Robert Skidelsky
1984 Revisited
In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother’s state of Oceania is perpetually at war. This never-ending conflict is not a conventional war to be won, but rather a tool of control. The paradoxical party slogan “War is Peace” is the key idea Continuous war justifies continuous surveillance. Orwell’s novel vividly illustrates how the fear and unity generated by perpetual war are used to rationalize an all-pervasive surveillance state.
Perpetual War as a Tool of Control:
In 1984, Oceania is locked in an endless war against rival superstates (Eurasia or Eastasia, depending on the Party’s propaganda needs of the moment). This state of perpetual war is carefully maintained for its own sake. War is no longer about victory or territorial gain. As a forbidden text explains to the protagonist Winston “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact”. In other words, the unending war’s real purpose is to preserve the power hierarchy. The never-ending conflict creates a constant atmosphere of crisis, wherein the populace believes survival is at stake. Orwell writes that “the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival”. Thus, the citizens feeling under siege, accept that the party (the small caste) must have absolute power, which includes the existential necessity of total surveillance.
By means of perpetual war the Party deliberately cultivates an environment of fear and fanaticism. Even when daily life is bleak and resources are scarce, the external threat keeps people obedient and eager for sacrifice. 1984 describes a “social atmosphere… of a besieged city” where even Inner Party members live austerely, and yet war fever makes any hardship or draconian measure acceptable. The populace is kept in a frenzied patriotic mood through rallies like the Two Minutes Hate and constant propaganda about victories and traitors. As Orwell notes, every Party member is expected to be “a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph… necessary [for] the mentality appropriate to a state of war”. This manufactured mentality ensures that people remain fearful of enemies and thus loyal to Big Brother. Crucially, it “does not matter whether the war is actually happening… All that is needed is that a state of war should exist”. The mere idea of an ongoing war – even if the details are fictitious – is enough to justify extreme policies. By never allowing a sense of peace, the Party keeps everyone psychologically primed to accept constant vigilance and repression as normal. Perpetual war creates a unity of purpose that the Party exploits: citizens channel their fear and hatred toward the external enemy, never toward the Party. This is how “War is Peace” in Oceania – continuous war secures the Party’s peace at home, cementing its unchallenged authority.
Surveillance Under the Guise of Security:
One of the most oppressive powers the Party wields – one it defends through the rhetoric of war – is its surveillance apparatus. From telescreens in every room to the Thought Police and even indoctrinated child spies, Oceania’s citizens are under unceasing watch. Big Brother is always watching, as posters constantly remind people. The telescreens exemplify this omnipresent surveillance: “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment… you had to live… in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”. This level of intrusion is extraordinary, yet the Party justifies it as vigilance. After all, Oceania is at war; enemies and saboteurs (real or imagined) lurk everywhere. People are taught that surveillance is a protective measure – a necessary eye on potential traitors working with the enemy. Goldstein, the alleged arch-traitor, and his shadowy “Brotherhood” are constantly blamed for setbacks. A day never passes, Orwell writes, “when spies and saboteurs acting under [Goldstein’s] directions [are] not unmasked by the Thought Police”. The message is clear: if Big Brother did not watch everyone, the nation would be in peril. Thus, perpetual war propaganda breeds acceptance of invasive monitoring. People come to equate surveillance with safety. Handing over privacy and freedom to the Party becomes, in their minds, a reasonable price to pay to avoid defeat by the enemy. In 1984, the public’s fear of external threats is so great that it overrides their concern for privacy – exactly as the Party intends. Orwell demonstrates this dynamic when he points out that Oceania’s scientific research is devoted chiefly to “war and police espionage,” the twin pillars of power. The Party’s two overarching goals are “to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish… independent thought” – in other words, to perpetuate war and to perfect surveillance. Each goal reinforces the other. War justifies the surveillance state, and surveillance suppresses dissent so the war can continue indefinitely.
Modern Parallels: National Security and Mass Surveillance:
Orwell’s is a cautionary tale, but many aspects of it resonate in our real world. Modern democratic states are not totalitarian Oceania, yet they increasingly use the rationale of national security threats to expand surveillance programs. The clearest example is the “war on terror” initiated after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Governments swiftly asserted that enhanced surveillance was necessary to prevent terrorism. The U.S. government passed the PATRIOT Act just weeks after 9/11, dramatically increasing the state’s surveillance powers with little debate. As one analysis bluntly states, “The Patriot Act is a prominent example of the use of terrorism to justify expanding government surveillance.” Provisions of this law allowed authorities to eavesdrop on phone calls, intercept emails, and access personal records on an unprecedented scale – actions that previously would have raised loud objections on freedom grounds. Fear of external attack made such measures politically possible. In fact, officials explicitly used public fear to accelerate the surveillance agenda: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft warned Congress in 2001 that new terrorist acts were imminent and that lawmakers would “be to blame” if they failed immediately to grant broader powers. In the atmosphere of alarm after 9/11, few opposed the Patriot Act; the logic was that extraordinary monitoring of citizens was a regrettable but necessary weapon in an ongoing war for survival.
