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Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. Up th

Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. Up there with gravity and shit. I wish we could do something with this information, but alas, knowledge isnt power. Cersei Lannister: Power is power.

udev4096 2y ago
Littlefinger: Knowledge is power.
ebiester 2y ago
That wasn’t a prediction, just an observation.
Cumpiler69 2y ago
>Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. It's not a prediction when it's history. That has been going on at least as long as the Roman Empire, yet people are still surprised it's happening today. Modern regimes didn't invent these schemes, they're reusing tried and tested methods because they're known to work because human psychology and behavioral instinct is vulnerable to the same exploits which probably will never get patched anytime soon.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  And it’s always the others who are doing it. Our government would never. I mean, they did, but that was at least… dozens of years ago. And got forcibly declassified. They would never today. I guess. :-)
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    It's been at least one dozen years ago since the last time it happened. No one from that period is still in the exact same position as when it happened - some of them were promoted.
    - nozzlegear 2y ago
      > some of them were promoted. And the rest? Who exactly are you talking about here?
  - dh2022 2y ago
    I am sorry I lack context. Which government took over dozens of years ago? And what got forcibly declassified? Thanks.
    - jamal-kumar 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - coldtea 2y ago
        Speakers over 40 all around the world use that. And when emojis are not supported (like in an plain text file meant to be read on people's terminals, or iirc here on HN too), it makes sense for people under 40 too.
        setopt 2y ago
        They might have meant writing :-) instead of :), while I think you’re talking about
        jamal-kumar 2y ago
        Yeah specifically with that hyphen nose. I have like three friends who all do that and they all meet that description it's hilarious
        rrr_oh_man 2y ago
        Don‘t discriminate against the hyphen nose. (Said in a sharp German accent) :-)
        jamal-kumar 2y ago
        Would guess also you remember your ICQ number
    - layer8 2y ago
- rob74 2y ago
  Indeed - When he wrote 1984 in 1948, Orwell just took his contemporary totalitarian regimes (mostly Nazi Germany and the USSR) and extrapolated them to world scale...
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    1984 seems to be set in the UK ('Airstrip One', of 'Oceana'). None of the storyline actually takes place in 'Eurasia' or 'Eastasia' or any other part of the world. They don't need to even actually exist for the storyline. Indeed, this itself is a message about controlling a populace via control of information. The rest of the world could have been razed by war, they could be total utopias. The propaganda keeps people from thinking about alternatives.
    - xnorswap 2y ago
      Yes, but Orwell wasn't really writing _about_ the UK, you need to look at the context and background of the work, which is the rise of Stalinism and the fear of that brand of totalitarianism taking over.
      - zorked 2y ago
        There is a very politically-motivated school of interpretation of 1984 that wants to excessively tie it to "Stalinism" to prevent using the book to critique other political doctrines - completely unrelated to Stalinism or communism - that exhibit the same tendencies. Interpret more broadly and it becomes a much better, more important book.
        xnorswap 2y ago
        It wasn't just Stalinism, it was wider totalitarianism too, but that wasn't the point I was making, it wasn't a critique directed against the state of the UK at the time, but what it could become.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    Orwell learned his cynicism the hard way as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish civil war 1936-37. He arrived as an idealistic anti fascist fighter. After experiencing Stalinism in person, he became the man we know. https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/how-spains-civil-war-defined-george-orwell-politically/ https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/how-spai...
- baybal2 2y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
potato3732842 2y ago
>Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. The way modern states leverage external threats to justify abusing people or waging their own external wars is fairly parallel to how the less top heavy kingdoms of the middle ages and early modern period used religion as a justification for comparable atrocities.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Anything that can be declared evil through repetition on state influenced media is always popular with autocratic leaders. One of the reasons "they're oppressing and committing atrocities against some of our people who live there!" has been a perpetual casus belli against neighboring states. If you trumpet it long enough, eventually people start believing and get mad.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  this topic is large and easily misunderstood. No absolute statement covers all. therefore all absolute statements are untrue. People originated as tribal groups, most of them fought violently over territory at times. Meanwhile "religion" is always present, but in varied forms. The stratification and codification of "religion" and The State occurred in different ways in different cultures, but it is certainly a compromise between active violence and active spiritual traditions, in a society. You can say "people who claim to be ReligionX used violence" and it means more than one thing.
aurareturn 2y ago
Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. Who is that virtual enemy for the US?
- samsonradu 2y ago
  The enemy within? https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-enemies-from-within-5c4a34776469a55e71d3ba4d4e68cf62 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-enemies-from-within-...
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    Yep. Pretty much everyone. Only difference in which enemy is pointed to, is who you ask.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      Some are more objectively real threats than others. Like that guy who claims to only want to be dictator for a day, who sent an armed mob to storm the Capital building, pardoned cronies and war criminals, and brags about walking in on women naked.
      - coldtea 2y ago
        For "an armed mob to storming", it looked a hell of a lot like a bunch of stupid ass demonstrators getting inside a government building with no plans, no leadership, and no fucking clue what to do, and then getting summarily expelled. That is to a coup what The Muppet Show is to Saw. As for the "pardoned cronies", isn't today a bad day to single one side out based on that? (Not to mention the singling out for "war criminals", when the other side is warmongering hawks, bombing, openly pushing for war, sabotaging peace deals, and openly assisting a slow burning genocide).
        paulryanrogers 2y ago
kozikow 2y ago
> Cersei Lannister: Power is power. Knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient component of power Or in other words observability is a necessary, but not sufficient component of optimization.
- cess11 2y ago
  Power determines what knowledge is possible.
himinlomax 2y ago
> virtual enemy There's nothing virtual about North Korea ...
zxcvbnm69 2y ago
[dead]
AceyMan 2y ago
H.L. Mencken wrote it down well before Orwell. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- ncr100 2y ago
  Amazing that while these insightful critiques about government and democracy appear to stand, Democracy also still appears to be nearly the best system that we've enacted to govern large bodies of people. We suffer with inefficiency, majority tyranny, populism, short-term-itis, inequalities, and voter apathy which promotes less qualified people. At least we usually have peaceful conflict resolution rather than firing squads. <3
dang 2y ago
It's best to avoid generic tangents like this, as the site guidelines ask (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). They tend to lead to generic flamewars, which are boring. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42306176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42306176.
smegger001 2y ago
Power is power, knowledge is a lever

