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on the reach of authoritarians
Aug. 10th, 2021 01:09 pmthe story about the Arkansas governor trying to do takesy-backsies and asking people to wear masks, and conservatives turning on him for doing so, does reveal that George Orwell's 1984 had one unrealistic part.
A key feature of the farcical authoritarian regime was its ability to not just get away with contradictions, but to command the public's memory. For example, Oceania was one of three global superpower nations, and the state's demand for loyalty was justified by its perpetual war with one of the other two. In the beginning the narrator describes that the "official truth" is that they were always at war with one of them, but he's pretty sure they used to be at war with the other one. And this was farcically demonstrated when there was a big speech going on and the target of the perpetual war changed, right in the middle of it, and the entire country just fell in line, turned on a dime.
In reality, authoritarians' control over the people does not extend to reversing on their own propaganda. If a leader comes to power by working the people into a froth over some issue, then forevermore his support from the people will depend entirely on his ability to maintain that froth. Indeed, such a leader would be forbidden to eliminate, neutralize, or even mitigate the threat.
when Trump spoke to liberals in his 2016 campaign, he insisted that all this immigration stuff wouldn't harm the good hard-working ones, he just wanted the bad ones. But what if that weren't a lie? Honestly, what do you think would have happened if like, in the middle of 2018, he'd held one of his rallies and announced "we rounded up a lot of illegals, but we figured out which ones are the bad ones, we're letting the rest of them go and reuniting them with their families, and we'll get them on a path to citizenship." How do you think the crowd would have reacted? Would they have cheered, gone and called their liberal relatives and said "see, I told you not to worry?" Or would they have shouted him down, called him a traitor, and turned on him?
A key feature of the farcical authoritarian regime was its ability to not just get away with contradictions, but to command the public's memory. For example, Oceania was one of three global superpower nations, and the state's demand for loyalty was justified by its perpetual war with one of the other two. In the beginning the narrator describes that the "official truth" is that they were always at war with one of them, but he's pretty sure they used to be at war with the other one. And this was farcically demonstrated when there was a big speech going on and the target of the perpetual war changed, right in the middle of it, and the entire country just fell in line, turned on a dime.
In reality, authoritarians' control over the people does not extend to reversing on their own propaganda. If a leader comes to power by working the people into a froth over some issue, then forevermore his support from the people will depend entirely on his ability to maintain that froth. Indeed, such a leader would be forbidden to eliminate, neutralize, or even mitigate the threat.
when Trump spoke to liberals in his 2016 campaign, he insisted that all this immigration stuff wouldn't harm the good hard-working ones, he just wanted the bad ones. But what if that weren't a lie? Honestly, what do you think would have happened if like, in the middle of 2018, he'd held one of his rallies and announced "we rounded up a lot of illegals, but we figured out which ones are the bad ones, we're letting the rest of them go and reuniting them with their families, and we'll get them on a path to citizenship." How do you think the crowd would have reacted? Would they have cheered, gone and called their liberal relatives and said "see, I told you not to worry?" Or would they have shouted him down, called him a traitor, and turned on him?
