I don’t know how many times in 2022 I made references to George Orwell in my writings.Whether I talked about “newspeak” or “doublethink” or just described the current political malaise as “Orwellian,” I tried not to overuse such citations. Orwell, after all, was a writer who rarely ever wasted a word in his prose and had unkind words for those who misused language..Although one is probably first introduced to Orwell as the novelist of Animal Farm and 1984, his journalism is just as rewarding a read. A good introduction is the wonderful 'Homage to Catalonia,' which details his experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War against both the Fascists and the Stalin-supported Loyalists, or the columns he wrote under the banner of “As I Please.” .What is remarkable about Orwell is he was fiercely loyal not to a political party or even a political movement, but to the truth. He was calling Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin a monster when progressives everywhere were proclaiming him as the great man who would usher in a socialist millennium.Unlike too many journalists today who become ardent supporters of politicians or faithful to political parties, Orwell called himself a socialist who supported the British Labour Party but refused to be a paid political hack who buried his criticism in order to advance any cause. I do not believe, had he not died an untimely death in 1950 at the age of 46, that he would have continued to call himself a socialist — so determined was his search for the truth and his disdain for liars. It's worth noting some of his quotations — some well known, others not so much — to see just how they played into how the news of Canada and the world unfolded this year. All citations are from this website. .One of the major stories of the year has been the war in Ukraine. We've heard about Russian war crimes while watching NATO draw closer to a military confrontation that would probably lead to a nuclear war. Orwell said most of the war propaganda is product of politicians and journalists who are nowhere near the fighting. “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting,” he wrote. .This has certainly been true in Ukraine where American and Canadian politicians have been funneling billions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine while offering no guarantees the arms and money isn’t being scooped up the corrupt oligarchy in that country. The people who seem to think risking nuclear Armageddon is no big deal are not the ones who would be on the front lines. However, when it comes to atomic bombs, it won’t matter where you live or work once the war gets started. .The most significant Canadian story of the year was the Freedom Convoy and the subsequent invocation of the Emergencies [War Measures] Act by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to crush it. .The Trudeau government understood this adage from Orwell: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” .One of the key elements to Trudeau’s maintenance of power has been his control over the news by either owning or subsidizing major media outlets. Through this mechanism he has successfully transmitted the message he wants Canadians to hear and as Orwell said, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” .Trudeau did not suppress the Freedom Convoy because he wanted to safeguard the Canadian people. He did so to intimidate and threaten his political enemies. .“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power,” Orwell wrote. .And this federal government is not satisfied with beating its political foes into submission. It wants those opponents to apologize for their opposition and thank the authorities for beating the hell out of them. Because “we do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.” .Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland can actually pat herself on the back for freezing the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy supporters and hurting them economically while saying it was “an economic incentive” because, as Orwell wrote, “doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” .It all means that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” .Ultimately, Trudeau’s plan through the Emergencies [War Measures] Act, just as it had been throughout a COVID-19 pandemic of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, was to marginalize and penalize some Canadians and create two tiers of equality because as Orwell famously declared in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