udev4096 2y ago

Littlefinger: Knowledge is power.

ebiester 2y ago

That wasn’t a prediction, just an observation.

Cumpiler69 2y ago

>Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. It's not a prediction when it's history. That has been going on at least as long as the Roman Empire, yet people are still surprised it's happening today. Modern regimes didn't invent these schemes, they're reusing tried and tested methods because they're known to work because human psychology and behavioral instinct is vulnerable to the same exploits which probably will never get patched anytime soon.

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
And it’s always the others who are doing it. Our government would never. I mean, they did, but that was at least… dozens of years ago. And got forcibly declassified. They would never today. I guess. :-)
- llm_trw 2y ago
  It's been at least one dozen years ago since the last time it happened. No one from that period is still in the exact same position as when it happened - some of them were promoted.
  - nozzlegear 2y ago
    > some of them were promoted. And the rest? Who exactly are you talking about here?
- dh2022 2y ago
  I am sorry I lack context. Which government took over dozens of years ago? And what got forcibly declassified? Thanks.
  - jamal-kumar 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - coldtea 2y ago
      Speakers over 40 all around the world use that. And when emojis are not supported (like in an plain text file meant to be read on people's terminals, or iirc here on HN too), it makes sense for people under 40 too.
      - setopt 2y ago
        They might have meant writing :-) instead of :), while I think you’re talking about
        jamal-kumar 2y ago
        Yeah specifically with that hyphen nose. I have like three friends who all do that and they all meet that description it's hilarious
        rrr_oh_man 2y ago
        Don‘t discriminate against the hyphen nose. (Said in a sharp German accent) :-)
        jamal-kumar 2y ago
        Would guess also you remember your ICQ number
  - layer8 2y ago
rob74 2y ago
Indeed - When he wrote 1984 in 1948, Orwell just took his contemporary totalitarian regimes (mostly Nazi Germany and the USSR) and extrapolated them to world scale...
- ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  1984 seems to be set in the UK ('Airstrip One', of 'Oceana'). None of the storyline actually takes place in 'Eurasia' or 'Eastasia' or any other part of the world. They don't need to even actually exist for the storyline. Indeed, this itself is a message about controlling a populace via control of information. The rest of the world could have been razed by war, they could be total utopias. The propaganda keeps people from thinking about alternatives.
  - xnorswap 2y ago
    Yes, but Orwell wasn't really writing _about_ the UK, you need to look at the context and background of the work, which is the rise of Stalinism and the fear of that brand of totalitarianism taking over.
    - zorked 2y ago
      There is a very politically-motivated school of interpretation of 1984 that wants to excessively tie it to "Stalinism" to prevent using the book to critique other political doctrines - completely unrelated to Stalinism or communism - that exhibit the same tendencies. Interpret more broadly and it becomes a much better, more important book.
      - xnorswap 2y ago
        It wasn't just Stalinism, it was wider totalitarianism too, but that wasn't the point I was making, it wasn't a critique directed against the state of the UK at the time, but what it could become.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  Orwell learned his cynicism the hard way as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish civil war 1936-37. He arrived as an idealistic anti fascist fighter. After experiencing Stalinism in person, he became the man we know. https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/how-spains-civil-war-defined-george-orwell-politically/ https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/how-spai...
baybal2 2y ago
[dead]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

