{"id":76060,"date":"2019-11-20T23:02:30","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T05:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/?p=76060"},"modified":"2019-11-20T23:02:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T05:02:30","slug":"origins-thought-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/2019\/11\/origins-thought-police.html","title":{"rendered":"The Origins of Thought Police \u2014 and Why They Scare Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>(<a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/the-origins-of-the-thought-police-and-why-they-scare-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FEE<\/a> Opinion)<\/strong> \u2014 There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel <em>1984<\/em>. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith\u2019s varicose ulcer,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.homework-online.com\/1984\/symbols.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">apparently<\/a>\u00a0a symbol of his humanity (or something), which always seems to be \u201cthrobbing.\u201d Gross.<\/p>\n<p>None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it\u2019s not the worst thing in\u00a0<em>1984<\/em>. To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn\u2019t keep Big Brother out of your head.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in\u00a0<em>1984<\/em>\u00a0aren\u2019t that interested in controlling behavior or speech. They do, of course, but it\u2019s only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will,\u201d O\u2019Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith near the end of the book.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Big Brother\u2019s tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved thoughts. We see how this works when Winston\u2019s neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.<\/p><div class=\"themi-content_11\" id=\"themi-263889830\"><div id=\"ld-8755-6417\"><\/div><script>(function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:9217690065945446,size:[0, 0],id:\"ld-8755-6417\"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src=\"https:\/\/cdn2.decide.dev\/_js\/ajs.js\";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,\"script\",\"ld-ajs\");<\/script><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;It was my little daughter,&#8221; Parsons tells Winston when asked who it was who denounced him. &#8220;She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?\u201d<\/p><div class=\"themi-content_15\" id=\"themi-4274648694\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/themindunleashed\/subscribe\" aria-label=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px.png\" alt=\"\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px.png 1920w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-1536x864.png 1536w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-150x84.png 150w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-696x392.png 696w, https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Brown-and-White-Modern-Digital-Marketing-Course-Promo-Instagram-Post-1920-x-1080-px-1068x601.png 1068w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\"   \/><\/a><\/div>\n<h4 id=\"link-0\"><strong>Who Are These Thought Police?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>We don\u2019t know a lot about the Thought Police, and some of what we think we know may actually not be true since some of what Winston learns comes from the Inner Party, and they lie.<\/p>\n<p>What we know is this: The Thought Police are secret police of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bigthink.com\/strange-maps\/66-the-world-in-george-orwells-1984\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oceania<\/a>\u2014the fictional land of\u00a0<em>1984\u00a0<\/em>that probably consists of the UK, the Americas, and parts of Africa\u2014who use surveillance and informants to monitor the thoughts of citizens. The Thought Police also use psychological warfare and false-flag operations to entrap free thinkers or nonconformists.<\/p>\n<p>Those who stray from Party orthodoxy are punished but not killed. The Thought Police don\u2019t want to kill nonconformists so much as break them. This happens in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are re-educated through degradation and torture. (Funny sidebar: the name Room 101\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thevintagenews.com\/2017\/02\/07\/room-101-the-torture-chamber-in-george-orwells-1984-was-named-after-a-conference-room-at-the-bbc-where-orwell-would-have-to-sit-through-tortuously-boring-meetings\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">apparently was inspired<\/a>\u00a0by a conference room at the\u00a0<em>BBC<\/em>\u00a0in which Orwell was forced to endure tediously long meetings.)<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"link-1\"><strong>The Origins of the Thought Police<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Orwell didn\u2019t create the Thought Police out of thin air. They were inspired to at least some degree by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vqronline.org\/essay\/orwell-trenches\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his experiences<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spanish_Civil_War\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Spanish Civil War<\/a>\u00a0(1936-1939), a complicated and confusing affair. What you really need to know is that there were no good guys, and it ended with left-leaning anarchists and Republicans in Spain crushed by their Communist overlords, which helped the fascists win.