The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Complete Failure of '1984' ｜ 10⧸26⧸23

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00:00:30.000 Progressive media outlets are celebrating the release of Julia,

00:00:40.580 a new feminist retelling of 1984 authorized by George Orwell's estate.

00:00:45.380 One glowing review from the Los Angeles Times declared that the new novel outclassed Orwell's dystopian classic

00:00:50.960 and suggested that it should take the original's place in high school English curricula.

00:00:55.260 The irony is almost too much to bear.

00:00:57.500 Perhaps the 20th century's most famous novel about propaganda,

00:01:01.220 in which the main character's job is to update the historical record to conform to the current government narrative,

00:01:07.300 has been updated to conform with modern propaganda.

00:01:10.940 The media, which in theory serve as the safeguard against exactly this form of centralized information manipulation,

00:01:17.700 are instead its most enthusiastic cheerleaders.

00:01:20.260 Though we live in a society whose conception of authoritarianism has been shaped almost entirely by 1984,

00:01:27.060 Orwell's novel failed to slow our rush headlong toward centralized state control.

00:01:32.640 Humans are narrative creatures who don't interact with facts in a vacuum.

00:01:37.400 Stories are critical because they create a shared context and vocabulary in which we can place the facts that we encounter.

00:01:43.920 Even going back to Plato, most civilizations understood that the stories that they collectively tell themselves

00:01:50.680 shape the very conceptual landscape on which people approach issues.

00:01:55.980 Orwell's book has served as the shared narrative context in which America and many other western nations

00:02:01.520 discuss the possibility of tyrannical state authority.

00:02:04.940 Modern advances in mass transit, mass communication, and mass production during the early 20th century

00:02:12.000 allowed for the rapid centralization of state power,

00:02:14.880 and gave rise to nightmarish regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. 0.55

00:02:19.940 Orwell's most famous work perfectly captures the nature of those regimes

00:02:24.020 in its depiction of brutal authoritarian government backed by plenty of direct opposition and the threat of force.

00:02:30.420 The dystopian novel became the universal reference point for tyranny thanks to its ubiquitous assignment

00:02:36.900 as required reading in American public schools.

00:02:40.980 Although the deterioration of public education has meant fewer modern students will read the book,

00:02:46.800 for many decades 1984 was likely the only novel most Americans had read that provided such a conceptual framework.

00:02:53.860 And yet, while most people treat 1984 as the critical warning on what an authoritarian government looks like,

00:03:00.880 they never seem to consider why it was included in compulsory public education in the first place.

00:03:07.660 The truth is that while 1984 serves as a good warning against the dangers of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, 0.71

00:03:13.700 it fails to equip students with the tools necessary to oppose the total state that is currently consuming America.

00:03:18.860 Given the nature of our soft, managerial regime, 1984 poses little threat to our leaders.

00:03:26.340 And because it's the only text in which most Americans encounter the idea of a dystopian government,

00:03:31.440 the novel limits their ability to conceive of an oppressive government that does not resemble the one Orwell described.

00:03:38.160 As a result, 1984 is only a threat to the dead managerial regimes of the past,

00:03:43.700 the ones that our current rulers defeated.

00:03:45.400 It serves the role of containment, setting a narrative frame that fences in thought about how a population might be controlled.

00:03:53.940 I'm not suggesting that there's some vast conspiracy to distribute 1984 to control the masses,

00:03:59.540 but its organic selection was likely due to its compatibility with our regime's mode of power.

00:04:04.940 Think of the rebellious and edgy television show that warns you about the dangers of evangelical Christianity, 0.69

00:04:11.580 thereby enforcing all the real narratives of power.

00:04:14.460 Some of the predictions in 1984 did come to pass, like the novel's own propagandistic update and replacement.

00:04:22.140 But our totalitarians look and feel so different that Orwell's warnings failed to halt their advance.

00:04:28.880 By casting themselves in the guise of kind, tolerant, and educated administrators applying therapeutic remedies,

00:04:34.620 our current regime's rulers can enact many of the social tears depicted in 1984 without triggering the narrative alarms.

00:04:42.200 These days, it's impossible to thrive with just one job.

00:04:44.800 Between increasing living costs, paying off debts, and planning for the future,

00:04:48.500 things like buying a home, building savings, and even going on vacation can seem like fantasies.

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00:04:57.360 work towards a promotion, or try putting your money into something risky like stocks, cryptocurrencies, or even a side hustle.

00:05:03.460 But at the end of the day, do you really want to sacrifice time and energy

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00:06:17.700 Several alternative dystopian novels do accurately warn against aspects of our soft managerial total state,

00:06:23.980 but they failed to gain the formative narrative status achieved by 1984.

00:06:28.780 Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is probably the most famous of these stories.

00:06:32.280 Though flawed, it does a much better job of laying out the tools deployed by our regime today.

00:06:36.680 While Orwell focused on force, hate, and blunt propaganda,

00:06:41.200 Huxley predicted the more benign and therapeutic tone that social engineering would take.

00:06:46.120 The population in Brave New World is not held in check by fear.

00:06:50.220 Instead, they're controlled by the manipulation of their pleasures.

00:06:54.020 People are genetically engineered to be happy with their station in life

00:06:57.320 and provided with constant chemical assistance to help them deal with any feelings of despair or unhappiness.

