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
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