PROPAGANDA AND NAZI GERMANY

"Ever since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken a tremendous interest in propagandist activity. I saw that the Socialist - Marxist organizations mastered and applied this instrument with astounding skill. And I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown to the bourgeois parties."

The quote above is not from George Orwell. It is from a book written by a man who has had tremendous, negative, influence on the world. A man named Adolf Hitler.

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At the beginning of his political career, Hitler witnessed the power of propaganda on the citizens of Russia.
As he rose on the political ladder, Hitler schemed possible ways of controlling the citizens of Germany and swaying them towards the idea of Nazi Germany.

During WWII, Hitler admitted that he learned much from the enemy (the allies) about the use of propaganda.
but as Hitler and his propagandist Joseph Goebbels collaborated to convince the masses of his ethics, Hitler used propaganda is such a way that would be deemed despicable by the allies. Hitler would use lies and deceit to convince everyone that what he was doing was right and he was very aggressive and thorough at justifying his means;

"The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blase young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I mean is to convince the masses. But the masses are slow-moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them." 

This quote is another excerpt from Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My War). This quote summarizes the heavy use of propaganda to influence the masses. By constantly giving a message, over and over and over, eventually the masses will believe it is true. This is a re-occurring theme in 1984. If a lie is repeated, it eventually becomes truth. This was the case in Hitler's Germany. But most importantly, this is a case in the totalitarian society of Oceana in 1984. 

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF 1984

1984

 Originally written as a vision of George Orwell's brilliantly imagined future, 1984 is a dystopian style novel written in 1949. Orwell incorporated many of his viewpoints in this novel, and it is considered to be his masterpiece, even outdoing the allegory Animal Farm.
1984 is the story of one man's rebellion against a totalitarian party. Winston Smith, a man who feels unsatisfied, unjustly treated, but most of all lonely, becomes guilty of the most devious of crimes. Thoughtcrime. Winston Smith lives in one of three super-states; Oceania. At any given moment, one of the superstates is at war with another, and allied with another. Winston works at one of the departments of the Party (the governing group in 1984), called the Ministry of Truth, which is ironically concerned with lies and propaganda. But the most difficult ideas of 1984 have not even been discussed yet. In the society of Oceana, you are constantly under surveillance from the thought police. The thought police control your actions; anything you do that is unsatisfactory to the party will imminently lead to your disappearance, or as the people of Oceania say "vaporized". A smile when a smile is not wanted, a frown when a frown is not needed, are just two examples of actions that can lead to vaporization. In 1984, Winston Smith follows these ethics perfectly, but still falls victim to thoughtcrime in the end. In Oceania, the Party is divided into three parts, Outer Part, Inner Party, and Proletarians.

A picture of the structure of the Party.

The Inner Party is the highest caste; besides the thought police and Big Brother, who control everything. The Outer Class is what Winston belongs to, and would be considered the middle class. The proletarians, who make up the highest percentage of Oceana, are not controlled by the Party, but are controlled by what the Party provides them with, whether it be the lottery, cheap music, pornography, or any other form of distraction. This will be addressed in another article.

This may have been a very brief explanation of the complexity in the dystopian society of 1984, but it is necessary to move on to the main portion of my blog, which is propaganda. The truth behind Orwell's warning against totalitarianism will be revealed in future posts, but for now...


IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Why is this blog called Thou Art?

THOU ART

By now you may be wondering why this blog is called Thou Art. It is not a big deal to do with propaganda, but I found it a very significant yet subtle part of the book. After Winston has been captured and confessed to thoughtcrime, he is changed. O'Brien, who he trusted before, controls him through pain and torture, and bores into him the deeper principles of the Party. As he related to him what the Party was and how it functioned, he says something important about the infallibility of the party.

"O'Brien smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou art". No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean."

As you can see, the point of the Party is complete, perfect, equality, where you are not a person, but you are the party. Thou art the party. By succumbing to the propaganda and using doublethink, like it tells you to do, you become orthodox, unconscious, thoughtless. This is what the Party wants. The Party cannot and will not change if their are no individuals in the Party. The Party will last as long as it is the only thing on earth. 

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU - Repeated propaganda.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

Imagine walking down an avenue. Everywhere you look, you see the sign above. And every time you see it, you know that it is true. Every where you go you know that you are being scrutinized. Every action you do, every word you speak, is seen and heard by the thought police, who, in essence, is Big Brother. Orwell uses the constant image of Big Brother to represent repeated propaganda; that is, something that is seen so often that it is considered a fact. Big Brother is such and important figure in the novel, that Orwell addresses him almost immediately in the first chapter of the book;

"On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. it was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran."(Orwell, Chapter 1)

Similar to Nazi Germany's propaganda? The issue of the mass production of propaganda is emphasized very often by Orwell, through Big Brother and another form of propaganda: telescreens.

A telescreen keeps and eye on Winston's room as it spews Party propaganda from the Ministry of Peace in the fil adaption of 1984.

Telescreens watch over everyone in Oceania at all times. They can never be turned off and they spew a never ending supply of lies; the prediction's of goods outputs that have failed but are changed to be true, battles won by Oceania that have never actually happened, and predictions for a never war that will never end. Always a voice is speaking, always an eye is watching. You are never free. But that is a privilege because...


FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

CONTROLLING THE PAST, CONTROLLING THE PRESENT, CONTROLLING THE FUTURE - The controlling factor of propaganda.

In 1984, the Party is in complete control. The Party will never not be in control. The reason for this almost mythical power lies in the two most powerful slogans of the party, one of them being the quote pictured above. But what does this quote mean in 1984?

Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, the department responsible for propaganda and replacement of the past. Replacing the past is simpler then you would think. The workers find a flaw in the party, fix it, and erases all recorded evidence of that flaw.

"The Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April."(Orwell, Chapter 4) 

By controlling the present, the Party can change the past to whatever they want it to be. Nobody can prove they were wrong on anything, because all evidence proves they were right. But that leads to the question of a persons memory, and whether they know it to be true because they themselves experienced it. To suppress this thoughtcrime, the Party uses a very contradicting slogan;

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH