“The freedom to say that two plus two make four”

No amount of coercion can make the equation add up to five

“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’‘
”Four.”

“And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?”
”Four.”

The word ended in a gasp of pain.

- 1984 by George Orwell

In George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984, “the party” (meaning, the government) could not and would not tolerate independent thought from the proletariat. To do so would break the illusion under which the proles lived, and could put the party’s power at risk. If we learned nothing else from Covid-19, it is that there are many in our government, much like Orwell’s party, who do not want you thinking for yourself, and that there are many more who are, much like Orwell’s proles, incapable of thinking for themselves.

We saw the party in action around the world. A perfect example was New Zealand’s now former Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, who crowed that:

I want to send a clear message to the New Zealand public. We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily. You can trust us as a source of that information. You can also trust the director-general of health and the Ministry of Health for their information. Do feel free to visit it anytime to clarify any rumor you may hear. COVID19.govt.nz. Otherwise, dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.  (emphasis mine)

She went on in a later speech at the U.N. to say that governments needs to take a role in dispelling misinformation and disinformation. In other words, it’s up to governments to tell their people what is “true,” what information to believe. You might think, “well, that’s some crazy lady on the other side of the world. That’s not America where the First Amendment protects our right to say and believe as we choose.” If you think that, you are gravely mistaken. Two plus two equals five.

Not all aspiring autocrats are so overt as Ardern in their ambitions. There have been plenty of American tin-pot tyrants scheming more covertly, as has been uncovered through the publication of collections of documents such as the Twitter files, which revealed government coercion of a tech company to push a narrative and stifle dissent. More recently, hearings regarding Facebook have shown similar abusive government arm-twisting of private industry to suppress “unacceptable” ideas and to promulgate the government’s authorized agitprop. Two plus two equals five.

While such machinations certainly pre-date Covid, they have never been more evident than since. The ability to question the “official narrative” became unacceptable. To question the origins of Covid made you a conspiracy theorist. To deny that masks could stop the spread made you a grandma-killer. To reject the experimental jabs made you responsible for the propagation of the virus, because, as the president said, “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” There was no room for rejecting the sanctioned storyline, and this sentiment was so strong that the government moved to create within the Department of Homeland Security a “Disinformation Governance Board,” something even the Wall Street Journal labeled, in Orwellian 1984 terminology, Biden’s “Ministry of Truth.” This department, had it not been cancelled before it could get started, was allegedly going to be tasked with countering misinformation. Two plus two equals five.

Moving this direction is fraught with so many problems and raises so many questions. What happened when people went along with just “trust the experts”? Who determines what is misinformation or disinformation? What dictatorial body decides the information someone is posting has the potential to lead to the radicalization of others? Do you really want someone else doing your thinking for you?

Yet with the media joining arms with the party in pressing the official messaging, they succeeded in turning the proles against each other. The party in 1984 had an organization called “the Spies.” The Spies had “no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it…it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals.” Sound like anyone you know? How many not only took to social media to condemn those who went against the crowd? How many unfriended people over it?

But let’s move beyond just Covid nonconformists. How about gender ideology? Boys can be girls and girls can be boys, we’re told. So desperate are they to hold on to this fairy tale that some states are trying to pass laws making it illegal to address someone using pronouns based on that person’s biological sex. Teachers already have been suspended or released from employment for failing to address students using the students’ “preferred pronouns.” Why? Why must those who think critically, who accept actual science, be punished for acknowledging reality rather than capitulating to a harmful, flighty fantasy? There is a reason, but let’s look at one more: election deniers!

Whether or not you believe the process or outcome of the 2020 election was legitimate, no one should deny another the right to their opinion. No one got upset with Al Gore contesting the 2000 election. No one threatened Hilary Clinton with jail for (wrongfully) claiming the 2016 election was not only stolen from her but that Trump was a foreign agent, not to mention her campaign paying to fabricate a false file on her opponent. Is that not election interference? Make no mistake - Trump’s trials are not about Trump. sidebar: for the record, I am neither a Trump fan nor a never-Trumper. I believe his “America-first” attitude and perspective were absolutely proper for any elected American government official; however, I believe, along with some good policy decisions, he made many horrible, and unconstitutional, mistakes. Now back to our story… Like I said, Trump’s trials are not about Trump (except in that the Democrats don’t want him to run again); it is about us. It is about making sure anyone who would question the motives or means by which the party garners power is silenced and brought into submission. Therein lies the reason for controlling the information - controlling the people.

This was the reason the party controlled the information in 1984 - keep the proles under control. Information is used to control in two ways: to shape thought and to distract. Shaping thought is accomplished through censorship we’ve seen in spades. Censoring ideas that contradict the mandated message extinguishes individuality and reason. During Covid, any opinion that did not fall in line with the official narrative was squashed. Ardern made clear the reason for this in her speech to the U.N. when she intimated:

how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble?

How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists?

How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?

All this translates to asking, “how do we control the people if we do not control the information?” Messaging about the climate, the economy, elections, gender, racism, “constitutional rights”, and so much more is manipulated in order to manipulate the masses. This is a reason government has been interfering with social media, why they have captured the main stream media, and why they want to censor opposing thought. All of this is for control. Such a system does not end well for the proles. Are you going to capitulate and say that two plus two equals five, as O’Brien attempted through torture to persuade Winston his four fingers were five? Or will you stand firm on the fact that two plus two equals four, and your freedom to say so, no matter the amount of attempted coercion? If you prefer to accept that two plus two equals five, prepare yourself for the fulfillment of O’Brien’s prediction: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’”

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Footnote: if you have not already, I highly recommend reading Orwell’s 1984. You will be amazed at how much of what he wrote is playing out in the world today.