Why Fictional Dystopias Do Not Prevent Real Ones (Part 1)

Why Orwell's warning fell on deaf ears

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Recently, an all-too-familiar act of violence perpetrated against white children resulted in several weeks of unrest in the United Kingdom. An African teenager (who was born in Wales) entered a children’s dance studio in Southport, Merseyside and randomly stabbed to death three young girls and maimed a dozen other people. In the ensuing days, white Britons took to the streets, fed up with crimes being inflicted upon their children by those with migrant backgrounds and the anti-white double standards of the British government and media when it comes to interracial crimes.

After the protests turned to riots and resulted in clashes with police and predominantly Muslim counter protesters, the UK government cracked down on the “far right”, putting an end to the unrest. As of the writing of this essay, hundreds of white Brits have been arrested and summarily charged, convicted, and sentenced for their participation in the demonstrations or even for posts on social media in support of them.

The contrast between the British establishment’s reaction to the BLM riots of 2020 verses those of this past month has been revealing. They met unrest sparked by the death of a convicted criminal and drug addict in police custody in America with unwavering support in 2020 while meeting unrest sparked on by the brutal murder of three innocent children in their own country this year with cold disdain and condemnation. This glaring partiality has earned Prime Minister Kier Starmer the nickname “Two-Tier Keir”.

The draconian crackdown and shameless double standard of the British government got many on social media to draw comparisons between present-day Britain and popular works of dystopian fiction. This is the most recent, but certainly not the first time George Orwell’s classic 1984 has been invoked by right-wing and centrist political commentators in response to the increasing authoritarianism of the political establishment in Britain and the West more broadly. In fact, this has been done so frequently that referencing George Orwell feels more like a tired cliché of contemporary discourse rather than insightful political commentary at this point. So, I assure you, this essay isn’t going to be yet another comparison between modern Britain and 1984.

Rather, I want to look the phenomenon of dystopian fiction in the culture more broadly and what impacts it has had. It’s not only right-wing dissidents who have taken a liking to the genre in recent years. It is one of the most popular genres out there today among readers across the political spectrum and has been for decades. I only got around to reading 1984 this year, but phrases like “thought crime”, “Ministry of Truth”, and “memory holed” have already been part of my lexicon for almost a decade now.

We live in an age of increasing authoritarianism. Governments throughout the world have passed laws designed to jail citizens for nonviolent political speech alone. Big Tech companies have routinely banned users for simply expressing political views contrary to those of the company. Every single prestigious university or major corporation now requires ideological conformity among their staff under threat of termination. Governments and international bodies have identified “misinformation” (information they don’t like) as the most serious global risk threatening the world today. There exist numerous organizations like the ADL or SPLC with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal to use for the sole purpose of defaming and deplatforming those whose views they deem unacceptable. And let us not forget that governments across the world forcibly shut down all public life for two years in response to COVID, a relatively mild illness.

It's not only the influential institutions, but the people themselves who are becoming increasingly authoritarian in this regard. Several surveys have shown that a large portion of the population believes that certain kinds of speech should be forbidden online or on college campuses if it offends certain people. Some studies have suggested that young people are less likely to support free speech than older generations. It has become commonplace today for people to disown friends or family members with political views which differ from their own. And again, let’s not forget how many ordinary citizens enthusiastically took it upon themselves to enforce government-issued restrictions during COVID.

Is the popularity of dystopian literature today a function of a widespread sense that our world is beginning to reflect these works of fiction? I doubt it. Many hardcore progressives, the loudest enforcers of ideological orthodoxy, are themselves big fans of the genre. It’s not difficult to imagine someone like Nina Jankowicz, the director of the Biden Administration’s short-lived “Disinformation Governance Board”, could have her own favourite dystopian fiction novel. And I guarantee, someone like her wouldn’t see the slightest hint of irony in that.

The joke, “Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not an instruction manual.” has been uttered so often in recent years that it has become stale. If the novel was written as a warning, it certainly hasn’t succeeded in that goal. But it didn’t fail because the book wasn’t well written. I might not be too optimistic about its efficacy as a cautionary tale, but I still maintain that 1984 is a brilliantly written novel. It also didn’t fail because people didn’t read it. On the contrary, 1984 remains one of the most popular works of literature in the world today. Yet most people seem incapable of recognizing when the real world begins to resemble themes from the story.

I personally know many people who this is applicable to and I’m sure you do too. They repeat over and over how religion is used to control people. Meanwhile, these same people take the word of the mainstream media as if it were handed down by God himself, and are furious at the fact that it’s possible access alternative viewpoints on the internet. They frequently warn that dehumanizing others will lead to violence, yet many of them said that they wish the assassination attempt against Donald Trump had succeeded. They often preach that authoritarian governments use fear to take away people’s rights, yet during COVID they were absolutely fanatical, demanding the government enforce the harshest restrictions possible.

And it’s not just resentful, blue-haired, far-left activists who you’ll hear this from either. Many of them are upper-middle class, have had successful careers, have strong families, and are highly productive members of society overall. These well-rounded individuals aren’t going to attain power or money off of the continuation of the status quo. They actually have a lot to lose in the long run. How can otherwise intelligent people read of a totalitarian nightmare in a fictional novel and think of themselves as enlightened in doing so while being totally incapable of applying it to the real world which they live in?

