The Revolution is being televised; We just don’t know it
I’m sure that even, at least in passing, you have heard of the book “1984" by George Orwell. A book so influential a recent U.K backed reported flagged it as a trigger for, and quote, “Far Right Extremism” which if you know anything about the book this is deeply ironic, but also shows the fear of world governments over the power of such ideas presented. There is one main concept in the book that I find deeply intriguing, which is the idea of being a “Thought Criminal”. The book presents this concept to be a person who is thinking, or even simply considering ideas which do not match the dominant hegemony of the ruling state. In this case INGSOC, a party presented in the Michael Radford's film adaptation brilliantly released in 1984, as a NAZI esque authoritarian regime. But why is any of this of interest?
This is important because I feel that we are moving towards this eventual future, a lot quicker than many may believe. It is now irrefutable that at least the American, Australian and British governments had, and potentially still has Big Brother surveillance systems monitoring its citizens, for example the work of American born CIA whistle-blower Edward Snowden reveals this. Snowden who worked for the CIA from 2006 up until 2009, and leaked the existence of a previously unclassified secret network of wide ranging information gathering tools. Snowden revealed that this network of information gathering was being used in co-operation with telecoms companies, to create a Big Brother type base of extensive information without the knowledge of the individual. Which on its own is particularly Orwellian and no new concept to readers of 1984, what's even more worrying is the reaction of world governments to basically EX-communicate Snowden for his findings, proceeding to in June 21, 2013, unseal charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, following which the Department of State revoked his passport. The treatment of Snowden's work, alongside more recent events are what makes this a cause for major concern, let me explain.
Elon Musk becomes the owner and CEO of Twitter on October 27, 2022, after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion, this is important due to Musk revealing information in what is now know as the “Twitter Files”. These documents show that information was being “Blacklisted” from natural dissemination and hidden away from the top of search results and wont go onto the trending tab, therefore acting as a form of censorship of views which didn't align with the views of Twitters inner circle at the time. These Blocked tweets were not of just some random Twitter wind up merchant, US journalist Bari Weiss provided with screenshots by Twitter’s new head of safety Ella Irwin, evidence of three influential conservative accounts in the US were put on different blacklists. Now, no matter the political leaning, I think we can all agree that the government censoring information is no way to improve discourse, which is only bringing our society and now global village closer to a 1984 situation.
Unfortunately, this growth of mass surveillance and governmental involvement in censoring ideas is certainly not a western centric problem, this is truly global. For example, the Chinese Communist Party are making monumental strides in the race to destroy its citizens liberties through its “Social Credit” system which demolishes lives based upon loyalty to the government. The system is currently only being trialled in a few smaller regions of China, (although not for long) and it gives a person and their family a grading based on how good of a citizen they are, basically how obedient to the government they are which reminds me of a certain book. Similarly to 1984 there are, arguably not so extreme, punishments for receiving a low grade such as difficulty purchasing travel tickets around the country and restricting other liberties such as internet speeds.
Why do I refer to these examples as a “Revolution”?
Well I do refer to the aforementioned examples as the evidence of a revolution, but in a less positive optimistic sense. The development of government involvement, or maybe just the uncovering, around the world is in my opinion a definite revolution but a revolution of growing authoritarian states with the complete lack of interest in protecting liberties of their citizens. With the Snowden case, the American government all just exiling Snowden for revealing governments abuse of their position of power, and the scariest thing is that it is being televised. All the information presented, all the case studies are publicly available and at some point have all been mainstream news.
The revolution is being televised, we just don't know it.
