Our Emmanuel Goldstein
11th January 2020
ZMan reminds us of how proglodytes work.
One of the best observations Orwell had about totalitarian society is had to have an opponent, against which everyone must rally. It was not just a practical opponent, like another country. The forever bad guy had to have a spiritual dimension. In opposing the bad guy, the members of the society established their commitment to the cause and thus their standing in society. Emmanuel Goldstein in the Novel 1984 and Snowball in the novella Animal Farm are his famous examples.
Of course, modern totalitarian states are almost always the result of some mass movement that swept to power. Their ascent was either based on their promise to reform or their ability to demolish the prevailing order. Eric Hoffer noted that “mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” The bogeymen in the Orwell novels were such devils. They were the center of the moral universe for the totalitarian society.