Doublethink

What is Doublethink?

Have you ever read George Orwell's novel 1984? People tend to think that complete surveillance is the means the party uses to uphold it's power. But they have another tool I believe to be much more powerful: Doublethink. It's the ability to accept two contradicting facts as part of one reality. Example: A party-member plans an attack on a facility which is to be blamed on an imaginary enemy. Because of Doublethink he can accept the fact that he planned the attack without doubting that the enemy who supposedly did it exists. Sounds weird, doesn't it? But if you apply it to reality, it gets even scarier.

Meet Condoleezza

Some students asked her whether waterboarding is torture. She starts off a long explanation how everyone was ordered not to use torture. Student's answer: "Ok. So is waterboarding torture?" And her reply is, that they were ordered not to use torture, so their orders were by definition not orders to torture someone. Sounds weird? It's Doublethink! Accepting the fact that she gave the order to torture while knowing her orders included torture.

Now, I am not a big activist for enemy combattants (I get a lot of hate for that here in Germany), so if torture was a means needed to fight whatever the USA fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, so be it. Just the strain of thought visible in this little dialogue with Condoleezza is disturbing. Seen Nixon/Frost? "If the President does it, then it's not illegal!"

China and Doublethink

No, I'm not gonna criticise the Chinese Government. I'll let the European Commissioner for Media, Mrs. Viviane Reding do the talk:

"A blocking of certain content in the internet is completely unacceptable for the European Union!"

As you might know, China is installing an addition to their "Great Firewall," enabling the government to block internet users from watching porn on the internet (Got no numbers here, but I bet the orders for cable internet fell rapidly ever since the announcement... CLICK). Well, that's her opinion. But funny thing that a European Comissioner tries to influence a far-away country in Asia before looking at her own domain - Europe. Sweden censors the internet for Swedes (afaik). Denmark does. Norway too. But China is to be criticised... That's classic Doublethink: Censoring is evil. But not, if we do it ourselves!

Report Post