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CHAPTER 13 The "Secret of Rulership" Revealed
The British Empire had a long, and, sometimes, not so glorious history of deceit, abuse, exploitation, tyranny, and plunder. It is, therefore, not surprising that the deepest and most sophisticated revelations about political and economic nightmares -- collectivist and commercial -- came from two brilliant Englishmen,-- George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Orwell revealed the deep "secret of rulership." The "intellectual basis" for dominion, he asserted, is "doublethink" -- a "vast system of mental cheating," consisting of "conscious deception," "control of the past," etc.1 Interestingly, Orwell also revealed the antidote to doublethink (more on this later). Aldous Huxley traced the "Brave New Worldian nightmare" -- mind manipulation, brainwashing, and commercial propaganda -- to "representatives of commercial and political organizations who have developed a number of new techniques for manipulating, in the interest of some minority, the thoughts and feelings of the masses."2 Huxley sarcastically depicted these representatives as "people who took daily baths and went to church in top hats."3 For him, technology has been hijacked by Big Business and Big Government for the purpose of increasing the concentration of their economic and political power.4 What did Huxley recommend people do? To preserve freedom and democracy, he said, people must resist "the unscrupulous purveyors of poisonous propaganda" who take away, "little by little," our "inalienable rights."5
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See George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1987 and 1989, at 223 ("doublethink"),
and 224 ("secret of rulership"). 2 See Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, with an Introduction by David Bradshaw, 1958 and 1994, at 5-6 ("Brave New Worldian nightmare").3 Ibid., at 45-46 ("top hats").4 Ibid., at 27 and 172 (Big Business and Big Government; concentration of power).5 Ibid., at 45 ("inalienable rights"), and 167 (the need for outlawing "psychological slave trade . . . against the unscrupulous purveyors of poisonous propaganda"). |
