The Two Minutes Hate: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

I can haz love?

George Orwell's concept of the Two Minutes Hate is something that has stuck with me since first reading the book as a child. It's a sensory assault that aims at brainwashing the citizens of Orwell's nightmare world and at providing an outlet for their hidden emotions. Wikipedia also informs me that brief artillery barrages in WWI were called "hates". The sense is one of an assault on the viewer in which emotions overtake reason. Those emotions are, Orwell seems to indicate, an easy target for the state's mechanisms of control. The hate is directed at enemies of The Party and performed ritually each day.

A flip side of the Two Minutes Hate is the adoration of Big Brother. He is the hero of Oceania and the only acceptable object of love in their society. His perfection and leadership mush be acknowledged by all members of the society.

I couldn't initially find many analogous rituals and "hates" in the United States. While there are many personal, social, and religious rituals practiced in our county, there are no major governmental rituals. Independence Day might be a national holiday but it barely holds a candle to Orwell's "Hate Week". It also lacks the central planning and propagandizing of Orwell's totalitarian government. America also lacks the adoration part of Orwell's vision. Regardless of what some on the right may want you to believe, Obama does not come close to the do-no-wrong, demagogic nature of Big Brother.

However, I did notice some disturbing trends in the way our political leaders behave:

Clinton is laughing about the death of Moammar Gaddafi while riffing on the famous Caesar quote veni, vidi, vici. I'm not apologizing for Gaddafi. He was a bad man and committed terrible injustices on his people. But let's not forget that the past decade saw a blossoming of America's relationship with the late Libyan dictator. Indeed, after ending his weapons program in 2003 and turning over all his materials to the international community, Gaddafi was supported by the US. That's right, America supported the terrible dictator whose death Hillary Clinton laughs about. We came, we saw we, we negotiated, we financially supported, his people revolted, we turned on him, we bombed him, and his own people killed him. I don't know how to say that in Latin - sorry. In case you had any doubts, here's "Qaddafi: From Private Ally to Public Enemy". 

I heard he had a creepy shrine to Condi in his house.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-november-1-2011/condoleezza-rice-pt--1

Of course, that's standard operating procedure for America's treatment of foreign leaders and dictators. We court them for a while. Help them oppress their peoples and personally enrich themselves, and then we turn on them when the time is right. What more closely parallels Orwell's world is they way in which these leaders are depicted. Take it away Gelnn Greenwald:

That’s how dictators and other assorted miscreants with whom the U.S. was tightly allied for years or even decades are overnight converted into The Root of All Evil, The Supreme Villain who Must be Vanquished (Saddam, Osamabin Laden, Gadaffi, Mubarak).  Americans who were perfectly content to have their government in bed with these individuals suddenly stand up and demand, on cue, that no expense be spared to eradicate them.  Often, the demonization campaign contains some truth — the nation’s long-time-friends-converted-overnight-into-Enemies really have committed atrocious acts or, as a new innovation of Nixonian tactics aimed at Daniel Ellsberg, evenharbored some creepy porn (!) — but the ritual of collective hatred renders any facts a mere accident.  Once everyone’s contempt is successfully directed toward the Chosen Enemy, it matters little what they actually did or did not do: such a profound menace are they to all that is Good that exaggerations or even lies about their bad acts are ennobled, in service of a Good Cause; conversely, to question the demonization or object to what is done to them is, by definition, to side with Evil.

Glenn goes on to identify the ways the same approach is applied to anybody the government wishes to label as the "New Enemy". This reminds me of the tendency of hawkish commentators to insist that 9/11 was purely the result of fanatics and crazies who "hate us for our freedoms" - as if it would have happened regardless of any external circumstances. The categorization of people and causes as "Good" and "Evil" prevents any deeper analysis of the issues. Even asking whether or not America's policies toward the middle east share some of the blame will get you scolded by neocons and clash-of-civilizations crusaders - as Paul Krugman learned after posting this to his blog on 9/11.

But America loves to celebrate these deaths as a kind of victory over something and our leaders embrace it either because they themselves have bought into it or because they know how much they stand to gain. We don't want a complicated worldview because we don't want to see the kinds of actions we're really perpetrating on the world stage and against our own citizens. We prefer instead to think of all of our enemies as Simply Evil.

The past two months have seen this method turned against the average American. Fox News, admittedly and easy target, leads the way in setting up the single narrative:

Not to be outdone, Citi corp. Fiance, and new CNN pundit Erin Burnett (watch at about 3:30min) also layers on some condescension (oh, and she's wrong about the whole "Bailouts were profitable" thing). More than a month later, these jibes and jokes seem hopelessly naive. What's worse is the cognitive dissonance: OWS is both a disorganized collection of lazy hippies and a major threat to public safety and national well being.

