Orwell’s Five Warnings About the Psychology of Totalitarianism Orwell understood totalitarianism’s psychology: unlike dictators who seek wealth and status, totalitarians aim to reshape humanity. They often claim to act “for our own good,” with conscience on their side. After reading Orwell, five lessons stand out: 1. Political correctness can become mind control “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Words frame reality and limit solutions. 2. Doublethink is the hallmark of propaganda “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” When contradictions become acceptable, rational thought collapses. 3. Control the past and you control the future “Who controls the past controls the future.” Rewriting history turns gratitude into guilt and inheritance into theft. 4. You cannot fight for freedom with a shackled mind “Until they become conscious they will never rebel.” Team loyalties replace judgment; challenging the narrative grants permission to ask questions. 5. True power is the power to shape perception “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes…” The goal isn’t mere obedience, but surrendering the ability to distinguish truth from what authority declares true. Orwell’s warning: don’t let it happen—resist arbitrary power by holding to truth, conscience, family, community, faith, and the people you love.
The Three Words Democracy Borrows Democracy is often praised as inherently good, but Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates saw serious flaws. A better view: rule by one, few, or many each has tradeoffs. A healthy society ideally combines a strong leader, a competent elite, and a virtuous citizenry—because, as Thomas Sowell said, “there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” Democracy promises three virtues it can’t guarantee: freedom, wisdom, and consent. **Freedom:** Nozick’s thought experiment shows how slavery can be disguised by changing vocabulary—when power gradually shifts from overt domination to rules voted on by others, at what point is it “freedom”? A society can talk endlessly about freedom while restricting rights through taxes, regulations, and suspensions. **Wisdom:** Socrates doubted democracy produces wisdom. If a voyage were dangerous, you wouldn’t let every passenger vote equally on navigation. Yet political voting gives equal weight regardless of knowledge, inviting manipulation by those skilled in fear, emotion, and flattery. **Consent:** “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” can be an illusion. If the state is treated as “us,” coercion can be reframed as self-government. But representatives don’t truly follow your instructions the way a genuine agent must. Freedom, wisdom, and consent are real virtues—democracy just borrows their language, and the biggest risk is believing that choosing rulers collectively makes the ruled free, wise, and consenting.
On 23 August, the Int’l Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, we remember the victims and their resistance. @UNESCO’s #MoW Latin America & the Caribbean includes 18 inscriptions from 24 countries, keeping memories of slavery alive for future generations. https://t.co/olFEwYtRd3 #SlaveTrade #Abolition #UNESCO #LA #CA
How life manifests itself as an insoluble contradiction. Slavery, the desire for dominance in relations between men and women, the commission of murders, violence and criminal acts occur as a result of an irresistible desire on the part of the perpetrators. The desire on the part of the victims and their attempts to counteract them turn out to be unattainable desires. Violence is a manifestation of sadism. It is caused and its level is determined by the level of the male sex hormone testosterone. It leads to violence on the one hand, and on the other hand determines the possibility of fertilization of female individuals and the continuation of life by creating offspring. OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A FUNDAMENTALLY INSOLVABLE CONTROVERSY THAT AFFECTS AND DETERMINES THE WHOLE OF LIFE. PEOPLE CANNOT BELIEVE, UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT THIS FACT. THEY DEEPLY BELIEVE THAT CONTROVERSIES ARE NOT INSOLVABLE AND THAT THERE ARE SOLUTIONS FOR THEM. THEY ARE ENDLESSLY DISCUSSED, TRYING TO APPLY THEMSELVES THROUGHOUT LIFE AND THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE EXISTENCE OF HUMANITY. And all this turns out to be vain efforts, ineffective, fruitless, fruitless. The ingenious explanation, opening everyone's eyes to the truth is the understanding that THESE RELATIONS ARE ALWAYS ON THE EDGE OF CONFLICT, THAT THEY ARE TOLERANCE OF THE INTOLERABLE. All attempts to overcome slavery are illusory. Attempts to create a socialist and communist society, to present slavery as part of family relations, as paternalism, that it can be replaced by democracy, that slaves can become wage workers and their interests can be effectively defended by protest actions, strikes, and trade unions are fruitless delusions. Man with his whole nature strives for slave ownership. Slave owners are sadists who kill slaves in case of disobedience. They have power over their lives and this creates in them a sense of superiority, of a chosen higher caste, a natural selection of the smartest, the most capable. eternal holders of sacred power given by God, a manifestation of higher justice and harmony. This is a delusion that completely blinds the mind. The truth is that slave ownership stems from cannibalism and they cannot realize this, understand that this is the truth. In Bulgaria, the slave-owners are called chorbadjii-izednicy, that is, cannibals, and this is not idle talk, but a very accurate definition of things. Slaves are masochists, weak, helpless to defend themselves. They are completely blocked by the power structures of the slave owners. In antiquity, they were usually soldiers, punished to be slaves because they tried to kill the slave owners. Relations between men and women are also on the verge of conflict, tolerance of the intolerable. They have a completely unacceptable, contradictory nature and this is an objective fact. The similarity that they are the same people, regardless of the different sex, is an illusion, self-deception. They are totally different and their relations are based on reconciliation or dominance, tyranny of one sex over the other. Violent, criminal manifestations have the same nature as slavery and relations between the sexes. All attempts to eradicate them are fruitless. They cannot even be limited.
