From Orwell Today. (with thanks)
17. Falsification Of Past
The past is whatever the Party chooses to make it....
If the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered.
The Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened. The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie whith the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'
The largest section of the RECORDS DEPARTMENT, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with thoroughness and it was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960. Books were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably re issued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy. But actually it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head.
Sometimes he talked to Julia of the RECORDS DEPARTMENT and the impudent forgeries that he committed there. Such things did not appear to horrify her. She did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truths. He said, "Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except in an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any cerainty that any other human being shares my memories.
If, for example, Eurasia or Eastasia (whichever it may be) is the enemy to-day, then that country must always have been the enemy. And if the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continually rewritten.
The day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love. The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. As often happens, the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth. To make sure that all written records agree with the orthodoxy of the moment is merely a mechanical act.
The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons. To be able to learn from the past meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. One reason is that the Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions partly because he has no standards of comparison. He must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising.
But by far the more important reason for the re adjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is a confession of weakness.
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and rewritten as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
Anything large and impressive, if it was reasonably new in appearance, was automatically claimed as having been built since the Revolution, while anything that was obviously of earlier date was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle Ages. The centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of any value. One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets - anything that might throw light upon the past had been systematically altered.
Museums were used for propaganda displays of various kinds - scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses, wax-work tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.
Often Julia was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her. She believed, for instance, having learnt it at school that the Party had invented aeroplanes. And when he told her that aeroplanes had been in existence before he was born, and lOften Julia was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her. She believed, for instance, having learnt it at school that the Party had invented aeroplanes. And when he told her that aeroplanes had been in existence before he was born, and long before the Revolution, the fact struck her as totally uninteresting. After all, what did it matter who had invented aeroplanes?ong before the Revolution, the fact struck her as totally uninteresting. After all, what did it matter who had invented aeroplanes?
Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the huge and simple question, "Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?" would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified - when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.
The past not only changed, but changed continuously. What most afflicted Winston with the sense of nightmare was that he had never clearly understood why the huge imposture was undertaken. The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive was mysterious. He took up his pen again and wrote:
I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.