This need by people in power to categorize their enemies is very Orwellian. They need to be able to direct the public against whatever is deemed "bad". This way they can maintain the illusion that they are always morally justified in their actions. Much like my last post, I am disturbed by these trends and how they are increasingly applied to Americans. Without all the other mechanisms of oppression in an Orwellian society, these broad generalizations seem to collapse under opposing evidence. Right now, America isn't there but I can unfortunately envision a future where, given current trends, people will engage in ritualistic "hates". They will be easily swayed by merely labeling a person or group rather than actual analysis of ideas. Then again, maybe we're closer than I think.

This is a good point to stop. We're entering into the category of the next post: doublethink.

I hope you are enjoying the series of posts. I always feel like they're a bit of an incoherent rant but that's part of the reason I keep a blog - to better know what I think. As usual, I encourage comments and criticism.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

State control of your daily life: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

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Sorry for the long delay between posts. Life has a way of getting in the way. Three completely insane weeks at school, coming down with a bad cold, and the release of Skyrim taking time to focus on hand-eye coordination all took their toll.

In my last post I looked at our government's massive surveillance apparatus and wondered whether that made America resemble an Orwellian State. While the capability for complete obliteration of privacy exists, there's not enough transparency in our government to tell how such capabilities are being used. This violates a key aspect of Orwellian surveillance - knowledge of the surveillance creates complicity through paranoia.

Today I turn my attention to mechanisms of state control over our daily life. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell creates a society where even the daily activities of individuals are regimented and dictated by the state. Initially, America seems to be free from all such control - we can move about the country freely. We have choices in where to work and how to spend our money. We form relationships voluntarily. I am tempted to make connections to public schooling and the oath of fealty we force all children to swear each day but it is a weak form of control at best.

I think we need to look at some larger trends in order to see how the country is changing and how individuals are losing influence over their own lives.

The first big trend is Occupy Wall Street - or, more accurately, the coordinated response against OWS. I posted a few videos at the end of October about the Rough Treatment of Occupy Protesters. It was those videos which motivated me to write this series of posts. I'd like to point out something I wrote:

The move to crush the protests is on. Atlanta just evicted hundreds from Woodruff park and arrested around 50 protesters. Police forces nationwide are trying to deny any living space to the protesters in the hope that they will fade away this winter.

That now appears to be exactly what has happened. In every major center of protest, the police cleared the tents and living spaces. They've denied them shelter so that the protesters have a much harder time occupying. What I didn't expect was the hand of the federal government in crushing the protests. It now appears that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI coordinated these raids with local law enforcement:

Rick Ellis of the Minneapolis edition of Examiner.com has this, based on a “background conversation” he had with a Justice Department official on Monday night:

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict “Occupy” protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night’s move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

[...]

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

Corroborated by this AP story. We've also seen attacks on student protesters at Berkeley and police using military weapons and armor when clearing a protest near UNC Chapel Hill:

This is just like Modern Warfare 3 but you're shooting
poor people with rubber bullets instead of Russians with real ones.

Spurred on by Federal guidance, police departments around the country made a show of force. They brought out armored vehicles, and used LRAD sound cannons against protesters who were singing the national anthem. In Oregon, Federal Protective Services was actively assisting police in eviction and detention of protesters in Schrunk Plaza. The FPS is part of the Department of Homeland Security, by the way.

These tactics were employed along with a media blackout designed to hide any police abuses like those that have been floating around You Tube and nightly news broadcasts since the protests began. All reporters were kept out of the area near Zuccotti Park - except of course the New York Times which was embedded with DHS NYPD for two weeks while they trained to demolish the encampment. Compare this New York Times article to the video below from Mother Jones:

Despite all their efforts, videos of the NYPD raid and police actions in other cities continue to make their way on to the internet. (Wow, You Tube assigns commercials to videos that reach a certain amount of views - the commercial I just saw was for Monsanto. Ugh.)

Thankfully, the internet allows for free exchange of information and ideas. Thankfully it allows people all over the world to expose and resist such thuggery by police and governments. Much of the material I've linked so far has been from the You Tube or Twitter accounts of people involved in or covering the OWS movement. Even when the media are ordered out, we still gain first person accounts of the events.

Yeah. About that:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.


Congress is considering a bill written for and designed by the entertainment and telecommunications industries which will grant unprecedented censorship powers to both the government and to those corporations. I've already documented that these companies have a long history of cooperation with our intelligence agencies (like the Department of Homeland Security). All that's required is an accusation by any company and the government gains the authority to shut down an entire domain (for example, www.youtube.com is a domain). While the spirit of the bill is to prevent piracy, it creates the legal standing needed to actively censor social media, video sites, and even news outlets during critical events. Sure, a judge may toss out the law some time down the road but it will be years before such a case is fully litigated (probably all the way to SCOTUS).

