George Orwell Part Two: Censorship and Silencing

 

In September 2024 Betley Parish Council considered several policies which it did not have but should have and updated the few that it did.  Councillors were invited to look at these policies and submit any amendments/changes/ improvements etc.  Only one Councillor did so and few if any of those recommendations (all 20 pages) were considered or accepted. 

Local Councils had produced a template, which some councils amended to meet their particular needs.   Betley Parish Council has included in this a clause wishing to regulate not only its own social media but to include all other and private social media platforms.  This could mean giving itself the power to close down platforms with which it might not agree or did not like.  Although the PC was cautioned with regard to the impact of this it went ahead anyway, ignoring perhaps the view of Bruce Coville who informed that 'withholding information is the essence of tyranny, control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.' 

The Councillor who queried the coverage of meetings in the Minutes and the Accounts was quickly silenced and pin-pointed for 'special' treatment.  This was a form of censorship and silencing.  The Council, then, appears to be legitimising via its now adopted policies freedom to speech and other opinion.  The Newspeak employed by authority for this appears to be 'Managing Threats'.

For some time now the AboutWrinehill Blog  has been vetted by one or two people who have attempted to discredit it and its author.  The blog was set up in the first instance as a balance to the mis/dis-information being generated and dispensed by the Parish Council particularly via the Minutes, which appeared to have become, since May 2019, politicised and seemingly weaponised.  

This would not be the first time in history that such tactics have been used to silence and outlaw voices and views with which those in authority/power would rather not hear and would rather no-one else heard either.  So is there a justification for censorship and silencing? The Human Declaration of Human Rights is clear: 

‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ ― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 19).   Betley Parish Council and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council please note.

However, opinion and views are formed by the quality and amount of information available.  But as Bruce Coville noted: ‘withholding information is the essence of tyranny, control of the flow of information is the tool of dictatorship.’ Local Authorities at all levels, please note.

'As centuries of dictators are aware, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired', so wrote Alberto Manguel in his A History of Reading.  He went on to state that  the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.' And this is probably why one of the first acts of any dictator/tyrant is to burn books or withdraw them from circulation.  Losing past Minutes is another way of cancelling history and the past.  Silencing and demeaning  any one making observations and/or criticisms of the regime also removes accountability and transparency.  Fairness is kicked into touch.  Fair play appears to be an alien concept to tyrants and dictators.  

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill  (1936 - Nobel Laureate in Literature) not mincing his words stated that 'Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretence, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.'   

However, Henry Steele Commager went further to state that: 'The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.'  Such revelations led Orwell and others to the conclusion that there was only one viewpoint permitted in a dictatorship - all others are denied and/or silenced.  North Staffordshire appears to be on such a trajectory.  Betley Parish council and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council please note.

Censorship is often accompanied by anti-intellectualism, the encouragement of the more extreme popular view by giving it prominence over more informed views and creating rules to limit freedoms.  Such tactics give rise to serious implications for society since it threatens its coherence and weakens the social fabric.  But tyrants interested only in assuaging their egos and imposing their will would  have no concern for the consequences of their actions.

Orwell found that to implement absolute power,  reality had to be 'manipulated'.  He found that 'the further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.'  And that 'the people who believe what the media tells them they believe' would cease to resist. Democracy unravels.   

Local Authorities who once published their own newspapers now issue statements which are in effect articles which are then syndicated and circulated to news platforms.  Only 'good news stories' about the LA qualify. the articles are also used to vilify those questioning ‘the system’ .  The greater the errors of judgment of authority and its ‘mistakes’ the more upbeat the stories which gloss over and divert blame and/or attention elsewhere.  Bad news is turned around to become good news, failure becomes a success story.   Political leaders feature prominently in the delivery of these messages.

Orwell believed that such tactics overall were created in order to limit not only thought but the vocabulary needed to express thought.  Fear accompanied by intimidation and harassment of the ‘whistle blower’ (more Newspeak) was a particular regulating tool, which Orwell and others believed to amount to ‘psychological abuse’, which has the impact of extending beyond the individual. infect wider society.             

He also found that ' during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary action'.  It is truth that also uncovers hypocrisy, leading to the discovery that the powerful distort facts.  The only defence and antidote to this is an inquiring and questioning/curious mind since without it, sense becomes drowned in nonsense. Asking questions and insisting on answers becomes an offence/a breach/harassment/an imposition rather than a right.  Betley Parish Council and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council please note.          

Orwell cautioned that 'Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear' and silence.

However, Orwell's book 1984 demonstrates that no matter how fear is instilled and played out, compliance with the system is far from guaranteed. George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (1948) also responsible for the TV serial Game of Thrones was convinced that ‘when you tear out a person's tongue’, literally or figuratively, 'you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what they might say'.