American Pie: 1984 And All That
In this powerful and well-argued column John Merchant suggests that George Orwell's visionary novel "1984'', which introduced us to Big Brother, still contains a warning to the United States and Britain. Fear gradually erodes democratic institutions, and the foundations of fear have been put in place in America and Britain.
When George Orwell’s book, “1984” was published in 1949, it was greeted with a mixture of acclaim, skepticism and ridicule. The acclaim mainly was related to its literary merit and insightfulness. The skepticism and ridicule was expressed mostly by people in countries that had not experienced a totalitarian government or a dictatorship in recent history, primarily Britain and America.
The year 1984 seemed far away in 1949, and the UK and US constitutions were considered unassailable. Since then, the USA has experienced McCarthyism and the Nixon era, both of which came close to undermining America’s Constitution.
When the year 1984 finally arrived, the nay-sayers were ready to utter their “I told you so’s,” and Orwell’s hypothesis was again called into question, despite the fact that the term “Big Brother” had become part of the language and was regularly quoted. In the light of events since 9/11, it is becoming clear that Orwell wasn’t wrong, just premature.
For those of us who live in democracies, it is very hard to conceive how dictatorships and totalitarian governments can come into being. How could the Russians allow Stalinism or the Germans embrace Hitler and his Nazi regime? Of course it could be argued that pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Stalin Russia weren’t exactly democracies in the strictest sense, but certainly they were less oppressive than what followed.
Part of the answer is that those governments didn’t gain power overnight. Years of planning and a gradual erosion of democratic institutions laid the foundation for the ultimate seizure of control.
An obvious tactic to gain total power is the use of fear to terrorize the population. Saddam Hussein’s recent government is an example, as is the Taliban era in Afghanistan.
Fear is very persuasive, but how do the protagonists position themselves to neutralize any opposition so that they can launch a campaign of fear? It starts with the creation of national paranoia, followed by changes in the constitution for “The public good.” A fearful and paranoid population is only too ready to be “protected.”
Right now, in America and Britain, the foundations of fear have been put in place, and the stage is set for the transition into totalitarianism. The Patriot Act in the US, and the most recent “Prevention of Terrorism Bill” in Britain, are built on those foundations.
The vast majority of each country’s population has no idea how insidious those policies are. Alarmingly, in the US at least, a significant proportion of good and intelligent people accept the broad statement that reduced freedom and increased government power are for their own good.
An overview of the Patriot Act by Dan McNeil and David Strom of the American Federation of Teachers Legal Department provides the following excerpted insights: “In general, [The Patriot Act] lowers the traditional legal standard the federal government uses to gain access to private information from ‘probable cause’ to something that more closely resembles ‘suspicion.’
They go on to say, “In amending over 15 federal statutes, the Patriot Act expands the authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and law enforcement, to gain access to business records, medical records, educational records, library records and internal communications, including stored electronic data and communication. It also expands the laws governing wire-taps and ‘trap and trace’ phone devices to apply to Internet and electronic communications.”
Section 215: ‘Access to Records Under the Foreign Intelligence Act’ allows an FBI agent to obtain a search warrant for ‘any tangible thing,’ which can include books, records, papers, floppy disks, data tapes and computers with hard drives. It does not require the agent to demonstrate either ‘probable cause,’ the existence of specific facts to support the belief that a crime has been committed, or that the items sought are evidence of a crime.”
Their overview goes on to say that “the FBI is employing campus police on a part-time basis to monitor political and religious activities on campus and investigate students, faculty and staff backgrounds and activities. Campus police cooperating in FBI investigations are prohibited from reporting to the head of the campus police or any other member of the university on their activities.”
There is much more in the same vein, and it does well to note that this commentary only relates to educational institutions. One can only imagine how far the act reaches into the life of the general public.
If one adds to this legislation all the other scrutiny of one’s private life: automated toll booths that log car owners’ movements on the highway, the reporting to the government of certain transactions that financial institutions are required to do, and even the requirement some supermarkets have that people who buy beer must provide a driver’s license that is logged into the check out computer; then it becomes perfectly clear how pervasive “Big Brother” is.
The placebo offered to the citizenry is that these new laws have an ostensibly finite life, but it is well known that laws are seldom rescinded, especially those that add power to authoritarianism. In the UK, the “Terrorism Act of 2000” was replaced by the “Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001” which has now been superseded by the “Prevention of Terrorism Bill.” Each one has had progressively more impact on personal freedom.
Despite President Bush’s statement that “The war on terrorism cannot be won,” terrorism will pass, if only because the terrorists eventually will have no haven, or more hopefully, because the disenfranchised will be empowered and the religiously misguided will discover the true interpretation of their faith. There is also the faint hope that the western democratic nations, principally America, will realize that democracy is not a “one size fits all” doctrine, to be imposed anywhere they see fit.
The real concern is how the western democracies will have been changed by the threat of terrorism, and whether the changes will be reversible once the threat has gone away. Somehow I think not. If the fears and concerns of people like me are realized, then the terrorists truly will have won a resounding victory, and we will be living the lives of those we sought to liberate.
