Consider the source
George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, was a British author who lived from 1903 to 1950. He lived through the Great Depression, the first and second World Wars, and he saw the rise of Stalinist Russia and Communist tyranny. He is most well-known for two very important and incisive novels: “Animal Farm,” written in 1945, and “1984,” written in 1949.
Animal Farm was Orwell’s sharp criticism of both Stalin’s rule in Russia, as well as the corruption that exists when Socialism is left to bloom and produce its rotten fruit. Orwell himself identified as a Democratic Socialist, and he agreed with economic Socialism. What he opposed, however, were the totalitarian aspects of Communism. What Orwell failed to realize (as far as we know) is that the softest and lightest forms of Socialism inevitably mutate into totalitarian and tyrannical Communism; it’s baked right into the cake.
1984, unlike Animal Farm, is Orwell’s attempt to illustrate what a country would look like if totalitarian Communism was allowed to burgeon, unrestrained, into its fullest form. It’s what Orwell envisaged Russia would look like, for example, if Stalin was successful and uncontested by other nations. It’s a picture of a nation with complete control over its people, from ever-seeing and ever-hearing surveillance, and an entire apparatus devoted to rewriting and revising history, to brutal punishment and brainwashing for any dissidents.
Neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet
What Orwell created in his book never actually came to pass, in any lasting way, during his life. Hitler and the Axis were defeated. Stalin never turned Russia into the Oceania of 1984, and within a few years of Stalin’s death his successor began to undo the great evil of his predecessor. For almost a century tyrants have wished for the kind of technology and control Big Brother possesses in 1984.
As we entered the COVID-era, it appears that rather than using 1984 as a fictional warning of the dangers of Communism, Progressives (our elected officials, our unelected health bureaucrats, and our legacy media) chose to use 1984 as an instruction manual for totalitarian control. You have to give credit where credit is due; they did an excellent job transforming Canada into as close to a dystopian, Orwellian hellscape as they ever have.
I decided to read 1984 in the midst of the COVID madness, and I was astounded at how prescient Orwell was, whether he knew it or not. It seemed like portions of his novel were lifted right off the pages and implemented by way of public policy, legislation, or media narrative. At a multitude of points in the book it seemed as if I was getting a description of the news media of that very day on either CBC, Global, CTV, or any other number of propaganda arms of the Federal Government. It was quite surreal.
I want to spend the rest of my time showing some examples of various things written in a book some eighty years ago and their uncanny resemblance to what we observed and experienced in Canada over the past several years. To be honest, it’s still a little unsettling for me, even today.
Revisionist history
‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past…’ Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
Doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic… to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself…
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – 1984, pgs. 30-31, 71
2020-2023 was a Masterclass in doublethink. I remember being told we would need two weeks to flatten the curve and ease the inevitable burden on our healthcare system. That eventually became the quest for “Zero COVID: we must save everyone.” I remember being told that the virus was so deadly we couldn’t even go outside, except for BLM protests, because then, all of a sudden, social justice was more important than social distancing, the science was on the side of the Wokies (see here). I remember being told that there would be no “vaccine mandates,” until I was barred from travelling, eating at restaurants, and seeing my aging grandmother. I remember being told the jab would save lives and create “dead ends” for the virus, until we needed booster shots ad infinitum with hospitals being flooded with very sick jabbed people (see here).
Big Brother in Canada acted like tyrants, denied it and said they never forced anything, and the media propaganda machine helped them spread their doublespeak message.
The Memory-Hole
“For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in…
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right… After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories.” – 1984, pgs. 33, 137
As excess deaths in Canada were rising, shortly after the COVID jabs were made available, a curious thing happened. Provinces like Manitoba stopped publishing excess deaths, or at least, and still to this day, that information is unavailable on Statistics Canada. In June 2022, in Ontario, more than 80% of people sick with COVID in hospitals and ICUs had received at least two shots of the COVID jab. Then, for some reason, Ontario Health stopped tracking hospital and ICU admission with COVID by “vaccination status.” There are videos of doctors and nurses (which I have secured on an external hard drive) early in the pandemic saying that the virus itself was only as deadly as a bad flu season, and that the proposed lockdown measures would only make people sicker as time went on. Believe me when I tell you, you cannot find these videos anywhere on the internet. This is the same with entire websites and articles.
The State (Bir Brother) and its propaganda media (the Ministry to Truth) have thrown these into the Memory Hole, hoping that they would only exist in our own minds (I guess there are some massive positives to the internet in that people were able to save and store them before they were erased). This is true regarding Residential Schools as well. Now, I admit that the State taking control of education and removing children from homes is evil. However, remember when we were told, with certainty, that Canada was full of mass graves of Indigenous children. Well, after millions of dollars and some excavations, it was all a hoax. In fact, they are now being called anomalies, and their past messaging has been tossed into the Memory Hole. We can apply this to the BLM website and riots, George Floyd, and a slew of other circumstances where the past was erased and re-written to keep the narrative going strong.
The ever-changing face of the enemy
“At every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd… The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong!... It was sabotage!