<\/p>\n<p>Orwell, an idealistic 33-year-old socialist when the conflict started, supported the anarchists and loyalists fighting for the left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, which received most of its support from the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin. (That might sound bad, but keep in mind that the Nazis were on the other side.) Orwell described the atmosphere in Barcelona in December 1936 when everything seemed to be going well for his side.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing &#8230; It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>he wrote in\u00a0<em>Homage to Catalonia.<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[E]very wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle &#8230; every shop and caf\u00e9 had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That all changed pretty fast. Stalin, a rather paranoid fellow, was bent on making Republican Spain loyal to\u00a0<em>him<\/em>. Factions and leaders perceived as loyal to his exiled Communist rival,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leon_Trotsky\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Leon Trotsky<\/a>, were liquidated. Loyal Communists found themselves denounced as fascists. Nonconformists and \u201cuncontrollables\u201d were disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>Orwell\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2017\/05\/george-orwell-spain-barcelona-may-days\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">never forgot<\/a>\u00a0the purges or the steady stream of lies and propaganda churned out from Communist papers during the conflict. (To be fair, their Nationalist opponents\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.asphs.net\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&amp;context=bsphs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">also used propaganda and lies<\/a>.) Stalin\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/NKVD\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NKVD<\/a>\u00a0was not exactly like the Thought Police\u2014the NKVD showed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Andr%C3%A9s_Nin_P%C3%A9rez\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">less patience<\/a>\u00a0with its victims\u2014but they certainly helped inspire Orwell\u2019s secret police.<\/p>\n<p>The Thought Police were not all propaganda and torture, though. They also stem from Orwell\u2019s ideas on truth. During his time in Spain, he saw how power could corrupt truth, and he shared these reflections in his work\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/350bnxW\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/350bnxW\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In short, Orwell\u2019s brush with totalitarianism left him\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=mEgxAJr1REUC&amp;pg=PA258&amp;lpg=PA258&amp;dq=%E2%80%9CThis+kind+of+thing+is+frightening+to+me,+because+it+often+gives+me+the+feeling+that+the+very+concept+of+objective+truth+is+fading+out+of+the+world.+After+all,+the+chances+are+that+those+lies,+or+at+any+rate+similar+lies,+will+pass+into+history&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=sHa3k9NMgq&amp;sig=ACfU3U1wXA_vTYqn4QvULe0KhDEUWkqRYA&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwigjsaS_eflAhXqTN8KHdQPAYYQ6AEwBHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=%E2%80%9CThis%20kind%20of%20thing%20is%20frightening%20to%20me%2C%20because%20it%20often%20gives%20me%20the%20feeling%20that%20the%20very%20concept%20of%20objective%20truth%20is%20fading%20out%20of%20the%20world.%20After%20all%2C%20the%20chances%20are%20that%20those%20lies%2C%20or%20at%20any%20rate%20similar%20lies%2C%20will%20pass%20into%20history&amp;f=false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">worried<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This scared him. A lot. He actually wrote, \u201cThis kind of thing is frightening to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. \u201cThe individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe,\u201d Rudyard Kipling once observed.<\/p>\n<p>The struggle to remain true to one\u2019s self was also felt by Orwell, who\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=IcyGPLqBi60C&amp;pg=PA14&amp;lpg=PA14&amp;dq=No+one,+at+any+rate+no+English+writer,+has+written+better+about+childhood+than+Dickens.+In+spite+of+all+the+knowledge+that+has+accumulated+since,+in+spite+of+the+fact+that+children+are+now+comparatively+sanely+treated,+no+novelist+has+shown+the+same+power+of+entering+into+the+child%E2%80%99s+point+of+view.+I+must+have+been+about+nine+years+old+when+I+first+read+David+Copperfield.+The+mental+atmosphere+of+the+opening+chapters+was+so+immediately+intelligible+to+me+that+I+vaguely+imagined+they+had+been+written+by+a+child.+And+yet+when+one+re-reads+the+book+as+an+adult+and+sees+the+Murdstones,+for+instance,+dwindle+from+gigantic+figures+of+doom+into+semi-comic+monsters,+these+passages+lose+nothing.+Dickens+has+been+able+to+stand+both+inside+and+outside+the+child%E2%80%99s+mind,+in+such+a+way+that+the+same+scene+can+be+wild+burlesque+or+sinister+reality,+according+to+the+age+at+which+one+reads+it.