Celebrate Banned Books Week by reading —or re-reading—George Orwell’s “1984”
Commentary: Before they were called “alternative facts,” Orwell’s 1949 classic described the phenomena of Newspeak and doublethink
By Kristine Brancolini
Every year across the U.S., teachers, librarians and other educators have to fight for the rights of young people to read, think and generally be exposed to new and challenging ideas. The American Library Association records hundreds of attempts annually to have books — many of them part of the canon of great literature — removed from libraries and school curricula on the grounds that they are offensive or divisive.
Attempts to suppress these titles stretch back decades, but this year has brought an interesting twist: demand for many of these same “Banned Books” has sky-rocketed in the months since U.S. Pres. Donald Trump assumed office.
Popular favorites such as 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid’s Tale are selling in record numbers, as are more obscure titles such as Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935), John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).
Each fall, the ALA celebrates the freedom to read challenged books during Banned Books Week, which this year starts on Sunday, Sept. 24. Libraries often hold a “read out,” inviting community members to read from their favorite banned books. This year my choice was easy: 1984 by George Orwell, published in 1949.
The dystopian novel is set in a superstate called Oceania that is perpetually at war. Its ruling class, called the Party, engages in mass surveillance and public manipulation to maintain power and serve the interests of the elite.
The book introduced many enduring concepts such as an omnipresent Big Brother figure and the stamping out of individual ideas through “thought crime.” There are many disturbing congruencies between 1984 and 2017, but I find Trump’s assault on the truth to be the most dangerous. His use of “alternative facts,” cherry picking of scientific evidence, and ever-evolving policy positions parallel 1984’s reality control mechanisms: doublethink and Newspeak.
In 1984, the Party controls language, which in turn shapes reality. The book’s protagonist Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth, which is actually the ministry of propaganda and lies. Smith’s job is to propagate “doublethink,” a type of mental gymnastics that allows the government to manipulate the facts to suit its needs: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.” Doublethink thus produces a flood of deliberate contradictions. The Party slogans are: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Smith helps the Party achieve this doublethink by using a new, simplified language called “Newspeak” and by literally rewriting the past, altering historical sources such as news articles to conform to the government’s predictions and pronouncements. In 1984, facts are malleable, subject to the pronouncements of the Party. 2 + 2 does not always equal 4. Sometimes it’s 5 and sometimes it’s 3.
Similarly, Trump employed a form of Newspeak and doublethink during his campaign that now pervades his entire administration. His favorite method of communication is Twitter, a medium unsuitable for issuing nuanced policy statements due to the 140-character limit. Throughout the campaign Trump tweeted falsehoods and exaggerations.
Then after the election, Trump and Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration audience the largest ever, despite all evidence to the contrary. White House advisor Kellyanne Conway defended Trump’s pronouncement as simply “alternative facts.” As interviewer Chuck Todd pointed out, alternative facts are falsehoods. 2+2 is not 5, no matter how badly the president wishes for magically increased inauguration numbers.
Trump’s assault on science, particularly climate science, also mirrors the Party’s view of science in 1984.
In Newspeak, there is no word for “science” because, “The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles” of the Party’s political philosophy. Sometimes science is accepted and sometimes it is rejected.
“Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy?” an official asks at one point in the book. “The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them.”
Does this sound familiar?
Under the Trump administration, the language of climate science is being systematically removed from all government websites. Government scientists assert that the administration has created a hostile work environment for scientists, in fact, waging a war on science.
In February, Trump appointed Scott Pruitt as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt was an active opponent of the EPA when he served as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Now he is now working in secret to eliminate the agency’s environmental mission, actively undermining the very federal agency he serves—and he is doing it by rejecting science that doesn’t conform to the needs of the fossil fuel industry. In April 2017, the EPA announced that it would be removing climate science data from its website.
Pruitt doesn’t fully deny his war on climate science. Instead he engages in doublethink and Newspeak, saying that by denying sound science and giving polluters a pass, he is taking a “back to basics” approach to running the EPA. This is nonsense of course; the “basics” of the agency are to “protect human health and the environment.” But Pruitt’s first speech to the EPA rank and file was about the need for civility among regulators, whom he says exist to “give certainty to those they regulate” — not to protect the public.
But just as in 1984, the Trump administration only rebels against science when the facts get in the way of its agenda. The U.S. has been experiencing record-breaking hurricanes that many attribute in part to climate change, which has caused the air to become warmer and wetter. The Trump administration accepts the computer modeling that predicts the speed, intensity and paths of the hurricanes; it’s only when those computer models point to global warming as a possible cause that officials suddenly reject that science.
This ability to hold conflicting positions at the same time — and apparently accept both of them — extends to other aspects of Trump’s policy making. For example, he seems to hold simultaneously opposing views on the Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as evidenced by how many times he has contradicted himself and reversed course on the issue. In the announcement of his candidacy in June 2015, Trump vowed to rescind Obama’s executive orders on immigration providing deportation relief to certain youth who were brought to the U.S. illegally through no fault of their own. He repeated this promise at a campaign rally in August 2016. But on other occasions he expressed concern for DACA recipients, saying was “going to work something out” for them and that “they shouldn’t be very worried.”
On Sept. 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of DACA in six months, challenging Congress to act if it wants to save the program. Later the same day, Trump said, “I have a great heart for these folks” and tweeted that if Congress does not pass DACA legislation in time, he will “revisit this issue.” Meanwhile, the “talking points” memo on DACA from the White House urges DACA recipients to “use the time remaining on their work authorizations to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States.”
Does Trump want DACA recipients to be protected or deported? At this point no one knows, including the president, it seems. It’s classic doublethink.
How then can we fight the forces of 1984 in 2017?
The only defense against doublethink is freedom of thought and expression. Although Trump routinely vilifies the media and journalists, our free press and our unfettered access to reliable information sources will be key to surviving the Trump presidency.
Academic librarians have mobilized to reassure our students that we will protect their rights and teach them to recognize “fake news” and fabricated information. Librarians are creating workshops and research assignments, working with teaching faculty to promote essential literacies — information, news, and media — for citizenship in a robust democracy.
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad,” Orwell wrote in the aftermath of World War II as a warning about the rise of authoritarian regimes. Indeed, madness would be to accept doublethink and Newspeak, whether they happen in the form of Tweets, alternative facts, a war on science, or a carousel of contradictory policy positions.
Trump famously does not read, but apparently someone in his administration does. His political career is characterized by the false information and contradictions found in 1984. So let’s celebrate Banned Books Week by reading — or re-reading — 1984 and exercise our freedom to think critically, speak clearly and act justly.
Kristine Brancolini is Dean of the Library at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and co-director of the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL). She is co-author of Enhancing Library and Information Research Skills: A Guide for Academic Librarians, to be published this month by Libraries Unlimited.
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