Over the subsequent two decades, the war on terror has remained a continual background for justifying surveillance. There is no defined end-point to a war against terrorism – much like Orwell’s perpetual war, it is envisaged as an open-ended struggle against an ever-present threat. Government agencies such as the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) built massive data-collection programs, vacuuming up phone and internet communications worldwide. These programs were kept largely secret until whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013. When exposed, they were defended on the grounds that they had saved lives by foiling attacks. For example, General Keith Alexander, former head of the NSA, testified that post-9/11 surveillance programs helped “prevent more than 50 terrorist attacks” worldwide. Whether or not such claims hold up to scrutiny, the important point is that authorities frame surveillance as a direct response to an ongoing external danger – precisely the kind of argument the Party makes in 1984. Indeed, commentators have explicitly compared the war on terror to Orwell’s concept of perpetual war, noting that it creates a “special mental atmosphere” of fear in which the public tolerates measures they otherwise might reject. Under the banner of counterterrorism, many countries have adopted policies once seen as dystopian: ubiquitous CCTV cameras, monitoring of emails and social media, warrantless wiretapping, and broad data retention laws, all justified by the need to hunt hidden enemies. Just as in 1984 the citizens of Oceania accept being watched everywhere because war makes them feel it’s necessary, citizens in the real world have often conceded privacy to their governments in exchange for promises of protection against terrorists.
Crucially, public opinion has shown willingness to trade privacy for security when fear is high. Surveys in the years after 9/11 revealed that a significant portion of Americans agreed that it was “fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism.” An Associated Press poll a decade after 9/11 found two-thirds of Americans held this view. Such consent echoes the dynamic in 1984, where an external threat legitimizes intrusive oversight. When people are afraid – be it of bombings or of “Goldstein’s” saboteurs – they may conclude that those who “have nothing to hide” should not mind surveillance if it keeps them safe. Over time, this bargain can normalize constant monitoring as an accepted reality. Yet, as Orwell’s novel warns, the cost of this bargain is the gradual erosion of fundamental personal freedoms.
Our obsession with national security goes beyond the war on terror. Orwell’s idea of three big states perpetually at war is echoed in today’s view that the West (roughly NATO) is engaged in a ‘war’ against the ‘rogue states’ of Russia and China (Interestingly Russia and China regard the United States as the rogue actor for disregarding the United Nations). Geopolitical tension legitimizes expanding military-industrial complexes at the expense of welfare spending. The wars need not be any more genuine than those in Orwell’s 1984; it is enough that people believe they are real. For this purpose faked incidents can be used to stir up fury against the enemy.
Wars and war prevention demand not just big military budgets and a ‘war economy’ for external defence, but also extensive social control to guard against internal subversion. State and media craft narratives demonizing dissenters as "disloyal" or "pro-enemy." Propaganda campaigns generate fear, justify surveillance as patriotic necessity. Citizens accept normalization of surveillance as protection against constant threats.
The 21st century’s advanced technology has of course immensely improved since Orwell’s day, elevating surveillance to another level. Modern surveillance is more pervasive and seamless than in Orwell’s “telescreens”. Facial recognition, CCTV, smartphone tracking, internet data harvesting, as well as the rapidly expanding AI systems, which are able to analyzse massive data sets in real time for purposes of predictive policing, are integral parts of the contemporary security system. Governments soon will be able to employ AI for mass monitoring with minimal oversight. AI makes surveillance faster, more accurate, and incredibly difficult to detect, e.g.: China’s Social Credit system.
Conclusion:
George Orwell’s 1984 remains a powerful warning about how fear can be weaponized by governments to perpetuate their power. In the novel, the concept of perpetual war provides Big Brother with the ultimate excuse for total surveillance – an endless emergency that demands unflinching loyalty and vigilance. The public, kept in fear of external enemies, comes to accept the invasion of their privacy as a reasonable defense of national survival. This dynamic is not confined to fiction. In the post-9/11 era, real-world governments have frequently invoked the “state of war” against terror to broaden surveillance powers, and built up the idea of “rogue states” urging citizens to relinquish some liberty for security. When people believe their nation is under constant threat, they may allow the very “Big Brother” tactics that Orwell warned against – CCTV cameras on every corner, databases logging their communications, agencies prying into personal data – all in the name of safety.
Orwell’s 1984 justifies surveillance through perpetual war as a plot device to show us how a society can slide into an abyss of oppression. The Party’s arguments are ironically logical: if war is permanent, security must be paramount; if enemies are everywhere, nothing can go unmonitored. The novel thereby exposes the insidious logic of tyranny. Modern parallels in the war on terror demonstrate that this logic is not purely speculative. Ultimately, Orwell’s message is a call for vigilance of another kind – a warning to be skeptical of leaders who claim unlimited powers over us due to unending war. If fear of external threats makes us too willing to surrender our privacy and freedom, we edge closer to the world of 1984, where liberty is lost under the pretext of defending it. By recognizing how perpetual war can serve as a pretext for perpetual surveillance, we can better guard against the erosion of liberty in our own society. The price of freedom, as the saying goes, is eternal vigilance – not only against foreign enemies, but against the gradual encroachment of Big Brother at home.
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Robert Skidelsky
Room 1-16Millbank House