00:07:03.560 Why resist the regime when you can just take a drug that will make all your problems fade away?

00:07:08.920 If there's one thing we learned from the pandemic lockdowns,

00:07:11.760 it's that Netflix can be just as effective as Soma at pacifying the masses.

00:07:15.720 Brave New World was also more aware of the impact that the sexual revolution would have on the total state.

00:07:23.900 Humans are genetically engineered, not naturally conceived,

00:07:27.280 and so sex has become entirely detached from its organic content.

00:07:30.560 So you've always been picky about your produce.

00:07:33.120 But now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian.

00:07:37.100 So be it.

00:07:38.180 At Sobeez, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first.

00:07:42.420 Restrictions apply.

00:07:43.400 See in-store or online for details.

00:07:45.120 Text

00:07:47.680 Everyone in Huxley's novel is sterile.

00:07:51.000 Refusing to have sex with someone is considered selfish.

00:07:54.240 Orgies are common, and exclusive attachments are the ultimate taboo.

00:07:58.820 There are no husbands or wives, mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers.

00:08:04.400 The family forms a fundamental loyalty that competes with the total state,

00:08:08.620 and so it must be broken, not by force,

00:08:11.380 but through the destruction of the sacred and the proliferation of pleasure

00:08:14.900 that's been unmoored from its natural foundation.

00:08:17.960 The citizens of Huxley's dystopia don't fear the jackboot,

00:08:22.120 but simply can't imagine an existence where every moment isn't managed by a vast array of highly qualified experts.

00:08:28.560 The main problem with Brave New World is that Huxley was still a modern progressive who saw managerialism as the way forward.

00:08:37.300 The novel is more of a cautionary tale of progress gone awry than a warning against this form of progress itself.

00:08:43.680 That hideous strength by C.S. Lewis is a lesser-known work,

00:08:48.640 but it also provides critical insight into a regime that 1984 never captured.

00:08:54.380 Unlike Orwell or Huxley,

00:08:56.280 Lewis understood that the modern obsession with disenchanting the world and controlling human nature was evil in and of itself.

00:09:04.140 Lewis also managed to predict the rise of anarcho-tyranny.

00:09:07.200 In that hideous strength,

00:09:09.740 a cabal of self-righteous college professors who had been tricked into serving evil

00:09:13.860 used street thugs to manufacture riots and then manipulate the media into justifying a crackdown on average citizens in response.

00:09:22.420 Stop me if any of that sounds familiar to you.

00:09:25.580 The novel's characters are forced constantly to state obvious lies to themselves and others

00:09:31.320 to maintain their social status as intellectuals.

00:09:34.000 It's that depiction of a moral and spiritual death by a thousand little cuts that makes Lewis's novel so powerful.

00:09:41.760 These shapers of public opinion slowly recognize that they've sworn allegiance to a grotesque evil,

00:09:47.640 but they've bound so much of their identity and status to the new regime

00:09:51.280 that they have to continue their pyramid scheme of lies.

00:09:55.140 While there's certainly great merit to Orwell's warning against the forces of authoritarianism,

00:09:59.860 it's simply not the novel for our time.

00:10:01.840 It was written to ward off vanquished foes, not address the spirit of the regime that now rules over us.

00:10:09.140 The soft managerial regime is one that strips away the sacred,

00:10:13.120 denies human nature, and seeks to manufacture the ideal subject.

00:10:17.900 The destruction of the family, the sterilization of the vital, 0.98

00:10:21.200 and the weaponization of sex are all key tools in the arsenal of our ruling class. 1.00

00:10:25.700 The battle being waged in our time is a fundamentally spiritual one.

00:10:30.240 It's a battle of our hearts, minds, and ultimately, souls.

00:10:34.700 This is a war of belief, and we must fight to return to what is sacred

00:10:38.620 if we wish to escape the smothering advance of managed technocratic dehumanization.

00:10:55.700 And of course, you can watch all of my shows and read all of my columns over at The Blaze.

00:11:16.220 And you should definitely go check out the new Blaze website,

00:11:18.820 because you know those terrible ads that cover all those conservative news websites?

00:11:23.980 The Blaze got rid of them, and it looks so much better.

00:11:26.660 It's so much cleaner. It's so much faster.

00:11:28.640 And they did that because, of course, it's nicer to read,

00:11:30.860 but also because they don't have to worry about demonetization anymore.

00:11:33.980 You guys know how big tech does this.

00:11:36.000 Whenever there's a story that they don't like,

00:11:37.780 they go ahead and slap it with the demonetization label,

00:11:40.300 and all of a sudden it drops to the bottom of the algorithm,

00:11:42.300 and nobody reads it, and all of a sudden they've disappeared the story.

00:11:45.560 What this does is it allows Blaze to run all kinds of stuff,

00:11:49.560 and they don't have to worry about that aspect.

00:11:51.780 They don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to get deprioritized,

00:11:54.860 whether it's going to get demonetized.

00:11:56.860 They can just go ahead and do the type of reporting

00:11:58.860 and run pieces like mine without having to worry about the ads that would get attached to it.

00:12:02.880 Of course, that means that they are reliant on subscriptions,

00:12:05.480 so while you're there, you might consider checking it out and supporting.

00:12:09.040 All right, guys, thanks for watching, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 26, 2023

The Complete Failure of '1984' ｜ 10⧸26⧸23

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