There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot... But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.” – 1984, pgs. 160-161
We were told that COVID was the great plague of our generation, and an existential threat. But as cases died down over the summer months, we were told the real enemy was the Residential School system that murdered countless Indigenous children and buried their bodies in secret. Then, a new wave of COVID was once again the danger. But with the death of George Floyd, racism and police brutality were the real enemy, so protests in the streets were necessary. Then Russia was the real threat, and their war with Ukraine was the harbinger of World War Three. But COVID was still our greatest threat, until Monkeypox came around, which curiously disappeared during June when sodomites most enjoy their debauchery. Once July hit, Monkeypox was back, until only Sodomites were getting sick, then back to COVID. Then Climate Alarmism decided to prove that it was the real existential threat. Back and forth, back and forth, like horse jockeying for position, were our greatest enemies and threats.
And right on time, people would change or colour their social media profile pictures, take up their newest cause, condemn the newest villains and support the newest victims, always responding to whatever threat was shoved in their faces by the State, the media, and the health establishment. Rather than slow down and ask some meaningful questions, people went right on in irrational emotional rage, being taken on the wildest psychological roller coaster imaginable. Oh, it was real, believe me. I saw people get on that ride. In fact, people are still on that ride. Some of them still have masks on. Some of them still feed on a steady diet of CBC intravenously directed straight into their brains.
The Woke war of attrition
“The aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was the merciless questioning that went on and on, hour after hour, tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything that he said, convicting him at every step of lies and self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as from nervous fatigue…
In the end the nagging voices broke him down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards… His sole concern was to find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly, before the bullying started anew…
‘We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul... It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.’” – 1984, pgs. 215-216, 227
If you consider the messaging and mandates during the COVID, some of the goals in Wokeism and Social Justice, and those who support and work toward a full-on Socialist State, it’s clear that they desire, among other things, for people to be worn down and eventually comply. They don’t want people to merely agree with them or say the right thing. No, they want to see our resolve and resilience eroded, so that when we do comply, it will be as surrendered opponents.
This is why they barred the unjabbed from many facets of life in Canada, as a form of psychological “comfort torture” in the hopes that eventually we would just give in. And once we did that, we would be more likely and susceptible to comply even faster next time. This is why I received a $6,000 ArriveCan ticket, because they assumed I would just download the app and be a good little boy, which many, despite their earlier protestations, did.
They want us to believe that white people really are racist, that we do suffer from white guilt, and that we should feel complicit for the past sins of people with a similar skin colour to our own. They want us to believe that extreme climate policies are the only way to save our planet from turning into a flaming globe. They just don’t want obedience; they want confession and repentance as well.
Cultural chess players
“You understand well enough HOW the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me WHY we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power?... Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not
interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power…. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” – 1984, pgs. 233-235
At the end of the day, the Wokies, the Cultural Marxists, the Progressive Left, the Statists, and the Communists all feel the same way about those people and victims’ groups they elevate so highly – they don’t actually care about them at all. They have been used as political pawns, as objects to further their godless agendas. This was made very clear over the past several years.
If they really cared about women, then they wouldn’t support the murdering of countless pre-born baby girls who will eventually become women. If they cared about Indigenous people, they wouldn’t throw money at their problems. If they really cared about the weak and vulnerable, then they wouldn’t promote doctor-assisted murder. If they really cared about black people, then they would encourage families to stay together, not incentivize single-motherhood through tax breaks. If they really wanted to save lives, then they wouldn’t have implemented all of their disastrous COVID policies, which did exponentially more harm than good.
We live in a country where we can say unequivocally that our elected officials, our unelected bureaucrats, our health establishment, and our legacy media are not seeking the welfare of Canadians, and they are not at all committed to protecting the rights given to us by God. They exist to further a narrative, and in the process amass for themselves as much power and as much wealth as possible.
Don’t be like Winston
“(Winston) was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back...
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” – 1984, pgs. 265-266
At the very end of the book (*MAJOR SPOILER ALERT HERE!!!*) the main character, who throughout the whole book questioned Big Brother and was secretly working with the “resistance,” realizes that it is no use fighting. He gives in, willingly, and now loves the totalitarian State that promised to take care of him. Winston has been successfully reprogrammed by the Ministry of Love (tyrants often label themselves the opposite of what they truly are).
Let me clear and concise – don’t be like Winston! The tendency is to look at Big Brother, with all of his vast and endless resources, power, technology, and weapons, and give up fighting. The State talks a big game, and yes, they have the law enforcement and judicial power to back it up with severe punishments. Just remember, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).
The Lord is a God of miracles, eleventh-hour rescues, and last-second saving when all hope seems lost. God is able to keep His people from any and all harm, as there has always been light in the land of Goshen (see here). And even if He doesn’t rescue in this life, we still won’t bow to tyrants and idols, because we know there is life beyond the grave, and we believe that all evildoers will receive the full punishment for their rejection of God if they don’t turn to Christ in faith.
We also know that every empire that has ever set itself against the Lord and His people has ended up the exact same way – a pile of rubble and ashes, with many of them erased even from well-known history. The Kingdom of God, however, continues to grow and expand, gathering God’s people and tearing down God’s enemies. The Church has been established for two thousand years, and its flame will never be snuffed out.
Are the enemies of God currently using “1984” as a playbook and instruction manual rather than its original purpose – a warning against the full implementation of godless ideologies? Yes, they are. Does it appear, humanly speaking, that we are outmanned, outgunned, and wholly ill-equipped to engage in any meaningful way? Sure. Did the Kingdom of God break out on this earth with the birth of a helpless baby in an animal-filled manger, eventually growing to include twelve fisherman and other wise misfits, and then to several thousand, and eventually to countless people across time and all over the earth? You better believe it.
“And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!’” – Revelation 12:10-12