[nostrademons]

FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban books in the U.S.

They not only could happen here, they did happen here. It’s a testament to the power of propaganda that people view them as a hypothetical rather than as a lightly fictionalized documentary where the countries were changed to prevent the authors from going to jail.

[casenmgreen]

I looked to see if I could find anything asserting 1984 was about propaganda at BBC - nothing.

I found no interviews, no recordings - it seems what survives are his notebooks.

Can you describe the basis for the claim?

[nialv7]

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

[casenmgreen]

"As only Orwell could, he marked the BBC as he left – almost prissily: ‘I feel that I have been treated with the greatest generosity and allowed very great latitude…on no occasion have I been compelled to say on air anything that I would not say as a private individual.’"

That page does not seem to support the claim that 1984 is about or relates to his time at BBC.

[Spooky23]

Dig deeper. Orwell was a child of the empire, born in Bengal and served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. His service affected him deeply.

He wrote of it, and in some ways his writing on those times is better than his fiction.

[protocolture]

Its definitely an element, but it also mirrors some experiences in spain and ripping off Zamyatin's "We".

Like if you take Zamyatin's "We", and make the main character a propagandist working for the government, you get 1984.

[casenmgreen]

I found 1984 much more bleak and awful than We.

[MrSkelter]

The idea 1984 is about Russia would have surprised people at the time. That’s an ironic twist of history Orwell could have written about himself.

[darepublic]

Maybe they are getting 1984 confused with animal farm?

[JKCalhoun]

The recent HN front-page post linked to Asimov's review of 1984—Asimov claimed it was Stalinism through and through (writing the review in 1980, FWIW).

[notepad0x90]

Those events and times inspired those books, but they didn't actually happen in those countries.

There is a core message about the nature of not just ingsoc but the other governments of the world as well, and their relationship with each that gets left out when talking about 1984. The overbearing surveillance capital state is all people think about, that's part of it, but why that state exists, the motivations of it's leadership, the sheer and terrifying brilliance of the architecture of their government. in many ways, I'm glad the leaders of major countries and political movements don't grasp 1984 well (or at all).

But I agree that in 1948, Orwell's frustration and experience was not just that there was a world war, but that it was the second one in his life time. War-time mentality does approximate the levels of repression he mentions in the book, but in any country, it doesn't quite get there. But it could!

That's the scary part, things like "facecrime" weren't possible in 1984, now not only is it possible, it can be done without humans being involved too much. We have all the surveillance, more than he could have even imagined. But not only that, we have the means to analyze all the surveillance data in real time and do something about it. The capability to implement a world much worse than the one in 1984 exists. The villains of our times and the people they rule over just haven't managed to negotiate the imagination and sophistication of a strategy to abuse it yet.

EDIT: Coincidentally, I just stumbled on this timely piece: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62rexy9y3no

This is what I mean. just random people are doing the spying parts already. [SPOILER] a very similar scene is in 1984, except with the government behind the cams.

[SapporoChris]

Thank you for inspiring me to look up the sources for the literary motifs in 1984.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Sources_f...

A very interesting read, but it did not verify any of your claims.

[yesbut]

https://www.wired.com/2007/08/wiki-tracker/

[n1b0m]

While it’s true that the day-to-day misery and bureaucratic absurdity of 1984 were heavily shaped by Orwell's time at the BBC, he primarily wrote the novel as a cautionary warning against the rise of totalitarianism and the dangers of a centralized, surveilled state.

Having witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany, the rise of Stalinist Russia, and the Spanish Civil War, Orwell wanted to expose the mechanisms of oppression and propaganda.

[indubioprorubik]

Eh, orwell got his fare share of socialisation with socialism in spain and became a ardent anti-communist (more anti-totalitarian after seeing what this "experiment was all about" when it betrayed the anarchists).

Its like animal farm a staunch criticism of the communist experiment and the societies it would form. The history rewritting was actually a typical socialist society pehnomena, going so far that china basically erased its whole past permanently. Its a incredible young country (barely 70 years old) and had to reimport a ton of its culture from taiwan!

Orwell lived through the hyper akward year, where hitler and stalin where allies and best friends - and thus saw the moscow controlled part of the international defending facists as best friends for a year, right after they stabbed the anarchists in the back in spain.

[b00ty4breakfast]

The Spanish civil war turned him into a socialist. His anti-stalin/anti-Soviet streak was in no way anti-communist. perhaps you shouldn't be so weasel-y with your wording.

[jlaternman]

Nope. He was unapologetically socialist before his involvement in the Civil War, and that conflict actually did make him anti-communist, and an anti-authoritarian. Socialism of the kind Orwell supported and communism of the kind we have seen in the world are two very different things.

For those reading who are curious on which comment is accurate, I would encourage you to read up on it to confirm for yourself. It's a highly fascinating subject to read about.

Another thing the Spanish Civil War did make Orwell was a hardcore realist.

"Half a loaf of bread is better than no loaf."

[b00ty4breakfast]

june 1937, in a letter to Cyril Connolly, written in Barcelona during the Civil War;

>‘I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in Socialism, which I never did before.’

He was a libertarian socialist at various points, sure, but you're painting him as something he wasn't. He was avowedly a socialist throughout most of his adult life even if he wasn't playing patty-cake with the Trots and the MLs and various other 20th century Euro-centric leftist revolutionary groups