Parallels between the Party and the UDC
The Party constantly changing records of the past to make Big Brother and certain Ministries look good reminds me of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and their efforts to make the Southern cause during the Civil War seem heroic. After the Civil War ended, the UDC essentially tried to rewrite history in the Southern U.S., funding the creation of monuments that commemorated Confederate leaders, forming textbook review committees that rejected history textbooks for even hinting at criticizing the South, and even writing their own textbooks. For an example of the strict rules that the UDC used when examining textbooks, take the pamphlet “A Measuring Rod for Textbooks”, in which the author, a member of the UDC, tells schools to reject any textbook that calls the Civil War a rebellion or calls Confederate soldiers rebels. This organization wanted to remove all mention of the Confederacy being in the wrong, much like how the Party in 1984 rewrites their records to make all their predictions seem correct in order to give the impression of being all-knowing and infallible. The striking similarities between this real historical event and those depicted in a dystopic novel such as 1984 are alarming, to say the least.
What do you think? Comment below!
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOkFXPblLpU
This is a really interesting parallel, my mom is from the south and she has told me a little bit about how incredibly different the text books are and how they play down the civil war, sometimes even barely mentioning it at all. It really puts it in a new light when comparing it to 1984.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that there are similarities. This is a great example of how history has been rewritten to serve their purposes and I think there are a lot more examples of this, but at least it hasn't gone as far as 1984 where everyone accepts and believes the rewritten histories.
ReplyDeleteGreat parallel. A good friend of mine was born and raised in Alabama, and she tells me often about how deeply problematic the "history" lessons she got had been in schools there.
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