Community | June 04, 2010 | 46 comments

ORWELL WAS NAIVE

WhiteNoise
1950-ongoing : WORLDWIDE.

George Orwell's grim novel of totalitarianism, 1984, and his satirical political novel, Animal Farm, describe all too well the mechanisms of oppression and distortion of the truth by the state and the realities of political power. Orwell was opposed to totalitarianism in all its forms, whether Stalinist, fascist or pseudo-democratic. Ironically, Orwell had unknowingly fallen into the clutches of the very propagandists and distorters of truth he vilified and satirized. His British publisher, Fredric Warburg, was secretly working for the CIA. Warburg would later become notorious for publishing and distributing a CIA propaganda magazine, Encounter, for one of the CIA's countless front organizations, the ironically named Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Following Orwell's death in 1950, Warburg persuades his widow to unwittingly sell the movie rights to 1984 and Animal Farm to the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a creation of Rockefeller cousin, Hitler Project kingpin and Nazi shyster cum CIA head, Allen Dulles. According to its secret charter, OPC's activities on behalf of the "free" world include propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, demolition and subversion. Two of the CIA's Psychological Warfare Workshop staff obtain the screen rights to Orwell's novels. The head of the operation is none other than CIA operative Howard Hunt, who will later become infamous as a member of the Watergate gang of criminals. Hunt selects Louis De Rochemont to be the producer of the animated Animal Farm at Paramount. De Rochemont has considerable experience with propaganda, having created The March of Time series for Henry Luce and, during the Second World War, working with the U.S. Navy's propaganda film unit. To meet the CIA's objectives, the ending of Animal Farm is changed and the point of the story, that cruel capitalist farmers are no better masters than tyrannical Stalinist pigs, is destroyed.

The CIA's sanitized version of Animal Farm is distributed around the world by a CIA front, the U.S. "Information" Agency (USIA). The CIA then produces 1984 in Britain in 1954. Inevitably, Orwell's message is distorted and perverted by the CIA to suit the goals of the U.S. ruling class.

The CIA's Orwellian sabotage of two of the most powerful political works in literature is a masterstroke of pre-emptive mind control. As the psychological warfare experts at the CIA are only too aware, a successful movie, like television, can be seen by tens or hundreds of millions of people and, consisting of graphic images, is much more powerful and widely assimilated than the written word. By sabotaging the movie versions of 1984 and Animal Farm, the CIA effectively stopped the vast majority of Americans ever learning of the relevance of Orwell's writing to their own situation.

The role of the CIA in sabotaging Orwell's masterpieces is hidden for half a century. To the present day, many American school teachers use the CIA's movie version of 1984 to "teach" the novel, spoonfeeding young Americans "prolefeed" created by the CIA rather than the true, chilling and all too relevant message of Orwell's book.
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46 comments // ORWELL WAS NAIVE // Video

  • Guedoncio_Santos
    • 0
      Guedoncio_Santos  

    • "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - Copy to Clipboard
      -- George Orwell

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
    • 0
      iamaman  

    • Naive he is not! he may be too intellectual for most to comprehend. Aldous Huxley sounds queer next to Orwell. maybe that is why some people find huxley easier to read.

      In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
      George Orwell

      Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
      George Orwell

      Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
      George Orwell

      On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
      George Orwell

      Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
      George Orwell

      The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.
      George Orwell

      The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
      George Orwell

      People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
      George Orwell

      All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

    • 1 year ago
  • Newtown
    • 0
      Newtown  

    • Read Animal Farm three times, great book. Haven't read more than 50 pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four, not that interesting.

      I won't even bother with either version of Animal Farm. They're both chock full of BS.

    • 1 year ago
  • Godling
  • Newtown
  • Newtown
  • iamaman
  • UrbanGypsy
    • 0
      UrbanGypsy  

    • I think the Animal Farm cartoon film is also different from the book. I read the book back in high school and then I saw the movie. The book was better because the movie was missing detail and some of the storyline was changed slightly...

    • 1 year ago
  • Omnomynous
    • 0
      Omnomynous  

    • Not all that hard to believe, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Even if he didn't see it in his personal life, he wasn't that naive.

    • 1 year ago
  • jubal
    • +1
      jubal  

    • Whitenoise....great story and analysis and information as usual. I thank God for your incredible boldness and bringing our attention to the importance of actually reading the book. Yes the movies can be fun to watch, but the movie rarely if ever capture the nuances and most important social messages contained in the novels.

      READING IS KING!!!!!

    • 1 year ago
  • MoonLoon
    • +2
      MoonLoon  

    • We had a bookmobile (library) coming by every 2 weeks and I was allowed to check out 14 books (to read 1 per day). My two favorites, to this day, are The Illiad and Animal Farm. As a child I had trouble grasping the deeper meaning of the Animal Farm, but I now consider it one of the best books that I have ever read.

    • 1 year ago
  • donkeyfly69
  • WhiteNoise
  • hammywill
  • Nephwrack
  • hammywill
  • WhiteNoise
    • +1
      WhiteNoise  
    • hammywill:

      He was indeed, but when he realized that capitalism was the exploitation of men by men & communism was its opposite ;) he became a stauch anti-totalitarianism but mainly a humanist & social-democrat.