What it comes down to is legitimacy. People read a novel like 1984 with the idea already in their mind that the world being described to them is dystopian. Big Brother is fictional leader whose entire purpose in the story is to illustrate tyrannical rule. Thus, the regime of the story holds absolutely zero clout or credibility with the reader, making it easy for them to understand how abusive its rule is. However, in the real world, the media, the universities, the government, and corporations are viewed as legitimate sources of authority. Their word does carry a degree of clout and credibility, which is why many people accept it uncritically.

The ideology of Ingsoc has no sway on the reader, not because the reader has carefully considered its tenets and concluded that they are wrong, but because it’s presented as coming from an illegitimate authority. The reason the same reader can so uncritically accept and embrace the ideology of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is because it is preached by an authority which they do consider legitimate. Again, they haven’t rationally contemplated the veracity of this worldview, but simply accepted it on the basis of clout alone.

Let’s again look at the recent unrest and ensuing crackdown in the UK. How many aspects of this whole ordeal reflect themes in George Orwell’s novel? Let’s make a list.

1. Newspeak: The knife-wielding maniac who butchered multiple white children was referred to as “Welsh” in the media, despite the fact his parents were from Rwanda. “Welsh” no longer means someone ethnically Welsh, but anyone born in Wales.

2. The Rewriting of History: Only a few decades ago, Britain was overwhelmingly white. However, the British establishment have taken to pushing the lie that Britain has always been “diverse” in order to hide the effects of their immigration policies.

3. The Memory Hole: The recent unrest was spurred on by a brutal crime committed against British children, but this was only in the media for a few days before the narrative shifted to the threat posed by the “far right”, overshadowing the crime itself.

4. Two Minutes Hate: The British establishment has now spent weeks fearmongering about the “far right”, using them as a boogieman on whom all blame for the failures of multiculturalism can be placed.

5. Double Think: The entire British establishment were literally on their knees in support of unrest in 2020, spurred on by the death of a black man in America, but have cracked down ruthlessly on unrest spurred on by the death of three white children in their own country.

6. Thought Crime: Hundreds of people have been arrested in relation to the ordeal. Some of them were arrested for nothing more than expressing views critical of immigration or in support of the demonstrations on social media.

I’m sure I could go on, but you get the point. And this is just one event I’m referring to here. How many parallels could be drawn between 1984 and the COVID saga or any number of other happenings of the past decade. Again, I don’t wish to pass this observation off as a stroke of intellectual brilliance on my part. It’s already been said countless times before. The point is that, as glaringly obvious as this observation is, it still doesn’t prevent a large portion of the population, many of whom have no doubt read the novel before, from clapping along as this plays out in the real world.

The misconception is that people are these rational actors who will objectively analyse the system which governs their society and come to a well-reasoned conclusion as to whether it is just or not. The reality is that, for the majority of people, authority will always supersede their ability to think critically about any given subject. They may shutter in fear when they read of misdeeds of cartoonishly evil parodies of long discredited regimes of the past century, but when the institutions which they actually do grant legitimacy to act in a similar way, don’t expect them to wake up.

If you’re still not convinced of how ineffective dystopian literature is at preventing real-world dystopia, consider this. Last year, feminist author Sandra Newman published a feminist retelling of 1984 from the perspective of Julia, Winston Smith’s lover. I kid you not. Even 1984, the most famous work of dystopian fiction ever written is now being “reimagined” in order to bring it in line with the zeitgeist of the present-day. If that’s not bad enough, George Orwell’s estate actually gave their approval to the project. Even those entrusted with the legacy of George Orwell himself see nothing Orwellian about forcing present-day political doctrine into a story about the dangers of doctrinairism. Even they are true believers in the modern world’s version of Ingsoc.

Approved without the faintest sense of self-awareness

I’ll also add that most works of fiction in the genre seem incapable of imagining a manifestation of tyranny which doesn’t resemble historical regimes from the 1930s such as National Socialist Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union. I can forgive Orwell for this since he wrote his novel as a critique of Stalinism which still existed at the time of writing, but over 75 years later, we are still using the same tired and outdated point of reference for totalitarianism in our culture today. Almost every fictional dystopia is still derivative of some regime from the past century. Not only does this result in boring and unimaginative storytelling in the genre, but it also serves to obfuscate the true essence of totalitarianism in favour of surface-level trivialities.

"Dystopia is when someone gives a speech to guys in helmets while in front of a banner."

The implication is that a society can only be dystopian if it’s ruled by an all-powerful leader and has political slogans and iconography plastered everywhere as far as the eye can see. That’s the full extent to which a lot of people can even conceptualize totalitarianism. They can only grasp the aesthetics, but none of the substance. Winston Smith, the lead character of 1984 told himself “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”, in hopes that one day, the underclass will rise up and overthrow Big Brother and the ruling party. I don’t share his faith in the normies. Not only will they not rise up and overthrow an oppressive and all-controlling tyranny. They usually won’t even realize that that they are living under one.

So, fictional stories of nightmarish dystopian futures do not prevent those same nightmares from playing out in the real world. Perhaps a number of politically active individuals have taken a liking to the genre as a result of the sense that Western countries are headed in a totalitarian direction. However, that can’t be the full explanation for its popularity since the zealots of the reigning orthodoxy are often big fans of the genre as well. So, that bring me back to the question from earlier. Why is dystopian fiction so popular today? Is it just because the setting of a theoretical totalitarian regime makes for good storytelling? I think that’s part of it, but I also think there’s something else at play here too.

Continued in part 2.