I don't think that wars, slavery, conflict result from human nature, but from our incentives. Human nature is forged by its incentives, and follows them due to evolutionary pressures. Individual motivation resists the environment, but over generations, motivation is adaptive. #HumanNature #Incentives #ConflictResolution #Nospecificcountrycodesarementionedinthetweet.
Denk niet dat mensen minder naar kunst talen zodra het leven "ongewoon" wordt, zoals in de voorbije 6 jaren. Juist in woelige tijden maakt kunst zichtbaar wat in de waan van de dag verborgen blijft. George Orwells' "1984" en zijn vernietigende satire op totalitarisme, de surveillancestaat en het versluierende Newspeak: "War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength", groeide sinds de coronajaren uit tot hét referentieboek van de wakkere beweging. Desondanks hoor ik collega's vaker discussiëren over de coronacommissie of de zoveelste boze podcast van Jorn Luka, niet over de nieuwe roman van Theodor Holman of de verfilming van Bret Easton Ellis’ fascinerende thriller Scherven (volgende maand op Disney+). Dat is zonde (understatement) Omdat kunst vaak veel duidelijker laat zien wat macht met mensen doet dan de zoveelste politieke analyse. Daarom schrijf ik iedere week, alweer bijna 4 jaar, vaak tegen beter weten in, anderhalve pagina cultuur voor @deanderekrant #kunstencultuur #georgeorwell #1984 #corona #kunst #cultuur #1984
A high level Westminster Committee heard; There are immigration intelligence gaps north/south. Organised crime plays a role in facilitating irregular migration. Biometrics taken in the south are not shared in the north. Exploitation is growing in human trafficking/slavery. https://t.co/xcDFmNHBN1 #Immigration #HumanTrafficking #OrganisedCrime #GB #US
Abortion “Care.” Orwell would be proud. War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom. Killing babies is “Care.” #ProChoice #AbortionDebate #SpeechFreedom #Nocountrycodesfound.
African and Caribbean nations have called for formal apologies and reparations from countries benefiting from the transatlantic slave trade during a conference in Ghana, amid a backdrop of a recent UN resolution recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity and endorsing a comprehensive reparations plan. #Reparations #TransatlanticSlavery #Apology
African and Caribbean nations have united in a call for formal apologies and reparations from countries that profited from the transatlantic slave trade, following a three-day conference in Ghana that endorsed a 19-point reparations plan, which includes debt relief and restitution of cultural artifacts, while highlighting the need for acknowledgment of the historic injustices suffered by enslaved individuals. #ReparatoryJustice #SlaveryApology #TransatlanticSlaveTrade
Ghana has welcomed Pope Leo XIV's apology for the Catholic Church's historical role in slavery, calling it an act of moral courage that is vital for truth, justice, and reconciliation in light of the country's painful past as a hub for the transatlantic slave trade. #PopeApology #SlaveryHistory #MoralCourage