&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Qk5I5HbZUQ&amp;sig=ACfU3U3C5BuRIphxtmaTHQGTBlnjZzLZ0A&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwi708XVhOjlAhUB26wKHSDQBZsQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=smelly&amp;f=false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0about \u201cthe smelly little orthodoxies\u201d that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a &#8220;power of facing unpleasant facts&#8221;\u2014something of a rarity in humans\u2014even though it often hurt him in British society.<\/p>\n<p>In a sense,\u00a0<em>1984\u00a0<\/em>is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"link-2\"><strong>More Prophetic Than He Knew?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>It might be tempting to dismiss Orwell\u2019s book as a figment of dystopian literature. Unfortunately, that\u2019s not as easy as it sounds. Modern history shows he was onto something.<\/p>\n<p>When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stasi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Stasi<\/a>, East Germany\u2019s secret police, had a full-time staff of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what\u2019s frightening is that the organization had almost\u00a0<em>double\u00a0<\/em>that in informants,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwi-verlag.de\/rights\/buch\/father-mother-stasi-my-life-in-the-web-of-the-surveillance-state\/978-3-462-04723-3\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">including<\/a>\u00a0children. And it wasn\u2019t just children reporting on parents;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2015\/jul\/09\/the-spies-who-loved-me-my-dad-the-stasi-agent\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sometimes<\/a>\u00a0it was the other way around.<\/p>\n<p>Nor did the use of state spies to prosecute thoughtcrimes end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, it\u2019s still happening today.\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0recently ran\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/11\/01\/world\/asia\/china-student-informers.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a report<\/a>\u00a0featuring one Peng Wei, a 21-year-old Chinese chemistry major. He is one of the thousands of \u201cstudent information officers\u201d China uses to root out professors who show signs of disloyalty to President Xi Jinping or the Communist Party.<\/p>\n<h4 id=\"link-3\"><strong>The New Thought Police?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>The First Amendment of the US Constitution, fortunately, largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found in\u00a0<em>1984<\/em>, East Germany, and China; but the rise of \u201ccancel culture\u201d shows the pressure to conform to all sorts of orthodoxies (smelly or not) remains strong.<\/p>\n<p>The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in\u00a0<em>1984<\/em>, but the next generation will have to decide if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE\u2019s Dan Sanchez\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/why-your-favorite-youtuber-probably-hasnt-been-canceled\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-toggle=\"popover\" data-original-title=\"\" data-original- target=\"_blank\">recently observed<\/a>\u00a0that many people today feel like they\u2019re \u201cwalking on eggshells\u201d and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a lot of pressure, especially for people still learning the acceptable boundaries of a new moral code that is constantly evolving. Most people, if the pressure is sufficient, will eventually say \u201c2+2=5\u201d just to escape punishment. That\u2019s exactly what Winston Smith does at the end of\u00a0<em>1984<\/em>, after all. Yet Orwell also leaves readers with a glimmer of hope.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeing in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad,\u201d Orwell wrote. \u201cThere was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the world may be mad, but that doesn\u2019t mean you have to be.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>By <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/people\/jon-miltimore\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jon Miltimore<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FEE.org<\/a>\u00a0| Republished with permission<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The views in this article may not reflect editorial policy of The Mind Unleashed.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"themi-after-content_2\" id=\"themi-1591225040\"><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1747048\"> \r\n <\/div> \r\n <script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\"); \r\n <\/script> \r\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Orwell didn\u2019t create the Thought Police out of thin air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41550,"featured_media":76101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-no-sidebar.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2815,27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-76060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinion","8":"category-world-truth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76060"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76104,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76060\/revisions\/76104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themindunleashed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}