Words that control people: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

While I was reading “1984” novel from George Orwell, I couldn’t ignore three phrases that I read, and I have kept them on my mind till then. I refer to:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

These three statements are so powerful and yet contradictory, illogical and controversial. That’s why it provoked an impact on me, because I couldn’t understand at first, but the more I read, the more they made sense to me.

To start with, it’s necessary to know the power that slogans and propagandas have in a totalitarian regime. Slogans are important in this system because they promote its ideology and they also are shown to be stick on the people’s mind in order to not forget what it is supposed to be thought, as a consequence, slogans is the weapon to control people in order to not provoke a rebellion.

In the case of “1984”, this slogan fits well and it’s in concordance with the power that the Party has as head of the country, this means the power over people’s mind, since the Party wants to people think as they believe it is correct, so they dictate people what and how to think, in other words, “the idea of the slogan is to convince the citizens that what they want, is what they already have” (Echo).

WAR IS PEACE. Oceania is in constant war, but Winston, the main character, doesn’t believe in a 100% that this is a fact, he is not sure that this is happening since he think that the Party uses war as a method to get people afraid and it is a way of oppression, because people truly believe that their continent is the winner of this long war in order to strength the trust on the Party, so people “think” they are in peace since they feel they are protected by the Party and the only way to be in peace is war. Also, through war the Party promotes patriotism to the country and devotion to its leaders. However, people believe that this is normal, because it’s so constant, that they used to live in that way.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. The phrase changes the way of how people see things, since freedom is the opposite of slavery, but the meaning of these concepts are changed. The Party brainwashes the masses in order to they thing that liberty is unacceptable since it slaved people to their vices. For instance, to feel pleasure having sex, since this is a type of freedom that is not accepted by the Party, so it is forbidden to have sex because their wild feelings can dominate them.

The same thing happens with IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Ignorance is the maximum expression of control, since from the ignorance, people believe everything that the Party communicates them. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, which is where the documents are modified in order to keep people ignorant through false facts. Even although people suffer from misery, poverty and shortage, they accept these things because they don’t know another reality. Only by this, people couldn’t rebel against their leaders.

Nevertheless, this slogan is not far from our reality today.

In the case of the first statement, North America uses this idea to support its interventions in the Arab countries in order to “prevent” a confrontation, but USA already confronts them.

On the other hand, the system that our society is based on promotes freedom. However, our global economy of free market makes us slaves of it, since the marketing conditions people to generate a necessity and need things that we don’t really need makes us slaves.

Moreover, I relate the last sentence of the slogan with the ignorance promoted by television. Media controls what we see on the news. We don’t know what is really happening in the world because the information given is erroneous or wrong, or it shows just one side which is the side that people who control media want us to see. But we don’t question ourselves about what we are seeing or if the information is false, accepting everything as truth.

As a conclusion, when George Orwell created this slogan for his novel, he visualized how society was going to end and he wasn’t far away from the reality we live, but we hardly see how things really are.

REFERENCES

Echo, Paul. Paul Echo Island Chang. 24 May 2013. 17 November 2014. <http://paulechoislandchang.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/literary-analysis-essay-1984-by-george-orwell/>.

Light, Alexander. Humans are free. 2 January 2013. 17 November 2014. <http://humansarefree.com/2013/01/what-means-war-is-peace-freedom-is.html>.