potato3732842 2y ago

>Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. The way modern states leverage external threats to justify abusing people or waging their own external wars is fairly parallel to how the less top heavy kingdoms of the middle ages and early modern period used religion as a justification for comparable atrocities.

ethbr1 2y ago
Anything that can be declared evil through repetition on state influenced media is always popular with autocratic leaders. One of the reasons "they're oppressing and committing atrocities against some of our people who live there!" has been a perpetual casus belli against neighboring states. If you trumpet it long enough, eventually people start believing and get mad.
mistrial9 2y ago
this topic is large and easily misunderstood. No absolute statement covers all. therefore all absolute statements are untrue. People originated as tribal groups, most of them fought violently over territory at times. Meanwhile "religion" is always present, but in varied forms. The stratification and codification of "religion" and The State occurred in different ways in different cultures, but it is certainly a compromise between active violence and active spiritual traditions, in a society. You can say "people who claim to be ReligionX used violence" and it means more than one thing.

aurareturn 2y ago

Orwell being so right about governments using the constant threat of a virtual enemy has got to be one of the all time top on the money predictions ever. Who is that virtual enemy for the US?

samsonradu 2y ago
The enemy within? https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-enemies-from-within-5c4a34776469a55e71d3ba4d4e68cf62 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-enemies-from-within-...
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Yep. Pretty much everyone. Only difference in which enemy is pointed to, is who you ask.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Some are more objectively real threats than others. Like that guy who claims to only want to be dictator for a day, who sent an armed mob to storm the Capital building, pardoned cronies and war criminals, and brags about walking in on women naked.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      For "an armed mob to storming", it looked a hell of a lot like a bunch of stupid ass demonstrators getting inside a government building with no plans, no leadership, and no fucking clue what to do, and then getting summarily expelled. That is to a coup what The Muppet Show is to Saw. As for the "pardoned cronies", isn't today a bad day to single one side out based on that? (Not to mention the singling out for "war criminals", when the other side is warmongering hawks, bombing, openly pushing for war, sabotaging peace deals, and openly assisting a slow burning genocide).
      - paulryanrogers 2y ago

kozikow 2y ago

> Cersei Lannister: Power is power. Knowledge is a necessary, but not sufficient component of power Or in other words observability is a necessary, but not sufficient component of optimization.

cess11 2y ago
Power determines what knowledge is possible.

himinlomax 2y ago

> virtual enemy There's nothing virtual about North Korea ...

zxcvbnm69 2y ago

[dead]

AceyMan 2y ago

H.L. Mencken wrote it down well before Orwell. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

ncr100 2y ago
Amazing that while these insightful critiques about government and democracy appear to stand, Democracy also still appears to be nearly the best system that we've enacted to govern large bodies of people. We suffer with inefficiency, majority tyranny, populism, short-term-itis, inequalities, and voter apathy which promotes less qualified people. At least we usually have peaceful conflict resolution rather than firing squads. <3

dang 2y ago

It's best to avoid generic tangents like this, as the site guidelines ask (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). They tend to lead to generic flamewars, which are boring. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42306176 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42306176.

smegger001 2y ago

Power is power, knowledge is a lever