Martin Hanson: When an incontrovertible statement is ‘controversial’

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” George Orwell, Nineteen eighty four

In Two & Two, a Bafta-nominated short film, a male teacher and twelve schoolboys are in a grey, featureless classroom. Via a loudspeaker the headmaster announces that there are going to be changes and that the students must follow all instructions to the letter. The teacher starts the lesson by writing 2 + 2 = 5 on the blackboard. When the boys protest, he orders them to be silent. He then orders the boys to repeat the equation, and when one student raises his hand to say that two plus two is four, the teacher says, "Don't think, you don't have to think," and again tells the boys that the answer is five. 

Guy Hatchard: The Necessity of Kindness

This morning Jacinda Ardern received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, hitting out in her acceptance speech against keyboard warriors spreading disinformation:

“When facts are turned into fiction, and fiction turned into fact, you stop debating ideas and you start debating conspiracy.”

Was she echoing Orwell’s 1984?

Guy Steward: The Dangers of Misinformation and Disinformation

How precious of the mainstream news media to lecture us about the dangers of disinformation and misinformation when their whole modus operandi is along exactly those lines.

I remember when reading the daily newspaper was a pleasure and I’d look forward to it in work breaks, often getting something of interest and keeping articles to read later or do further research on. Over the years the time spent became less and less until in the last six years it went from fifteen minutes to five, then a quick flick through, then a glance at the first page headlines, now barely that. It was both the content and the literary quality that seemed, to me at least, to decrease over time until it just discredited itself or provoked a cringe.

Guy Steward: Free Speech or Loaded Language?

“The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition”, he said. “We’re getting the language into its final shape—the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else.”

- George Orwell, (Nineteen Eighty-Four, London, Secker & Warburg, 1966, p.54).

Our PM has acquired a reputation—or rather reputations—overseas, largely sympathetic and supportive. Her choice of words sometimes gives cause for concern though and has recently earned her a bit of a reputation as the “Don’t talk to your neighbour” PM. Whether extreme speech or just tough love, time will tell, but if your neighbour is fifteen or twenty feet away, then really? you shouldn’t greet them, or talk to them? Or is that not what she meant?

Twenty-three years ago, I wrote a little book entitled Mind Control, the result of a thesis on the subject of cults. It described a suite of ten practices characteristic of cult groups, including the use of fear and intimidation, relationship control, information control, reporting structures, and loaded language. If just some of the practices were present, then it could be called a group with cultic features. If most or all were present, then it was a full-blown cult. In passing I made some parallels with several places around the world, known to all, where it happens on a national scale. I also looked at how, if ex-cultists don’t resolve issues related to those practices, they run the risk of perpetuating them in other contexts.

Mitch Morgan: The Man Who Saw The Future

In 1949 a gentleman named Eric Blair published a book that was destined to open the eyes of the world to techniques employed in the art of social engineering; techniques that were used to control the opinions and actions of citizens who remained in a state of blissful unawareness that their thoughts were being covertly manipulated.

The author adopted the pen-name of George Orwell and his novel entitled ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ remains among the worlds’ best-sellers to this day - and the adjective ‘Orwellian’ has become synonymous with official deception and the falsification of recorded history by a totalitarian state.