MotionTwelveBeeSix t1_it84jmo wrote
The book isn’t about the world or its politics, if you expect more than random out-of-context snippets of dubious veracity you’re in for a disappointment.
By_your_command t1_it85fwz wrote
It’s 100% about its politics.
MotionTwelveBeeSix t1_it87cl7 wrote
It’s absolutely not, there are no politics in the western sense present, the absence of which is the entire point of the novel. The Party is a faceless monolith with no real ideology, despite its communist roots, beyond self-preservation. Politics implies internal conflict, and the Party would never allow such to exist in any visible sense. Probably the best analogue is the CCP.
Instead, the emphasis is on manipulation of truth, and the horrific abuses such control can enable and require. Oceania’s design as, essentially, Stalinist allows it to act as an indictment of both left and right wing governments and the only “politics” present, Ie the war/alliance with Eurasia is purposefully absurd and shown to demonstrate that politics themselves are a fraud.
NylonStrung t1_it8j5k9 wrote
That's an interesting way to put it, since it's often referred to as a "political novel". And it is, in some sense, but maybe its core theme is "anti-political". I don't want to directly quote from the text (no spoilers), but one character essentially says just that: the party believes in nothing but the pursuit of power. There's no ideals, no vision, nothing that makes for a political project. Just control.
MotionTwelveBeeSix t1_it8jywr wrote
Exactly, which if anything makes it even more poignant. Depoliticization of the population is a driving strength of the worlds most powerful authoritarian regimes. While I’m sure they’d love to have everyone take their party line, it’s enough to sow doubt that anything whatsoever is actually true. Depoliticized people will still pay taxes and they’re a lot less likely to get funny idealistic ideas about revolution than patriots.
NylonStrung t1_it9f6s6 wrote
I'd suggest that depolitisisation of the population is a phenomenon in most modern states, even outside of the obviously authoritarian ones. Whether as an actual strategy (e.g. pioneer of information warfare, Post-Soviet Russia, where nothing at all is really "real"), or simply as a by-product of the modern capitalist system, which cleverly creates atomised individuals who necessarily find thinking politically to be difficult (almost every state, and they're only slightly less propagandistic).
Right, looks like I'm reading 1984 again. You've inspired me. :P
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