AHC: Ingsoc Oceania

[Kaiser Tito]

In the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian state is named Oceania (presumably because it's a transatlantic empire). Sometime times when I hear Oceania however, I tend to think of the actual continent. Starting in 1900, how can we get Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the Polynesian islands united under a Ingsoc (Austsoc? Ocesoc?) regime by the year 1984?

 

[Booster Gold]

Well I'm not sure you could do a regime like the one in Orwell's books because those regimes are Mary Sue Dystopias and unsustainable. You could get an Totalitarian Socialist regime encompassing those areas though, perhaps with a WW1 loss and a worse depression

 

[overoceans]

Well I'm not sure you could do a regime like the one in Orwell's books because those regimes are Mary Sue Dystopias and unsustainable.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the dystopia of 1984 a little...far-fetched. For starters, I doubt that even Stalin was sitting there saying to himself: "Bwahaha!! I'm a boot!! Stomping on a human face!! Forever!!!!"

Somewhat related to this, why would the Inner Party torture Smith to the point of loving Big Brother, when their only subsequent plan for him is a meaningless job arguing about commas, followed(it is implied) by execution a few years later? Why not just kill him right away, as soon as he says he'd be willing to throw acid in the face of children?

 

[Kaiser Tito]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the dystopia of 1984 a little...far-fetched. For starters, I doubt that even Stalin was sitting there saying to himself: "Bwahaha!! I'm a boot!! Stomping on a human face!! Forever!!!!"

Somewhat related to this, why would the Inner Party torture Smith to the point of loving Big Brother, when their only subsequent plan for him is a meaningless job arguing about commas, followed(it is implied) by execution a few years later? Why not just kill him right away, as soon as he says he'd be willing to throw acid in the face of children?

North Korea comes pretty close, and today's GOP is embracing what could be described as a boot stomping ideology with it's social darwinist vision where only wealthy whites prosper and everyone else who doesn't die of disease slaves under them, which actually makes Ingsoc look slightly better in comparison since they actually seem to have health care at least.

 

[pattersonautobody]

In the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian state is named Oceania (presumably because it's a transatlantic empire). Sometime times when I hear Oceania however, I tend to think of the actual continent. Starting in 1900, how can we get Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the Polynesian islands united under a Ingsoc (Austsoc? Ocesoc?) regime by the year 1984?

The answer is in Bernsetin's book.

 

[Kaiser Tito]

The answer is in Bernsetin's book.

It's been a few years since I read it back in Highschool. I'll reread it later to refresh.

 

[Catsmate]

I'm reminded of some of the 'socialist' novels of the late C19/early C20 period. Rosa's The Coming Terror; or the Australian Revolution or Johnston's The Electric Gun.

 

[meLty]

North Korea comes pretty close, and today's GOP is embracing what could be described as a boot stomping ideology with it's social darwinist vision where only wealthy whites prosper and everyone else who doesn't die of disease slaves under them, which actually makes Ingsoc look slightly better in comparison since they actually seem to have health care at least.

Oh yes, the GOP, known for it's support of socialism, no freedom of speech, no human rights, endless rationing, endless wars and a surveillance state to name a few. /s

 

[WhiteDragon25]

Oh yes, the GOP, known for it's support of socialism, no freedom of speech, no human rights, endless rationing, endless wars and a surveillance state to name a few. /s

The bolded part is just about the only thing that isn't actually true of the current GOP. And 'socialism' is hardly a necessary requirement for IngSoc/English Socialism, as they don't bother with anything remotely resembling socialism aside from appropriating the name for their own purposes - Non-Indicative Brand Naming for political ideologies has historical precedent, after all, and in fact roughly contemporary to when the book was written: only a few years before its publication, there was this big kerfuffle called WW2 involving a genocidal totalitarian regime that called itself the National Socialists, remember? The name matters little when it is clear that it's just a mask to hide the true goal of power for power's sake.

 

[overoceans]

North Korea comes pretty close, and today's GOP is embracing what could be described as a boot stomping ideology with it's social darwinist vision where only wealthy whites prosper and everyone else who doesn't die of disease slaves under them, which actually makes Ingsoc look slightly better in comparison since they actually seem to have health care at least.

Oh, there are certainly parties and regimes that have done horrible stuff. But few if any of them are actually consciously doing evil just because they want to do evil things. Without getting into current politics, in most political parties that do bad shit, there's a combination of a) true-believers, who think the policies are somehow justified, and b) cynical hangers-on, who realize the policies are bad, but support them in order to advance their own career. (An example from the past: Dixiecrats who really believed that God made whites superior and society needed to be protected from racial-mixing, and careerist hacks who probably didn't really have any problem with Blacks, but got the job with a dixiecrat senator after graduating from PoliSci and so that's their meal ticket, and anyway those church-bombings would probably have happened anyway, with or without the speeches I'm writing.)

 

[the Imperium of Canada]

The bolded part is just about the only thing that isn't actually true of the current GOP. And 'socialism' is hardly a necessary requirement for IngSoc/English Socialism, as they don't bother with anything remotely resembling socialism aside from appropriating the name for their own purposes - Non-Indicative Brand Naming for political ideologies has historical precedent, after all, and in fact roughly contemporary to when the book was written: only a few years before its publication, there was this big kerfuffle called WW2 involving a genocidal totalitarian regime that called itself the National Socialists, remember? The name matters little when it is clear that it's just a mask to hide the true goal of power for power's sake.

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.

'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'

...the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism.

 

[CalBear]

North Korea comes pretty close, and today's GOP is embracing what could be described as a boot stomping ideology with it's social darwinist vision where only wealthy whites prosper and everyone else who doesn't die of disease slaves under them, which actually makes Ingsoc look slightly better in comparison since they actually seem to have health care at least.

Wrong Forum for this sort of comment.

Please confine current politics to Chat.

 

[CalBear]

Reviewing this thread is is pretty much all current politics.

Closing this per posted policy.