Orwell, Huxley & the New Authoritarianism
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are two of the great figures of the 20th century. Their novels, 1984 and Brave New World focus on authoritarianism. Both draw grim pictures of totalitarian rule but in each book the dictatorship to effect control deploys different techniques. For Orwell it’s straight out force. His dark image is brutal state oppression—“a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” Big Brother is watching your every move. You can be arrested at any time. Endless war is in the background. Whereas, in Huxley’s dystopia, societal control is achieved by more subtle means such as entertaining diversions, staged spectacles and the directed pursuit of manufactured needs and desires. People are infantilized. They are to be concerned with trivia like shopping, celebrity divorces and scandals leaving them with little time or interest to challenge power.
Speaker
Henry Giroux
Henry Giroux, a prominent public intellectual, prolific writer, commentator, and scholar. He teaches at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He is a founding theorist of critical pedagogy. Among his many books are Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, The Violence of Organized Forgetting, and America at War with Itself. He is a member of Truthout‘s Board of Directors and a regular contributor to the nonprofit, independent online news organization.
David –
Thank you, for finding powerful truth spokespersons and making their lucid and valid messages available to the public.
Samuel Allen –
So timely and dangerously real! Henry Giroux makes a ‘call to action’ similar to the one being made by Reverend William J. Barber, II’s Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival. With voices like Mr. Giroux and Alternative Radio, American’s will join one another in a movement for solidarity and away from materialism, militarism, racism, and complacency!