[Peace-discuss] Poets (here Eric Blair) often get there first...

[C. G. Estabrook]

...In [George] Orwell's 1984, [Emmanuel] Goldstein is the shadowy, 
possibly-fictitious-but-possibly-real former Party official whose betrayals of 
the State, ongoing treason, and array of other incomprehensibly evil acts make 
him, in the lore of State propaganda, the Prime Villain, the Root of all Evil, 
whom Good Citizens blame for all societal evils and on whom they exclusively 
focus their rage.  His image is regularly paraded before the citizenry during a 
Two Minute Hate Session, accompanied by an authoritative narration of his evil, 
and mass, inebriating rage results (see the video version here).  The ultimate 
benefit of this ritual is it enables the citizenry to ignore their own plight 
and the violence and oppression of their own government (political parties use a 
similar process -- endless focus on marginal, hated figures in the other party 
-- to keep fear levels high and party loyalty strong).  Thus can the debate over 
whether Julian Assange should be executed or merely imprisoned for life resume 
among all good people.

Speaking of Emmanuel Goldstein, he was the putative "author" of the Party manual 
published at length in 1984 that describes the Party's means of control and 
manipulation, entitled "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism."  
In the chapter entitled "War Is Peace," one finds what is easily the best essay 
for the 10-year-anniversary religious observance of 9/11 upon which we are about 
to embark:
/
In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, 
and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the 
desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the 
twentieth century. . . .

This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude 
towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, 
war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as 
raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations 
to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and 
burying alive, *are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's 
own side and not by the enemy, meritorious.
*
But in a physical sense war involves *very small numbers of people*, mostly 
highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The 
fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose 
whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses 
which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. . . .

To understand the nature of the present war -- for in spite of the regrouping 
which occurs every few years, *it is always the same war -- one must realize in 
the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive*. . . . The primary 
aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this 
aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of 
the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the 
general standard of living.
*
What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is 
unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the 
Party itself. *Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, 
industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary 
that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are 
fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary 
that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not 
matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is 
possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is 
needed is that a state of war should exist.

The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and 
which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, 
but *the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is 
precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are 
strongest.* In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a 
member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is 
untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is 
either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the 
declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of 
doublethink. Meanwhile *no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his 
mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously,* 
with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. . . .

War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen 
of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign 
languages.*If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that 
they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told 
about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the 
fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might 
evaporate. . .*

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely 
an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose 
horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. 
But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of 
consumable goods, and it *helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a 
hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal 
affair. . . .
*
In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize 
their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight 
against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own 
day they are not fighting against one another at all. _*The war is waged by each 
ruling group against its own subjects*_, and the object of the war is not to 
make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
/
There are certainly people with genuine power who understand exactly how this 
process works and are conscious of the propaganda it entails, and there are many 
ordinary citizens, paying only casual attention to political matters, who 
blindly ingest it.  But it is the high-ranking Inner Party members -- the D.C. 
cadre of think tank "scholars," government and academic functionaries, and 
journalists and pundits who fancy themselves sophisticated political junkies and 
insiders -- who are the True Believers.  They cling to institutions of political 
power and officialdom, plant their careers, self-esteem, self-importance and 
social circles in its belly, and are thus the most incentivized to believe in 
its Rightness and Goodness and the least able to critically assess it.  
Intoxicated with supreme loyalty to the organs of political power and societal 
institutions which support it, they become its most ardent, faithful 
evangelizers.  The more they gather together in their insular royal court realm, 
the more they reinforce each other's trite convictions.

These pseudo-sophisticated, pseudo-intellectual nationalists may "know that this 
or that item of war news is untruthful" or may even know that the entire "war is 
being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones."  But no matter: 
they are Washington's most loyal denizens and thus "never waver for an instant 
in their mystical belief that the war is real" or in the propaganda that 
sustains it.  At the heart of this propaganda -- and of their worldview -- is 
the unquestioning conviction about the unmitigated evil of the State's 
designated Enemies, and of their own Good.  Observe how WikiLekas is now 
discussed, and especially observe the waves of self-praising moralizing over 
this next several days, to see this dynamic in all its glory.

[From /<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html>./]
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