{"id":268704,"date":"2023-05-11T05:55:29","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T05:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=268704"},"modified":"2023-05-13T05:46:28","modified_gmt":"2023-05-13T05:46:28","slug":"ireland-plays-its-orwellian-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=268704","title":{"rendered":"Ireland plays its Orwellian role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish Savant \u2013 irishsavant.net May 9, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The term Orwellian has been debased by over-use and misunderstanding. It\u2019s come to represent anything that\u2019s futuristic and unpleasant. In actual fact Orwell\u2019s understanding of where our world was heading was infinitely more profound than that. Here\u2019s what I understand by the term.<\/p>\n

All power devolves to the State<\/strong>: Competing intuitions like religion, family,\u00a0free trade unions\u00a0etc. are suppressed. Control of\u00a0citizens\u2019 access to information is micro-managed down to the lowest level of detail and reinforced by endless brainwashing.<\/p>\n

Freedoms are systematically reduced until only those\u00a0approved by the State are allowed.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0State control is literally everywhere as exemplified by the\u00a0\u2018Big Brother is watching you\u2019<\/em>\u00a0motif. Whereas non-Orwellian tyrannies concentrated on controlling physical opposition, Orwell envisaged a time when actual thought would be controlled, hence the Thought Police.\u00a0 Offenders, the lucky ones, would be sent to \u2018re-education\u2019 centres for reprogramming.<\/p>\n

The application of Doublethink and Newspeak<\/strong>: This is represented be the legendary Ministry of War being designated Ministry of Peace, control\u00a0called support, \u00a0lies and propaganda disseminated by the Ministry for Truth\u00a0and so on. Many people today think (to the extent that they think\u00a0of it at all) that this device serves merely to sugarcoat the unpleasant.\u00a0 It does, but\u00a0it also operates at the deepest psychological level, serving to atomise society,\u00a0undermine\u00a0self-confidence\u00a0making individuals easy prey for a powerful State.\u00a0 I read somewhere of experiments with rats where the murine equivalent of Doublethink literally lead to some rats starving themselves to death.<\/p>\n

Rewriting of history<\/strong>: \u201cHe who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>The more you reflect on Orwell\u2019s words the more you appreciate their wisdom. Germany presents a perfect example, having been assigned total responsibility for the horrors in both World Wars. This travesty has been applied to extract massive \u2018compensation\u2019 from the unfortunate German workers and continues, by invoking\u00a0the Nazi\u00a0 and Hitler slurs to denigrate anything the new masters disapprove of.<\/p>\n

These principles were of course actively implemented in the former USSR and its satellites. But now the EUSSR, this time in the form of its Irish vassal state, sees the Orwellian apotheosis\u00a0embodied in proposed new\u00a0legislation, described <\/a>by The Irish Slimes<\/em>, in what\u2019s almost a parody of Orwellian DoubleSpeak as \u201cHate crime and speech legislation to protect freedom of expression. Bill affords \u2018robust safeguards\u2019 for artistic and political discourse and offers ways to deal with offensive online content<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course the legislation will do, and is intended to do, the exact opposite. Its terms are so broad and vague as to make virtually anything the authorities don\u2019t like an indictable offence. Innocent intent is not a defense. Nor is truth. Nor is fair comment on true facts. Publication in the public interest and for the public benefit is not a defense. Opinion expressed in good faith is not a defense. Responsible journalism (remember that?) is not a defense.<\/p>\n

Orwell smiles grimly from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irish Savant reflects on proposed new Hate Crime and Hate Speech legislation in Ireland, which is Orwellian in every sense of the term<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":196023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268705,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268704\/revisions\/268705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/196023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}