From 1984:
Doublethink: To forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. [https://study.com/academy/lesson/doublethink-in-1984-definition-examples.htmlsrc=ppc_adwords_nonbrand&rcntxt=aws&crt=502044578140&kwd=&kwid=dsa-1187583619848&agid=116312175297&mt=&device=c&network=s&_campaign=SeoPPC&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsZTygvTj9AIVx8izCh1eFw-DEAAYAiAAEgIWTPD_BwE]
I remember reading the novel 1984 in 1960, thinking how hard it would be to apply this technique in a democracy, where facts were available and the media was free to publish them. About twenty years later I taught the novel to high school students hoping to convince them it was a plausible dystopia, that we should guard against this kind of thinking. They believed; they were convinced that people could be brainwashed to believe the opposite of what they knew to be true. And yet I silently struggled to believe this was possible even in our democracy.
As we approach the anniversary to the 2021 insurrection, I am now convinced. I realize that most of the Republican Party and Fox, its media voice box, have fully achieved doublethink in the sense quoted above. What they know to be true has been repressed, while the fiction that the insurrectionists were tourists and patriots has become their public litany. Their tweeting to Mark Meadows on the day in question revealed a competing and now unconscious version of the story:
. . . according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the President needed to act immediately. They texted Mr. Meadows, and he has turned over those texts.
“Quote, ‘Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy,’ Laura Ingraham wrote.
“’Please get him on tv. Destroying everything you have accomplished,’ Brian Kilmeade texted.
“’Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,’ Sean Hannity urged.
“As the violence continued, one of the President’s sons texted Mr. Meadows.
“Quote, ‘He’s got to condemn this [shit] ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,’ Donald Trump, Jr. texted. [https://libguides.union.edu/c.php?g=1126166]
Today the invasion of the Capitol has been whitewashed as a demonstration of frustration for a fraudulent election, making the probability of repeated violence over election disappointments more and more likely. The violent facts are losing their shock value in order “To forget, whatever it was necessary to forget” as Orwell described the process of “doublethink.” All this is taking place in the backdrop of a fully functioning media that replays the video footage of the insurrection at every possible opportunity. The ability of elected Congress-persons to underplay this story even as it is being investigated, is stunning and disillusioning. Their version of events is a competing and potentially undercutting version of the report the Select Committee will eventually broadcast and document.
What about voters? Will we succumb to doublethink and repress our own memories of the terrible violation of the Capitol on January 6? Can we ignore what we know to be true by a conscious act? Can we execute doublethink?
To know and to not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them . . .
[https://study.com/academy/lesson/doublethink-in-1984-definition-examples.html?src=ppc_adwords_nonbrand&rcntxt=aws&crt=502044578140&kwd=&kwid=dsa-1187583619848&agid=116312175297&mt=&device=c&network=s&_campaign=SeoPPC&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsZTygvTj9AIVx8izCh1eFw-DEAAYAiAAEgIWTPD_BwE]
If we honestly probe our memories, can we minimize the most widely broadcast event in recent times? Surely it will take an exhausting amount of conscious energy to transform what we know into what we want to forget. Yet our leaders and opinion broadcasters have set the example for us. We can remember what we choose to remember and transform what we wish to remember differently. Doublethink can make it all happen, as preposterous as that seemed to me sixty years ago when I first read 1984.
Seventy-two years ago George Orwell witnessed doublethink in Nazi Germany and Communist Eastern Europe. That is how we know it can still happen today. Even in a democracy.