This month, George Orwell’s legendary novel Nineteen Eighty-Four turns 70 years old, and the warnings contained within the story are now more relevant than ever. Orwell’s predictions were so spot on that it almost seems like it was used as some type of accidental instruction manual for would-be tyrants. In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, there…
George Orwell, the world-renowned author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, wrote the following essay in 1946. In it, he sets out how language can be corrupted, leading to unclear, sloppy thinking. He is especially concerned with how the powerful use vague writing to cover up their own misdeeds. Despite being published over 70 years ago, this essay is as relevant…
When I took 1984with me on vacation recently, I didn’t expect to read it. Unlike the two other books with me—Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life and Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist—I had already read Orwell’s classic work. Or had I? It had been at least 25 years. Most of what I remembered seemed to…
In January, it was announced the UK government would launch the National Security Communications Unit, a dedicated organization to counter the growth of ‘fake news’ with disinformation of its own. While hailed as a new initiative, weaponizing information for defensive and offensive purposes is familiar territory for Whitehall. Almost half a year after the proclamation, concrete…
On Sunday April 15th, Britain’s Guardian bannered “OPCW inspectors set to investigate site of Douma chemical attack” and pretended that there was no question that a chemical attack in Douma Syria on April 7th had actually occurred, and the article then went further along that same propaganda-line, to accuse Syria’s Government of having perpetrated it. This ‘news’…
The Guardian ran an article yesterday by one of its editors, David Shariatmadari, that both proves and disproves its own theme at the same time: “An Information Apocalypse Is Coming”. Now, I don’t fancy the term apocalypse in a setting like this, it feels too much like going for a cheap thrill, but since he…
