Editor’s note: Aldrin Calimlim is a former editor of CNN Philippines Life and has been the website’s books columnist. His reviews have also appeared in Rogue Magazine and The Philippine Star. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
Manila (CNN Philippines Life) — George Orwell writes in one of this essays: “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”
In another, the great British author remarks: “In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy.”
The former, “Politics and the English Language,” and the latter, “The Prevention of Literature,” were both published in 1946, amid an environment of disquiet in the wake of World War II. But the crux of the matter on which both essays ponder over — the deliberate distortion of truth through the use and misuse of language — might as well have been about another age entirely, decades into the future.
That unpromising future, unfortunately, is the unavoidable present. Our age.
A widely circulated image on social media at the moment is that of an old Penguin paperback copy of one of Orwell’s novels. On its cover, where the phrase “Nineteen Eighty-Four” should have been, is the alternative title “Twenty Seventeen.” It would be terribly funny if its implication weren’t so terrifying. Apparently, that the political climate of the here and now bears a more than passing resemblance to the totalitarian society of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is what has caused the book to shoot to the top of bestseller lists of late. To be sure, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has been a perennial bestseller among the most enduring works in the literary canon since its publication in 1949. Its recent rise, though, is unusual, if not totally unexpected.
Already, the undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty that became so prevalent after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in November had prompted people to purchase copies of the book by the thousands. But a substantial spike in its sales did not occur until Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to Trump, used a ridiculous oxymoron to defend Sean Spicer, his press secretary, for categorically but falsely claiming that the crowd at Trump’s oath-taking ceremony in January was “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” Conway reasoned that Spicer, short of uttering an outright lie, was merely giving “alternative facts.”
Spicer’s invocation of the supposedly discussion-ending “period,” only to be followed by a qualifier that was made more laughable by its being unfounded, had a precursor in the mathematically false but politically expedient slogan “two plus two equals five” in “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” But it’s Conway’s “alternative facts” that reeked so much of newspeak and doublethink, the dubious euphemistic language and the simultaneous acceptance of contradictory beliefs promoted by the ruling totalitarian party in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” for the purpose of political indoctrination, that had people turning to the novel in droves.
And if the bestseller lists on Amazon and elsewhere are anything to go by, there’s also been a resurgence of interest in Orwell’s other great political novel, “Animal Farm,” and in other classics of dystopian fiction, each of which has worrisome parallels to the current political situation. Tellingly, many of these — such as Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle,“ Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” — imagine what the United States would have been like in alternative histories or would be like in alternative futures. (To be clear, in contrast to “alternative facts,” neither “alternative histories” nor “alternative futures” is of specious phrasing.) Perhaps the most noteworthy is Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 satirical novel, which tells of the rise of fascism in America following the election to the presidency of a populist demagogue. Considering who’s sitting in the White House today, its title is possessed of irony more biting now than it has ever been: “It Can’t Happen Here.”
Here in the Philippines, we have our own populist demagogue to reckon with, complete with his own brand of language and own band of lackeys that tap into the fear and discontent of the masses to advance his questionable policies, both foreign and domestic. Here, President Rodrigo Duterte and his staunchest supporters have all but made people oblivious to facts and figures by omission and distraction (e.g. fake news and incitements to anger apparently propagated by troll centers) and reduced the slaughter of human lives to little more than an anodyne initialism (i.e., EJK). Political language is indeed, as Orwell reminds us, “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
We Filipinos could do with our own “heed the warnings of Orwell et al.” moment, our own revival of interest in political books to equip us with frames of reference for countering propaganda and understanding reality. In preventing historical amnesia and revisionism as well as political abuse and corruption, we would be well-served by a determined search for texts that throw the inequities of the Marcos administration and other dictatorial regimes into stark relief, not to mention a purposeful return to José Rizal’s novels of rebellion and revolution, “Noli Me Tángere” and “El Filibusterismo.”
In the United States, Rizal’s duology is published by Penguin Classics, under the direction of its vice president and publisher, Elda Rotor, who is Filipino. As it happens, since Trump’s inauguration, Rotor has been spearheading a marketing and social media campaign to #RememberResistRediscover through literature, particularly with books from the Penguin Classics imprint.
“I feel strongly about this and hope we can contribute in positive ways to guide readers and to encourage dialogue among the public and in classrooms,” Rotor says. “So our priorities are to promote the Constitution, political and philosophical texts that have guided leaders and citizens from ancient times onward, historic works written by women and men without power and privilege, and works on social justice, immigration and race.”
Political language is indeed, as Orwell reminds us, “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Those three issues acquired a greater significance after Trump signed, in late January, an executive order effectively prohibiting the immigration of people from a number of Muslim-majority countries. Although touted as a measure against “foreign terrorist entry” into the United States, the travel ban was immediately and rightfully condemned by many for being Islamophobic, racist, and anti-refugee. Among them was Rotor, who in short order posted a picture of a stack of thematically relevant books, including “The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution” (part of the Penguin Civic Classics series, which she created and edited). The photo’s caption: “This is what democracy reads like.”
The refutation of Trump’s rhetoric of confusion and exclusion by way of literature is only too apt for someone who, despite having author credits on several books, has been known for not reading much of anything (as opposed to his predecessor, Barack Obama, reader-in-chief). Here is a former reality T.V. star, now the most powerful man in the world, who seemingly still cares for nothing more than ratings and cheap entertainment.
Aldous Huxley, Orwell’s contemporary and fellow prophet of dystopian doom, tells in his 1932 novel, “Brave New World,” of a society where people derive infinite pleasure from movies that feature not only sight and sound but also the sensation of touch. These so-called “Feelies” combine with other forms of control and conditioning to manipulate the populace into conformity and complacency. As a result, books are disregarded and become objects of little or no importance. Heaven forbid we should allow ourselves to come to such a state of ignorance and inertia.
A regime’s banning of books to stifle critical thought is one thing, but for a regime to not have to ban books at all because no one is reading them anymore anyway is quite another.