(Minghui.org) George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was written in 1948. It depicts a totalitarian society with omnipresent government surveillance under the leadership of “Big Brother” and “the Party.” The government seeks to control people's minds and persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as "thought crimes."
And just how is this done? Here are some brief excerpts from the book:
“...... a wave of pain flooded his body ...... his body was being wrenched out of shape, the joints were being slowly torn apart. Although the pain had brought the sweat out on his forehead, the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was about to snap. He set his teeth and breathed hard through his nose, trying to keep silent as long as possible ......”
“...... ‘That was forty,’ said O’Brien. ‘You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose? ......”
"O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
"‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
"‘Four.’
"‘And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?’
"‘Four.’
"The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.
"‘How many fingers, Winston?’
"‘Four.’
The needle went up to sixty."
Similarities to today's China
This is heartrendingly similar to how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecutes Falun Gong practitioners with brainwashing tactics.
To force practitioners to give up their belief in the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and to accept the CCP's fallacies, the Party commonly combines brainwashing with torture.
According to the personal account of a practitioner from Wuhan City, the city police locked him in a psychiatric hospital and tortured him with electric needles while being pressured to give up his belief:
“Six officials put me on a specially made bed and tied my feet and shoulders down. Five of them held my head, hands and feet, while Director Chen asked, 'Are you going to continue to practice Falun Gong? Are you going to continue your hunger strike?'
"I answered, 'Yes. And I will continue the hunger strike until I die.' They then pushed two electric needles into my temples about 5 centimeters deep. They dialed the current and voltage to the maximum and shocked me on and off for an hour or so. The strong current lifted me up again and again, even with five people holding me down. My brain felt like tens of thousands of sharp knives cutting into it. The pain made me want to die. I soon lost consciousness. Upon being revived, I could not think normally. I could not stand the thought of such horror and pain and could not regain control of myself ......”
Torture reenactment: Electric shock
Another example... more similarities
Mr. Song Yuegang, a practitioner from Liaoning Province, described being tortured with "stretching" in Benxi Forced Labor Camp. His limbs were stretched so that his body was suspended in mid-air:
“The stretching continued for two days and my legs were numb. Deputy director Wu Gang showed up. Seeing I had not given in, he started shocking me with an 18,000-volt electric baton. Another four days passed. The pain seeped into my bones.
“My spine felt like it was about to break, like a hammer was pounding on it. It felt like tens of thousands of ants were biting my chest. Even a slight exhale would cause severe pain. As I was suffering the unbearable pain each and every second, guards Wang Yi and Liu Jiangpeng shocked me with an 18,000-volt electric baton. The sparks from the baton jumped out over a foot. Wang Yi shouted at me, 'Song Yuegang, we will beat you to death today if you don't give in.'”
Torture reenactment: Stretching
The CCP appears to be capable of almost unimaginable cruelty in an attempt to force Falun Gong practitioners to utter the words, “I will give up.” How contemptible!
Shockingly, such evil practices are not rare. They are ubiquitous in labor camps, prisons, and brainwashing centers all across China. The CCP, similar to “Big Brother,” will not tolerate any belief that is not in line with the Party's ideology.
According to Orwell's Big Brother, “Thought crime does not entail death. Thought crime IS death.”
By the same token, the CCP claims, “Destroy them physically.” And if not that, the CCP wants to "transform" them according to the Party's standard. Of the nearly 4,000 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners, a vast majority died as a result of the torture they endured in the process of brainwashing, what the Party calls “transformation.”
In the words of Orwell's character O'Brien, brainwashing is the process of ripping human thoughts into pieces and gluing them back together according to the Party's requirements. In the words of the CCP, it is replacing human nature with Party nature. They want to destroy humanity and freewill to achieve total mind control.
Party nature has not changed
In the past, the CCP relied on periodic political movements to control the general public. Because Falun Gong practitioners refuse to give in or compromise on their principles, they have been subjected to the cruelest and longest persecution.
The combination of violence and brainwashing in each of the CCP's movements has forced generations of Chinese to surrender to the CCP's authority, all the while trembling with fear. Even in recent decades, as the CCP has shifted its focus to money making and embezzlement, the mind control tactics are still there anytime there is a need.
For example, at the very beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong, citizens everywhere were forced to take a stand to condemn Falun Gong, just as had been done during the Great Cultural Revolution.
Even children were not spared, and the elementary school textbooks were edited to contain outright slander defaming Falun Gong.
Simple comparisons between China today and Nineteen Eighty-Four can be quite revealing
1984 has a “Ministry of Truth,” while China has a Central Ministry of Propaganda. Both are charged with fabricating lies, distorting history, and reversing black and white.
1984 has a “Ministry of Love,” while China has a "stability maintaining system" made up of the Politics and Legal Affairs Committee, 610 Office, and the National Security Bureau. Both carry out the task of violent crackdowns and brainwashing.
1984 has pervasive Telescreens that monitor every move of every citizen, while China has a sophisticated Internet surveillance system, the “Great Firewall of China.”
1984 has “Newspeak,” a language system that seeks to eradicate any thought at odds with the Party's ideology, while China has "Party language" that is imparted and well known to everyone and keeps everybody's thinking and emotions in line with the CCP ideology. With all these mind control mechanisms in place, China is virtually a mind prison, where everybody is a spiritual prisoner of the CCP regime.
As a Chinese translator of Nineteen Eighty-Four pointed out, “It is of paramount importance to sound the alarm and expose the danger of totalitarianism, i.e. its destruction of ethics, its control of thought, its deprivation of liberty, its stifling of human nature, its fabrication and distortion of history, etc. If we let totalitarianism run amok, human society would fall in to a state of complete destruction that is beyond salvation.”