      "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" - George Orwell

      He was hated by both sides of the ideologue's coin for he had his epiphany in Spain during the civil war against the fascists...

      Spanish Civil War

      Soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising. As a sympathiser of the Independent Labour Party (of which he became a member in 1938), he joined the militia of its sister party in Spain, the non-Stalinist far-left POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), in which he fought as an infantryman. In Homage to Catalonia he described his admiration for the apparent absence of a class structure in the revolutionary areas of Spain he visited. He also depicted what he saw as the betrayal of that workers' revolution in Spain by the Spanish Communist Party, abetted by the Soviet Union and its secret police, after its militia attacked the anarchists and the POUM in Barcelona in May 1937. Orwell was shot in the neck (near Huesca) on May 20, 1937, an experience he described in his short essay "Wounded by a Fascist Sniper", as well as in Homage to Catalonia. He and his wife Eileen left Spain after narrowly missing being arrested as "Trotskyites" when the communists moved to suppress the POUM in June 1937.

      Orwell's books free online...
      http://www.george-orwell.org/

      HUB : http://www.orwelltoday.com/

      Students for an Orwellian Society
      http://www.studentsfororwell.org/

      "It does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchal society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects, and its object is not victory, but to keep the very structure of society in tact." - George Orwell, from 1984

    • 1 year ago
  • nursediesel
  • ampersand
    • +1
      ampersand  
    • WhiteNoise:

      I re-read "Homage to Catalonia" this spring when I was in Spain. In addition to the clear eyed stoicism he showed in reporting the betrayals of himself and his own men by the twisted politics of those in power above on his own side, Orwell's description of the universal commonality of body lice in war was the best depiction of the personal experience of the soldier I'd ever read.
      I don't think he'd be surprised by this betrayal, either.
      So it goes.
      In any case, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
      He is a man, and an intellect, well worth remembering.

    • 1 year ago
  • hammywill
  • Guyatthebusstation
  • WhiteNoise
    • +2
      WhiteNoise  
    • Guyatthebusstation:

      Looks like both were right, one for the oppressed & the other for the so called willing cogs... now which one ;)

      "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" - George Orwell

      "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you mad." - Aldous Huxley

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
    • 0
      iamaman  
    • Image
    • Guyatthebusstation:

      after the ongoing BP disaster, nothing surprises me on how the populace has become so stupefied and illiterate. Big Pharma's actually manufacturing a muscle relaxant, professionally known as Carisoprodal, as "Soma".

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma

      "In Western fiction, soma often refers to some form of intoxicating drug. It is also the brand name of the prescription muscle relaxant Carisoprodol."

      p.s. i visited the house Aldous Huxley supposedly wrote "Brave New World" in. its way off the beaten path between Pear Blossom and Little Rock, CA (LA County). use to live in Pearblossom for a few years. it hasn't changed much. It still has no stop light (HWY 138 [AKA Blood Alley]). Not to far from the remains of the old Wells Fargo stage coach trail. its still being lived in.

    • 1 year ago
  • Nephwrack
  • iamaman
  • Incredulous
    • 0
      Incredulous  

    • will never forget my first reading of Animal Farm....all of the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others....

      what's next, Bart Simpson as Holden Caulfield ...People always think something's all true.

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
  • Dagum
    • 0
      Dagum  

    • That’s unsettling. I read Animal farm and 1984. Didn’t know movie versions even existed and lazy teachers were using them to spoon-feed school children.

    • 1 year ago
  • Deltone
    • 0
      Deltone  

    • wow, that is interesting. thanks for adding your references. no one seems to do that on this site so it's sometimes hard to tell legit info from the rest of the jive. cheers.

    • 1 year ago
  • WhiteNoise
  • Godling
  • WhiteNoise
    • +2
      WhiteNoise  
    • Godling:

      See it, but with this new understanding which makes it a lot more fun, just like watching the news with the knowledge of all the spin & damage control going on... way more fun indeed ;)

      The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. There's also a negative side. - Hunter S. Thompson

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
    • 0
      iamaman  
    • WhiteNoise:

      NPR pbs link tv democracy now. are cool. the problem with the net you cant trust the info so much without doing some foot work and people are to lazy to use google nowadays.

    • 1 year ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • +3
      WhiteNoise  

    • REFERENCES

      Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm.
      http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/31423304/Orwell-Subverted-The...

      How the Central Intelligence Agency Played Dirty Tricks With Our Culture
      http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031800-02.htm

      Going Highbrow at the CIA
      http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/going-highbrow-at-the-cia-1124...

      The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.: William Colby: Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from September, 1973, to January, 1976.

      In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. Frank Church - Church was a key figure in American foreign policy during the 1970s, and served as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1981.

      The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink: George Orwell : English novelist, essayist, and critic, 1903-1950

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
  • WhiteNoise
  • iamaman
  • WhiteNoise
    • +4
      WhiteNoise  

    • AS FOR THE STATE OF TODAY'S INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM....

      Gonzo had a tender thought for the practitioners ;)

      Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."
      ~ Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
  • WhiteNoise
  • artemis6
  • iamaman
  • iamaman
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