Pictures like this will be subject to censorship:

That lady is pregnant.
http://today.seattletimes.com/2011/11/police-arrest-4-occupy-seattle-marchers

It also means I can't make and post videos like this:

What does this mean as part of the Orwellian State analysis? Well, I'd say that coordinated coercive actions by the government designed to quash free speech and destroy dissent are hallmarks of an Orwellian State. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the thought police also created false scenarios to detect those who had wavering or weak commitment to the state. Winston was tricked by a member of the Inner Party into believing he was joining an underground group which resists the state. In the end, he is exposed and learns the entrapment was a strategy frequently used to preempt open dissent. America doesn't do anything like that, right?

Wrong. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies routinely use surveillance to identify immigrants and Americans who they consider at risk for radicalization. Then, the FBI contacts these individuals (who have never previously taken any actions) and proceeds to radicalize them. Then, they design a plot to do something terrible, like blow up a Christmas tree, and ask the newly state-radicalized "terrorist suspect" to participate. At the last moment, they make the big reveal: Surprise! We were the FBI all along. Enjoy your water-boarding in Cuba you Christmas hating terrorist mother fucker!

How many times has this happened? We don't know. But there have been some high profile cases that the Justice Department and FBI have paraded around in front of the media to show us how good of a job they're doing at defeating the plots they themselves create. 

Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success.  In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro.  And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.

And we can't forget the super super dangerous used car salesman who was plotting to act as a liaison between the Iranians and the Zetas drug cartel  in order to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador the US.

This scenario sounds almost exactly like something out of an Orwellian nightmare. Does the state control our daily lives? No. Day to day decision making is still relatively autonomous. But our free speech is under attack. Our access to publicly available information is decreasing. Our ability to peaceably assemble and share those experiences is eroding at the behest of private industry. Worse still, our domestic intelligence services use entrapment and trickery to create criminals out of individuals who exist on the margins of society - individuals who are America citizens, who are guaranteed rights under the constitution, and who have done nothing wrong until the FBI makes them do it. These people are locked away under emergency powers granted in the Patriot Act and never heard from again.

If someone approaches you after reading this post and offers you a chance to fight back against the government, say no. Chances are they work for the government.

As I clicked the "Preview" button for this post, a grey bar appeared at the top of my Chrome browser. It informed me that Blogger would like to know my physical location. I clicked "Deny".  Maybe I was wrong about that whole complicity through paranoia thing.

Tomorrow I'll post my next discussion - The Two Minutes Hate: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

Invasion of privacy: Is America a Soft Orwellian State?

Surveillance is a key aspect of the Orwellian State. Winston's flat is monitored through his television (which actually was an early fear - people used to place tablecloths and blankets over their TVs so others couldn't see them through the TV). He is constantly fearful that a hidden microphone is listening on him - even when he goes into the countryside. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the purpose of the surveillance is not just to ferret out opponents of the state. The threat of constant surveillance is s mechanism of control. Winston and others are so worried that they must constantly questions their own appearance, actions, and words. Even an unconscious uttering could be grounds for detention if the surveillance systems overheard. Worse still, people were encouraged to spy on each other. 

I've already tipped my hand a bit as to that final part - the Dpt. of Homeland Security does have a public awareness campaign which seem to encourage some snooping. Remember citizen, If you See Something, Say Something. The focus, however, is not on actions against the state. DHS is encouraging you to stay aware and report potential terrorist activities. 

Terrorism is the crux of many of  the changes we've seen in America. We live in constant fear of another attack and have to take precautions against it. Or so the argument goes. I find the security vs liberty choice to be a false dichotomy. Following the attacks, a number of powers were granted to the presidency which it did not previously have and systems of surveillance were stepped up.

However, complex systems of electronic intelligence gathering were in place long before the 9/11 attacks. A multi-national electronic eavesdropping initiative called ECHELON has been in place since the 1960s. It's original goal was gathering data on the Soviet Union by listening in on electronic communications. Prior to the advent of fiber optic cables, all long distance communications were over the electromagnetic frequencies (radio, microwave, etc.). If you had sensitive enough equipment, you could listen in on even the faintest signals from thousands of miles away or, from a few hundred yards, you could detect the electronic impluses made by a computer keyboard - that is, you could read what someone is typing while they typed. The US and her Allies set up listening posts in the UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia - the largest of which is located in Yorkshire. Next time you visit a pub in Harrogate, say hello to all the American contractors who are "consultants" but can't tell you anything more. They're the folks listening to your phone calls.

