Two Minutes Hate

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In the

Oceania must watch a film depicting Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state, and his followers, the Brotherhood, and loudly voice their hatred for the enemy and then their love for Big Brother.[1]

The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy super-state of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's governance of Oceania and toward non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thought crime and the consequent subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals.[2]

Purpose

In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the first session of Two Minutes Hate shows the introduction of

O'Brien
, a member of the Inner Party, to the story of Winston Smith, the protagonist whose feelings communicate the effectiveness of the Party's psychological manipulation and control of Oceanian society:

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.[3]

Julia character. In the course of the Two Minutes Hate, the film image of Goldstein metamorphoses into the face of a bleating sheep, as enemy soldiers advance towards the viewers of the film, before one enemy soldier charges towards the viewers, whilst firing his sub-machinegun; the face of that soldier then becomes the face of Big Brother.[5] At the end of the two-minute session of hatred, the members of the Party ritualistically chant "B-B . . . B-B . . . B-B . . . B-B." To maintain the extreme emotions provoked in the Two Minutes Hate sessions, the Party created Hate Week, a week-long festival of hatreds.[6]

Instances and parallels

The attacks on the

American propaganda by the Committee on Public Information during World War I has also been compared to the propaganda in the "two minutes hate" program.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) in George Orwell (1980) pp. 750–751.
  2. ^ "Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell : chapter1.1". ebooks.adelaide.edu.au. Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  3. ^ "Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell : chapter1.1". ebooks.adelaide.edu.au. Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  4. ^ Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) in George Orwell (1980) p. 749.
  5. ^ Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) in George Orwell (1980) p. 751.
  6. ^ Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) in George Orwell (1980) p. 743.
  7. ^ Ennis, Stephen (4 February 2015). "How Russian TV uses psychology over Ukraine". BBC. Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
  8. ISBN 978-0-19-517399-4
    . Retrieved 11 September 2017.
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