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.