In the
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,...
by
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist...
, the
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
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 disapproved thoughts with the term
thoughtcrime or, 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...
, "
crimethink".
In the book,
Winston SmithWinston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a "central eye ... [the reader] can readily identify with"...
, the main character, writes in his diary: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime
is death."
The
Thought Police (
thinkpol in Newspeak) are the
secret policeSecret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state....
of the novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four whose job it is to uncover and punish
thoughtcrime.
In the
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,...
by
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist...
, the
governmentA government is the body within a community, political entity or organization which has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations.....
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 disapproved thoughts with the term
thoughtcrime or, 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...
, "
crimethink".
In the book,
Winston SmithWinston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a "central eye ... [the reader] can readily identify with"...
, the main character, writes in his diary: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime
is death."
Thought Police
The
Thought Police (
thinkpol in Newspeak) are the
secret policeSecret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state....
of the novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four whose job it is to uncover and punish
thoughtcrime. The Thought Police use
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...
to find and eliminate members of society who are capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority.
The
Thought PoliceThe Thought Police is the secret police of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals, using psychology and omnipresent surveillance from telescreens to find and eliminate members of...
of Orwell and their pursuit of
thoughtcrime were based on the methods used by the totalitarian states and competing
ideologiesAn ideology is a set of aims and ideas that directs one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a...
of the 20th century. It also had much to do with, as Orwell called it, the "power of facing unpleasant facts," 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 socialist, many other socialists (especially those who supported the
communistCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
branch of socialism) 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 Stalin damaged the socialist cause.
The term "Thought Police," by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness in any modern or historical contexts.
Technology and thoughtcrime
Technology played a significant part in the detection of
thoughtcrime in
Nineteen Eighty-Four — with the ubiquitous
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 which could inform the government, misinform and monitor the population.
See also
- Censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.-Rationale:...
- Free will
Free will raises the question whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions, decisions, choices. Addressing this question requires understanding the relationship between freedom and cause, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic...
- Freedom of thought
Freedom of thought is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints...
- Gatekeeping (communication)
In human communication, in particular, in journalism, gatekeeping is the process through which ideas and information are filtered for publication. The internal decision making process of relaying or withholding information from the media to the masses...
- Hate crime
Hate crimes occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation."Hate crime"...
- Hate speech
Hate speech is a term for speech that attacks or disparages a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group, such as race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or lack there of, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language ability, ideology, social class,...
- Laws against Holocaust denial
In order to prevent the resurgence of Nazism, Holocaust denial is illegal in a number of European countries. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalize genocide denial...
- Institutional knowledge
- Intrusive thoughts
Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome involuntary thoughts, images, or unpleasant ideas that may become obsessions, are upsetting or distressing, and can be difficult to manage or eliminate...
- Language and thought
A variety of different authors, theories and fields purport influences between language and thought.Many point out the seemingly common-sense realization that upon introspection we seem to think in the language we speak...
- Ostracism
Ostracism was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which a prominent citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the victim, ostracism was often used pre-emptively...
- Political correctness
Political correctness is a term denoting language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social offense in gender, racial, cultural, handicap, and age-related usages...
- Thoughtcrimes
Thoughtcrimes is a 2003 film.It is about a high school student named Freya McAllister who begins hearing voices in her head and ends up misdiagnosed as schizophrenic...
, a 2003 film
- Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007
The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 is a bill sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman in the 110th United States Congress...
Further reading
- Kretzmer, David and Kershman, Hazan Francine (Eds.) (2000) "Freedom of Speech and Incitement Against Democracy". Kluwer Law International, The Hague, Netherlands. ISBN 90-411-1341-X
External links
- Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. "Thought Crime".
- The Essayist, "Hate Crime Premise" July 24, 1998.
- Evenson, Brad, "Looking for thoughtcrime to crimestop". National Post, February 08, 2003.
- Peabody, Michael "Thought & Crime," Liberty Magazine, March/April 2008.
- Reuters, "Thoughtcrime a Reality: U.S. Toughens Child Pornography Law". October 2, 1996.
- Guardian report: MPs criticise lock-up plan for mentally ill. July 25, 2000.
- Michael David Crawford: "My Deepest Fear" September 6, 2006.