TOTALITARIAN TURNCOAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1941, Page 2

TOTALITARIAN TURNCOAT

THOUGHT CONTROLLED BUT NOT FIXED. “There are several vital differences between totalitarianism and all the orthodoxies of the past, either in Europe or in the East,” said Mr George Orwell in a recent address. “The most important is that the orthodoxies of the past did not change, or at least did not change rapidly. In medieval Europe the Church dictated what you should believe, but at least it allowed you to retain the same - beliefs from birth to death. It did not tell you to believe one thing on Monday and another on Tuesday. And the same is more or less true of any orthodox Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim today. In a sense his thoughts are circumscribed, but he passes his whole life within the same framework of thought. His emotions are not tampered with. Now, with totalitarianism, exactly the opposite is true. The peculiarity of the totalitarian State is' that, though it controls thought, it does not fix it. It sets up unquestionable dogmas and it alters them from day to day. It needs the dogmas, because it needs absolute obedience from its subjects, but it cannot avoid the changes, which are dictated by the needs of power politics. It declares itself infallible, and at the same time it attacks the very concept of objective truth. To take a crude, obvious example, every German up to September, 1939, had to regard Russian Bolshevism with horror and aversion, and since September, 1939, until June 22 of this year, he had to regard it with admiration and affection.”