In the Mouth of Marxist Madness

At the beginning of October, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán denounced the European Union’s 1984-inspired manipulation of language: “Brussels is creating an Orwellian world in front of our eyes.  They buy and supply weapons through the European Peace Facility.  They want to control the media through the Media Freedom Act.  We didn’t fight the communists to end up in 1984!”  The “Peace Facility” is responsible for transferring billions of dollars worth of artillery and ammunition to Ukraine.  The “Media Freedom Act” gives European bureaucrats extraordinary powers to censor any speech or ideas they dislike.

Although Orbán is absolutely correct in his assessment of European madness, there is no sign that his warning will have any corrective effect.  The Eurocrats are so steeped in self-deluding propaganda that it would be not at all surprising to see them pull another page straight out of 1984 by carving on one of their marble government buildings the same three slogans that adorned Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth”: “War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”  Such is the depth of the rabbit hole into which the European hive mind has descended that too many ordinary citizens would miss the depressing irony.

As if recognizing that Europe’s embrace of censorship, surveillance, and social control inconveniently mirrors Orwell’s condemnation of Big Brother and Big Government to perfection, the British “ruling class” attempted this month to “cancel” Orwell by using an article in The Telegraph to accuse the prophetic genius of being “sadistic, misogynistic, homophobic, and sometimes violent” — in other words, someone who should not be “tolerated” and no longer “deserves” to be read.  If “cancelling” the author who warned the world about such forms of slithery government tyranny is not “peak Orwell,” then the crazy train still barreling down the tracks promises to be a doozy.