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A truly immersive system of propaganda, which necessarily will be full of contradictions to the truth, absolutely requires that its subjects are compliant with "doublethink," that is, the ability to accept two contradictory thoughts in your mind without acknowledging that they are in fact opposites.
Orwell identifies this under two forms of "doublethink", which are "crimestop" and "blackwhite". "Crimestop" meaning the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of a dangerous thought.
Orwell further states "It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments"and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short, means protective stupidity."
"Blackwhite", is the act of contradiction of plain facts, applied to an opponent. And when applied to the Party, it is the willingness to say black is white when the Party discipline demands it so.
As Orwell describes it "it means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past"The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons"The subsidiary reason is that"he must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off" [the precautionary reason] by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party."
Orwell continues "The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest."
That is, it is the Inner Party members who are the most indoctrinated, the best at inducing "mind control" or "doublethink" on themselves, and at the same time believe that it is the best and right thing to do.
Orwell describes "doublethink" thus: "The process has to be conscious , or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence guilt"To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink."
What many fail to grasp when reading "1984" is that Orwell is not only the character Winston, he is also the character O'Brien. He is the Outer Party member-turned-revolutionary, and he is the Inner Party disciplinarian.
He is simultaneously the tormentor-programmer as well as the tormented-programmed.
Winston eventually breaks and releases the one thing that kept him human, his love and loyalty to Julia. In the end, an announcement is made that Oceania is ever nearer to winning the war and Winston looks up at a large poster of Big Brother and cries gin-filled tears of joy and relief, for he had finally come to love Big Brother.
He had become O'Brien.
So Who is the Said "Enemy"?The enemy is our lesser selves.
Our most base fears, desires and obsessions. The voice that whispers in our ears telling us not to believe in anything genuine or honest, that the world we live in will ultimately destroy itself and thus it is all about looking out for number one. That it is our fate to be the playthings of higher powers.
This is the voice of a prisoner of Plato's cave, neck shackled and looking at only shadows on a wall. This is not reality. This is the voice of someone who has been enslaved for most of their life. The voice of someone who has become so disempowered that they wholly accept whatever ugly condition is imposed upon them and will even work to defend it as necessary.
There is a way out of all of this, but you will have to become an optimist in order to see the solution.
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