The
Thought Police (
thinkpol in
NewspeakNewspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the...
) is the
secret policeSecret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state....
of Oceania in
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist...
's
dystopiaA dystopia is the vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and...
n novel
Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel, by George Orwell, published in 1949 about the totalitarian régime of the Party, an oligarchical collectivist society where life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, public mind control,...
.
It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish
thoughtcrimeIn the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labeling disapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime or, in Newspeak, "crimethink".In the book, Winston Smith, the main...
and thought-criminals, using
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
and omnipresent
surveillanceSurveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people and often in a surreptitious manner...
from
telescreenTelescreens are featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. They are television and security camera-like devices used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania...
s to find and eliminate members of society who were capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority. The
governmentIn the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Party which controls Oceania is split into two halves: the Inner Party and the Outer Party...
attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the
thoughtThought and thinking are mental forms and processes, respectively . Thinking allows beings to model the world and to deal with it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and...
s of its subjects, labeling unapproved thoughts with the term
thoughtcrime, or, in Newspeak,
crimethink.
The
Thought Police (
thinkpol in
NewspeakNewspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the...
) is the
secret policeSecret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state....
of Oceania in
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist...
's
dystopiaA dystopia is the vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and...
n novel
Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel, by George Orwell, published in 1949 about the totalitarian régime of the Party, an oligarchical collectivist society where life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, public mind control,...
.
It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish
thoughtcrimeIn the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labeling disapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime or, in Newspeak, "crimethink".In the book, Winston Smith, the main...
and thought-criminals, using
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
and omnipresent
surveillanceSurveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people and often in a surreptitious manner...
from
telescreenTelescreens are featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. They are television and security camera-like devices used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania...
s to find and eliminate members of society who were capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority. The
governmentIn the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Party which controls Oceania is split into two halves: the Inner Party and the Outer Party...
attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the
thoughtThought and thinking are mental forms and processes, respectively . Thinking allows beings to model the world and to deal with it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and...
s of its subjects, labeling unapproved thoughts with the term
thoughtcrime, or, in Newspeak,
crimethink. It was the Thought Police that had arrested Winston and Julia. The Thought Police operate a false resistance movement in order to lure in disloyal Party members, before arresting them. It is unknown, however, if a genuine resistance movement exists. The Thought Police also move among the
ProlesProles is a term used in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to refer to the working class of Oceania ....
, spreading false rumors and marking down and eliminating any individual deemed capable of rebellion against the Party or Independent thought. All Party members live their lives under constant supervision of the Thought Police. Every Party member has a Telescreen in his or her home, which the Thought Police uses to observe every single action, and takes note of anything that hints of unorthodox opinions or an inner struggle. When a Party member talks in their sleep, the words are carefully analyzed. The Thought Police also target and eliminate highly intelligent people, since they may come to realize how the Party is exploiting them. An example of this was of Syme, a developer of
NewspeakNewspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the...
, who, despite his fierce devotion to the Party, simply disappeared one day.
It also had much to do with Orwell's own "power of facing unpleasant facts", as he called it, and his willingness to criticize prevailing ideas which brought him into conflict with others and their "smelly little orthodoxies". Although Orwell described himself as a
democratic socialistDemocratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations, to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
, many other
socialistsSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
thought that his criticism of the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
under
Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953...
damaged the socialist cause.
Other uses
In the first half of the twentieth century, the
Special Higher Police', often shortened to ' was a police force established in 1911 in Japan, specifically to investigate and control political groups and ideologies deemed to be a threat to public order....
(Tokko) in Japan were sometimes known as the
Thought Police.
The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness, or preemptive policing where a person is apprehended in anticipation of the possibility that they may commit a crime, in any modern or historical contexts.
Brain-scanning research
In June 2009, CBS's
60 Minutes revealed that
Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently ranked among the best in the world...
's Psychology Department and their associates in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
, have developed ground-breaking technology that is able to scan the human brain, reading thoughts and intentions. .