The dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell challenges my view that history is fixed and unchangeable.

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The dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell challenges my view that history is fixed and unchangeable. The novel explores the idea that truth is what the Party deems it to be, and that the truths found in history are the bases of the principles of the future. Some fascist German leaders of the time boasted that if you tell a lie loud enough and often enough, people will accept it as truth. The Stalinists perfected this modus operandi by re-writing people and events in and out of history or distorting historical facts to suit the Party’s purposes. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” runs the Party slogan in 1984.

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Winston’s position in the Ministry of Truth is that of forging the past into something unrecognizable to any person with an accurate memory, so that each forgery “becomes” historic fact. One moment, Oceania is and always has been at war with one enemy, the next moment it is and has always been at war with another, and the people of Oceania accept the information as true. It is an exaggeration of a phenomenon that Orwell observed in his own time and reported with true clarity in 1984, that people most readily believe that which they can believe most conveniently.

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