Power

Power

1. Things That Work For It

   • Providing the Bare Minimum
     • "The Party"
       • "They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient... but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist that reality into whatever shape they choose," (Orwell, 199).
       • Source # 1
     • North Korea
       • "The United Nations says a quarter of the country's children are severely malnourished, and yet as far as the eye can see are fields of maize, wheat, and corn."
       • Source # 2
   • Language
     • "The Party"
       • "'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it,'" (Orwell, 52).
       • Source # 1
     • U.S. Government
       • Source # 3
       • "An intercepted message among senior al Qaeda operatives in the last several days raised alarm bells that led to the closing of embassies and consulates Sunday across the Middle East and North Africa, CNN has learned." (Language works against power here because in English, A.K.A Oldspeak, there are plenty of words that can be used to plan terrorist actions against the powerful group.
   • Surveillance and Security
     • "A top-secret court has renewed the authority of U.S. national security officials to collect telephone data as part of an anti-terror surveillance program that was exposed by intelligence leaker Edward Snowden."
       • U.S. Government
       • Source # 5
     • "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork," (Orwell, 3).
       • "The Party"
         • Source # 1
   • Crushing Opponents
     • "Over the days of clashes with the protesters, Turkish police excessively used water cannons and tear gas..."
       • Turkey
         • Source # 6
     • "You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word," (Orwell, 19).
       • "The Party"
         • Source # 1

2. Things That Work Against It

   • Strong Opposition
     • "The Brotherhood"
       • Source # 1
       • "For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves, or the capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice," (Orwell, 202).
     • Egypt
       • Source # 4
       • "Egypt's military toppled the country's first democratically elected president Wednesday night and reportedly put him under house arrest..."
   • Language (For and Against)