The downfall of the Soviet Union didn't see the end of these electronic surveillance programs. Indeed, the biggest threat to their continued existence came from the advent of fiber optic cabling. Fiber optics uses light to transmit a signal. Light produces no electromagnetic signature and can't be intercepted without having direct access to the cables themselves. This is exceedingly difficult - not that we haven't tired.

Not an entrance to Narnia.
The NSA's "secret room" in AT&T's San Fransisco network routing  office.
How do I know it's an official government installation?
It's wheelchair accessible, as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

What our intelligence service realized was, the easiest way to gain access to these new fiber optic cables circling the globe was to require the companies who used them to provide access. Telephone companies had been a part of this loop since the 1950s but another innovation required more direct action: the internet. Since 1997, the FBI and NSA have had software and hardware installed at the routing stations of major telecommunications corporations. The purpose is twofold - 1. Data aggregation. The FBI (and later NSA) store a record of billions of phone calls made by people throughout the world, including those of US citizens. The NSA Call Database (misleading because it now records all forms of communication passing through telecommunication networks) is believed to be the largest database in the world. 2. Allow for direct surveillance when necessary. 

To put that in perspective, all the major internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and cellular carriers are required to give intelligence agencies unfettered access to your phone calls, texts, emails, blog posts, Skype, Facebook, and pretty much everything else you do electronically. A record has been kept. Profiles have been created. These surveillance methods have been brought before court for a violation of the 4th amendment. However, the case died in the US Circuit Court of appeals because Congress retroactively legalized domestic electronic surveillance.

Well, actually and amendment to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

The degree of surveillance has increased along side the rapid growth of our communicative ability. Smartphones that record our location are used by police to track suspects. Facial recognition software is being used to identify people in crowds  (okay, okay, it's not perfect; yet). Many cities are broadening their surveillance programs. Atlanta, for example, is purchasing a mobile surveillance tower to monitor crowds and record their activities. 

Coming to a Woodruff Park near you.

Other activities are also becoming the subject to police surveillance. Use too much electricity? That's a SWAT Team'n. What other possibility could there be?

Sometimes, high electricity use doesn't lead investigators to drugs. A federal investigation in the Powell area turned into a surprise for detectives.

"We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers," Marotta said. "I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home."

As if I needed another reason to move toward energy efficiency - now my Minecraft Server is going to make the police think I run a grow house.

The surveillance apparatus has been in existence for a generation. As new technologies emerge, our intelligence agencies become deeply embedded in the infrastructure. They gain a clearer picture of who we are, what our habits are, and how (and, increasingly, where) we spend out time. While there's no major evidence of this power being turned against the average American citizen, there's also little transparency. The truth is, we don't know how these intelligence gathering powers are being used. We do know, however, that there are questions as to how effective these changes have really been.



I want to end with an analysis of this video as it makes a good segue for my next post.

First, kudos to Chertoff for pointing out that we can't be protected from the tide of history. We hear all too often that the attacks were the result of "crazy fundamentalists" who "hate us for our freedom". I think that mantra obscures America's role in creating the necessary preconditions for terrorism in the middle east.

Second, the video focuses initially on tighter Airport Security and men with machine guns who protect us on the subway. I am reminded of a 1998 film called The Siege.  It imagines a NYC held hostage by the threat of terrorist attacks. It's themes include surveillance, torture, and using the military domestically (including the intelligence services who are, like the military, supposed to be limited to foreign actions (CIA, NSA, etc.)). What was shocking in 1998 was the presence of armed soldiers in our cities. A mere 4 years prior to 9/11, such a thing was the stuff of movies. Now, it's ordinary life.

Third, we catch a glimpse of the tangled regulatory structure that guides our surveillance programs. Different committees and offices oversee the various intelligence agencies. Local and national law enforcement can't communicate. We're collecting so much data that we can't sift through it adequately. Yet, we're trying to streamline the process - we want the police to have real time access to our "iPhones and Blackberries" without any clear evidence that having such capabilities makes us any safer. Our officials say we're much safer with these measures in place but the only terror plots we seem to foil are ones that our own intelligence agencies create.

But is this all Orwellian? It's hard to say. Without knowing more about the kinds of information gathered and the way it's being used, we can't say one way or the other. Perhaps that's the ultimate answer, though. In Orwell's novel, the public knew exactly how and why the surveillance was being conducted. That knowledge was a supplemental form of social control. Fear and paranoia kept people from acting out and organizing against the state. Right now, those conditions do not exist. We have only a partial version of Big Brother watching us.

My next post will focus on whether or not the state is taking measures to control out daily lives. I hope you find a lot to think about as this series continues and, as usual, I welcome commentary and criticism.