The Party told You to Reject the Evidence of Your Eyes and Ears
Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth
Most Americans know who Donald Trump is: they know who he is and what he has done. They’ve seen the “carnage” of our political system, with hatred now hip-deep between Democrats and Republicans. Hitler, I mean Trump, now speaks openly of wanting to “be a dictator on Day One” if he can find a way to get back to the White House.
Fewer Americans know who George Orwell was: a prolific author, Orwell penned some of the most thought-provoking work of the 20th century. His landmark thesis on utopian society, “1984” is still revered in literature circles. Unfortunately, far too few Americans read anything of value or meaning in today’s world: if it cannot be encapsulated in a ten-second meme or a one-minute TikTok video, America doesn’t know anything about it.
And so, we are approaching the crossroads Orwell wrote about in 1984: a landscape of horror where the folks running the show control anything and everything. This is the world Donald Trump wants to create.
As I reread 1984, I am especially intrigued by the dialogue between Orwell’s hero, Winston Smith, and his antagonist, known only as O’Brien. O’Brien represents the state, and he has the full authority of the state to bring others in-line with the way the state works. Winston, who worked for the state, or The Party as Orwell calls it, never supported the Party: he knew he had seen plenty of evidence over the years of past events and people and all manner of things to convince him that what the Party said wasn’t the truth. In fact, Winston was in full rebellion against the Party, having teamed up with his willing accomplice Julia to learn the truth, and perhaps even expose it.
Soon after Winston finds solid evidence of the truth he seeks, he is captured by the Party, and taken to the Ministry of Love to be “re-educated.” And it is there that I bring you to today: this is Winston’s exchange with O’Brien in the Ministry of Love.
Winston is strapped to a table where he can not move: he can only feel the intense pain, through an intense electric current, being inflicted on him by O’Brien. O’Brien is trying to explain to Winston exactly what he needs from Winston, but Winston is having a tough time understanding.
“Where does the past exist, if at all?” O’Brien asks. “In records. And—?
“In the mind.” Winston responds. “In human memories.”
“In memory. Very well then. We, the Party, control all records and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?” O'Brien demands.
For a moment, Winston thinks he is winning this argument: how could they control me when I can still remember the past?
“How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine?”
“On the contrary” O’Brien scowled at Winston. “YOU have not controlled it!”
Torturing Winston for the sake of torture—to get something useful out of him—was meaningless to the Party. What O’Brien was doing wasn’t the important part, but why he did it. O’Brien continued to try to help Winston understand.
“Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact you have got to relearn Winston.
O’Brien wasn’t working on Winston to break him; he was working on Winston to change him. O’Brien’s role was to convert Winston to being a true believer.
There is then a lengthy battle about how many fingers O’Brien is holding up: while he shows four fingers, and Winston says it is four, he is never correct. The number, according to O’Brien, is whatever the Party says it is: somedays it can be three, or four, or five. Somedays it can be all three at the same time.
O’Brien is trying to get Winston to let go of his own beliefs and accept what the Party tells him to believe.
Once again, the electric shock stops momentarily, and O’Brien asks Winston if he understands why people are brought to this place, this torture chamber.
“To make them confess.” Winston offers.
“No, that is not the reason. Try again.”
“To punish them?” Winston asks sheepishly.
“NO!” exclaimed O’Brien. While he was enraged, he remained focused on Winston, on trying to help him understand the “why” of it all.
“No, not to merely extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why I have brought you here?
To cure you!
We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.
We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.”
O’Brien had opened a window into the soul of the Party and shared it with his subject: the Party cared only to control one’s mind. The purpose behind everything the Party did was to change the way the person thought—and for the person to be in total agreement with the Party at all times was the only thinking permitted.
Knowing he had not yet succeeded in curing Winston, O’Brien went on at length about how various regimes of the past—those during the Inquisition, the Nazis, the Russians—had all failed because they simply tortured their victims then killed them, creating martyrs in the process: martyrs whose memories would live on in the minds of others, giving all the glory to the martyr, defeating all the torture the state had wrought on its victim.
“Above all, we do not allow the dead to rise up against us,” claimed O’Brien.
O’Brien continued: “You must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston…posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out of the stream of history.”
Winston thought about it, and realized that he would simply be erased, but was puzzled: if he was to be erased, why torture him so?
“Did I not just tell you that we are different from the persecutors of the past? When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.
We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us…we convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.
We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.
We make him one of ourselves before we kill him.”
If you haven’t read the book, I won’t ruin the ending for you here, but suffice it to say that what happened to Winston Smith has happened to every Republican in the Party of Trump: their personal beliefs have been stripped from their minds to the point they no longer have the capacity to think for themselves.
They are no longer the conservatives they used to be, fighting with Democrats together against common enemies like Russia. They no longer value the democracy this nation has always been rooted in; they now deplore democracy, and instead long for what the Party—what the Big Jackass (Trump)—demands: an end to democracy.
The Party is now calling all the shots for Republicans, and those who have already had their minds altered—men like Kevin McCarthy or Lindsey Graham—I imagine are gone for good. There is no bringing them out from whatever spell Trump has washed their brains with.
While 1984 is purely fiction, it is now, and forever will be, non-fiction: the Party has made 1984 real.
The minds of those who followed Trump have been changed forever, and the truth is that he is not finished.
Trump is working to get back to the White House, to once again be the nation’s leader.
But this must never be allowed to happen.
For if that day comes, we will all become Winston Smith.
© Radical Liberal 2023. All Rights Reserved.
George Orwell. ISBN 978-605-74622-2-0