Week 7:

Winston’s capitulation attempts in 1984 corroborate Arendt’s claims that totalitarian regimes themselves rely not on propaganda but indoctrination, because both Orwell and Arendt show that absolutism depends on erasing the capacity for independent thought rather than merely manipulating opinion.

In Part Three of 1984, Winston’s imprisonment in the Ministry of Love exposes a new layer of the Party’s strategies for control. Earlier in the novel, the regime uses methods of propaganda such as telescreens, announcements, victories, hate week, rewritten histories and more, to influence the masses. But O’Brien’s work on Winston is not merely persuasion but transformation. Towards the end of the Chapter, Winston finally reasons “If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens”(278). This reflects Winston’s attempts to abandon all rational thought for the purposes of indoctrination. It’s not enough for the Party to want Winston to believe its lies but rather the Party has made him incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood entirely.

Hannah Arendt explains this idea in The Origins of Totalitarianism. She states: “The essential point is that the necessities for propaganda are always dictated by the outside world and that the movements themselves do not actually propagate but indoctrinate”(468). Arendt is making the important distinction that propaganda serves to promote a specific ideology, specifically those outside the regime. In totalitarian movements, it’s not simply enough to just promote the idea, it becomes important for the citizens of the regime to accept the beliefs that propaganda promotes uncritically. Inside totalitarianism, truth becomes irrelevant because the mind itself has been captured.

This idea is mirrored in what O’Brien achieves with Winston. By the time Winston develops a love for Big Brother, he is no longer the Winston he once was with opinions, doubts, or judgments. He has been remodeled into a perfectly conditioned member of the party.  The telescreens, posters, and other forms of propaganda that attempted to spread a certain ideology now merely sustain the illusion of normality. The successful domination of the party had occurred in Winston’s mind. He himself had become mechanized to carry out the party’s ideologies. 

Orwell and Arendt both argue that totalitarian regimes shift from manipulating ideologies to destruction of the self. Winston’s final sense of peace is not really peace at all but rather a lost sense of submission and apathy. His mind is silent as all past efforts to resist have been annihilated. When one’s individual thoughts are destroyed, domination becomes irrefutable and propaganda is no longer required as a method of control.