious money into reinforcing them against extremely small rock picks.”—
The problem is, they’re both wrong. 1984 is not so much a dystopic fiction as a Swiftian satire. It deserves to be taken seriously (very seriously indeed in my opinion) but as a satire, not as a prophecy or a projection of where the world was headed at the time of writing (1948). The common misconception is that 1984 is simply an attack on Soviet communism. It isn’t; Orwell had been there and done it when he wrote Animal Farm. Actually, in 1984 Orwell was satirizing not only the totalitarianism of Stalin and Hitler, but also that of bourgeois capitalism and religion. Klein, for fairly comprehensible reasons, is not likely to acknowledge that Orwell’s masterpiece rubbishes his own profession as thoroughly as any book in 20th century British fiction (with the sole exception of Waugh’s Scoop). Reducing Orwell’s work to further one’s own brand of, “newspeak” is not the sole preserve of conservatives like Gingrich. Liberals like Klein do it all the time.
When Winston Smith is tortured, he is asked to, “believe” that his tormentor is holding up more fingers than he actually is; not only to “see”, more fingers and not merely to say that he sees more fingers in order to stop the pain, but to actually believe with all his heart and soul. The target is not Stalin here, but religion. In Oceania, the proles (for all their poverty) are not repressed by totalitarian police tactics, but instead numbed by violent movies, alcohol, sports and pornography. Julia works for Minitrue, the government ministry responsible for churning out pornography for proletarian, “use”. No such ministry existed in the Soviet bloc or in Nazi Germany, it’s laughable to pretend otherwise. Orwell is holding up a mirror to capitalist pop culture here, and crucially, he presents a world where the party exerts itself primarily against, but also with the collusion of, a debased intelligensia.
Klein’s comment is fine as far as it goes; a work of fiction is not, “proof” of anything. But let’s be clear; liberals are as likely as anyone else to invoke, “big brother” to smear opponents, and almost as likely to do so in a completely inappropriate context. Bush and Cheney, anyone? The Patriot Act? Klein is a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow show, but he is unlikely to criticize her for using clips from the 1984 movie to smear birthers. When it comes to principled journalism, to being so commited to the truth that one is prepared to abandon partisanship and self-serving hypocrisy by speaking the plain truth even to ones’ own side, Klein is not fit to clean Orwells’ Internationale boots.
The liberal media (the little of it that actually exists beyond the feverish visions that haunt Glenn Becks’ waking nightmares) operates within strict terms of reference. Certain realities are verboten; liberals will defend government programs like medicare but they will not fight tooth-and-nail for the kind of nationalized system that provides 36 countries around the globe with greater quality, greater accountability and greater cost-effectiveness than the robber barons of the US system have or ever will provide. Such a thing is, “unrealistic”, apparently, even, “experimental” according to some. As long as liberals (dems and journos alike) lack the balls to speak the plain truth, the American people will remain in the dark, cherishing their xenophobia and believing that the objective reality of government healthcare in other countries is a figment of Michael Moore’s imagination. There is very little out there to counteract such nonsense. I doubt the liberals’ corporate paymasters would permit such honesty.
The timidity of the liberal media can be shocking in the extreme; note how, in the coverage of Haiti on MSNBC and CNN, there was little or no reference to the role of the US in the crippling, inhuman poverty that compounded the problems after the earthquake. How often was the neoliberal assault on the Haitian agrarian economy acknowledged as the prime mover in the creation of Port-au-Prince’s teeming slums? Notice how many times the question of why Haiti is so poor was asked, and how often that question was not answered. Little or no acknowledgement of the role of the UN as a military presence to protect foreign interests, little or no mention of the 2004 coup, little or no acknowledgement of the fact that the US and her allies have consistently voted against the extension of the UN mandate beyond a military mission.
Note that we frequently heard about how the Dominican Republic can cope with natural disasters… but no mention of how the storms of 2008 killed more than 120 people in Haiti but only 4 people in Cuba. No mention of Cuba at all in fact, how strange. Above all, note the repellent manipulation at work in not acknowledging any of this when covering scenes of, “mobs” fighting over aid, as though such desperate people have no reason whatsoever to see US troops as anything other than guardian angels. Now, that’s Orwellian.
