The story famously opens as the clocks strike 13 – conveying an immediate sense of discomfort, or of abnormality. As if time itself has been distorted.
But it isn’t just the clocks. Through the eyes of the protagonist, Winston Smith, and through the technology with which he interacts, 1984 shows us a world built on governmental control – not just over people’s actions, but over their thoughts.
The vividness of those technologies often dominates discussions about 1984, not least because of how prescient many of them seem. Every home in Airstrip One (the book’s renamed United Kingdom) contains a telescreen – a two-way TV which can broadcast as well as receive, and which is permanently switched on. This is perhaps the most spot-on of Orwell’s many feats of prophecy in the book – although, these days, we convince ourselves we keep our own cameras switched on by choice.
In his role “rectifying” history for the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith dictates into a device (correct again, Orwell) and is able to revise or erase old news reports – all of which is not only possible in the internet era, but is all too often deployed in today’s world of misinformation, fake news and “alternative facts”.
The Ministry of Truth’s sprawling propaganda operation also includes machines known as “versificators” that automatically mass-produce books and songs. It is for the reader to decide whether to take a cynical or sanguine view of this read-across to today’s reality. Either way, the versificators look set to join 1984’s uncanny catalogue of technological prophecies as we now grapple with the content-creating capabilities of generative AI.
All of this technology, just like Orwell’s fascination with the nuances of language and its ability to expand or curtail free expression, is what makes the grim everyday reality of life in Airstrip One so evocative. But none of this is what makes 1984 still feel so urgent and relevant in 2024 – 40 years after the eponymous future year in which his dystopia is set. Instead, it is Orwell’s understanding of the purpose and nature of propaganda and misinformation.
Orwell has been accused of being heavy-handed in his construction of Airstrip One’s propaganda regime, but it is the extremes of it that lays it bare – helping us make use of the novel’s insights in our daily lives. After all, the terms and the devices of propaganda change – “fake news”, “misinformation” and “deepfakes” being just some of the latest – but its fundamental nature does not.
The most important aspect of Orwell’s characterisation of propaganda and misinformation in 1984 is that it stems from those at the pinnacle of power, and it is deployed ruthlessly to serve their interests. It is easy to lose sight of this fact today when the onslaught of fake news seems to come at us via so many different actors and on so many different digital platforms.
Moreover, while we might recognise that the powerful exert control over what is broadcast on today’s telescreens or printed in the newspapers they publish, Orwell’s novel brilliantly conveys that it extends far beyond that. The world of Winston Smith is one in which even gossip is commodified to the purposes of the Party, not least when it is coupled with a secret police state that encourages people to report on their friends, neighbours or lovers – and even children to denounce their parents.
It is here that Orwell’s second great insight into the nature of propaganda comes into play. As the plot of 1984 rolls on, it is increasingly obvious that Winston and his lover Julia – played in Audible’s new dramatisation by Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo – are not the only ones who don’t actually believe the blatant lies and propaganda churned out by their government – but everyone knows they must put on a show.
So cowed are the people by the need to perform as propaganda says they must, that even parents who have been rounded up by the secret police because their children reported they had been saying seditious things in their sleep, speak of their gratitude towards and pride in their child for doing so. “Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?” exclaims Winston’s colleague Parsons as he recounts being denounced by his daughter. “I don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact I’m proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.”
In a chilling moment minutes later, Parsons – played by the actor and comedian Romesh Ranganathan – begs the secret police to spare him and kill his family instead: “I’ve got a wife and three children … You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes.”
The secret police know the child has fabricated the incident for reward, Parsons likely knows it too, and yet everyone plays along with the charade as it proves that the propaganda is working – everyone is willing to act according to the approved fiction.
We rarely think of misinformation in the real world in such a way, but we might benefit if we did. The purpose of propaganda is rarely to encourage everyone who views or reads it to believe in its literal truth – instead it provides a narrative, or lets those already on-side know what arguments are sanctioned and will be pushed. It is a vehicle for power of one sort or another to keep its supporters in line.
When viewed through this Orwellian lens, the very idea of fact-checking as a counter to propaganda or misinformation seems ridiculous – as futile as the idea that if Winston had only kept one altered headline instead of dropping it down the memory hole, he could have challenged the power of the Party.
In today’s post-truth dystopia, the performance of propaganda, along with human cognitive biases and defence mechanisms, means that people will often just cling even harder to their preferred falsehoods when faced with actual facts and statistical proof. And indeed, this is what Orwell was warning us about – not just a world deluged by fake news and propaganda pumped out by the powerful, but a world in which people just stop caring about truthfulness. Today, the fight against propaganda is also a fight against people’s growing indifference to it.
Understanding propaganda as a tool used by those in power, and then deployed as performance by those at whom it is aimed gives us a new framework in which to analyse it, and a new sense in which to resist it.
James Ball is the author of the books Post-Truth, and The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World.
Audible’s new dramatisation of George Orwell’s classic tale stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy, with an original score by Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri. Listen now. Subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms.
Audible and the Audible logo are trademarks of Audible, Inc or its affiliates
