101 ways Jehovah's Witnesses are the embodiment of George Orwell's 1984

Victory Mansions/cigarettes/gin/Square
Anything Jehovah's Witnesses get to name is either "Watchtower," "Kingdom," or "New World," be it road, house, farm, forest, hall, or Bible.

Victory Gin

He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.

Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful.

The experience of drinking in the "pure water" of spiritual "truth" is more akin to having a shot of Victory gin.

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness

More often he wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside, and at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In this place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be turned out. It was the place with no darkness.

'Do you know what time of day it is?' he said.

Ampleforth looked startled again. 'I had hardly thought about it. They arrested me - it could be two days ago - perhaps three.' His eyes flitted round the walls, as though he half expected to find a window somewhere.

'There is no difference between night and day in this place. I do not see how one can calculate the time.'

It is not true to say that all Kingdom Halls have no windows, but windowless halls can prove to be alarmingly disorienting, and the Society is not averse to approving them.

Hate Week
There was a time when Watchtower conventions lasted for a whole week - eight days, in fact - full of talks lambasting false religion, governments, and the United Nations. These days, although they are only over a weekend, the Society still finds opportunity to hate on religion or "apostates".

Big Brother

On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Jehovah's Witnesses like to be reminded of Psalm 11:4. "Jehovah is in his holy temple. Jehovah’s throne is in the heavens. His own eyes see, his watchful eyes examine the sons of men." 2 Chronicles 16:9 and Proverbs 15:3 are often deployed in the same way. It is dressed in words of love, but the warning is ever present - your sins will find you out.

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment...You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Big Brother is not Jehovah, per se, but he is personified in Jehovah's "representative," the Governing Body, aka the "faithful and discreet slave."

Blue overalls

The women studied him in hostile silence as he went past. But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal. The blue overalls of the Party could not be a common sight in a street like this.

Are Jehovah's Witnesses not equally recognisable with their suits, coats, boots, and book bags?

INGSOC
JW.ORG

Telescreens

Facts and figures

Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations - that they lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years ago. Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved.

Numbers of Kingdom Halls being built, growth in the congregation, numbers baptised, delegates at conventions - anything that can be counted and collated, data and statistics declaring the progress of the Society - is claimed as "evidence of Jehovah's blessing." Even one Watchtower becoming two is not off limits:

Minitrue

The Ministry of Truth...was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air.

Although the Organisation does not concern itself with pyramids these days, they held a great fascination for the Society's founder, Charles Taze Russell.

There is a more obvious pyramid, however - the top-down hierarchy found in the Watchtower Society.

At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization. Below Big Brother comes the Inner Party. its numbers limited to six millions, or something less than 2 per cent of the population of Oceania. Below the Inner Party comes the Outer Party, which, if the Inner Party is described as the brain of the State, may be justly likened to the hands.

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary.
The modern-day equivalent would be to write a blog. The official position maintained by the Organisation remains unchanged since 2002:

We have an official Internet Web site: www.watchtower.org. (now jw.org) This site is adequate to make information available to the public. There is no need for any individual, committee, or congregation to prepare a Web page about Jehovah’s Witnesses...While some may view this as a service to the brothers, it is not approved and should be discontinued. (Our Kingdom Ministry, September 2002 - you'll have to take my word for it, Our Kingdom Ministry is not available on the online version of the Watchtower Library.)

This was not illegal...

...(nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp.

There is no law against having a beard, or getting a tattoo, or a body piercing, or going to see an 18-certificate film, or for women wearing trousers to the meetings, or on the field ministry. But try doing these things without being viewed as anything other than spiritually immature.

Two-Minutes Hate
During the weekly Watchtower study Jehovah's Witnesses get many opportunities to vent against the world, false religion, and apostasy.

Junior Anti-Sex League

A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips.

With the Organisation's strict attitude towards fornication and pre-marital sex, every young Witness born in to the Organisation has a figurative scarlet sash tied about their waste until the day they are married.

It was always the women...

...and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

Not an unfair description of the situation within the Organisation - "The women proclaiming the good news are a large army," after all. (Psalm 68:11)

O'Brien

'I am with you,' O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!'

The Inner Party member who befriends Winston Smith into revealing his hatred for Big Brother. There are plenty of experiences of congregation elders who are not afraid to disarm those who have doubts, and then turn on them later - judge, jury, and executioner.

He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.

Emmanuel Goldstein

Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared.

The Society has their very own "Emmanuel Goldstein" in the shape of Raymond Franz, once a member of the Governing Body who was eventually disfellowshipped.

The Book

There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as THE BOOK. But one knew of such things only through vague rumours. THE BOOK was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.

There are two such books by Raymond Franz - Crisis of Conscience and In Search of Christian Freedom.

Eurasian Army

Behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army - row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar.

With Jehovah's Witnesses it is always the generic-looking apostate.

Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying

But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken.

And so it is with Watchtower articles that invariably conclude with the soothing words of the Governing Body. Or Assembly items thick with emotional manipulation, nobody can hear what is being said, but it feels so good.

WAR IS PEACE
This peaceful people are waging a constant war against the world, the fallen flesh, and Satan and his demons. And ultimately, peace is going to be ushered in through the "war of the great day of God the almighty."

The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
The Society claims that its "truth" will set you free - but such freedom simply replaces one form of slavery with another.

You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone - free - the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Leaving scriptural interpretation to the "faithful and discreet slave" is viewed as a virtue.

"My Saviour!"

The little sandy haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like, "My Saviour!" she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.

Jehovah's Witnesses are often reminded that without the "faithful and discreet slave" they would not know the truth, thereby implying that the Society is paramount to a person's salvation.

"B-B!...B-B!...B-B!"

For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold.

"G-B!...G-B!...G-B!" Praise handed out to the Governing Body often goes on for more than thirty seconds - but it does make your entrails grow cold when it dawns on you that all these words of praise have actually been written by the Governing Body themselves.

The Brotherhood
The belief held by those on the outside, or fading Jehovah's Witnesses, that there are those in the upper echelons who are secretly harbouring anti-Witness feelings.

It was always at night - the arrests invariably happened at night.
Juducial committees are invariably conducted at night.

The Times
The Watchtower magazine.

The canteen

Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. On to each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch - a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew.

They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays on to the metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat.

The spiritual "food" served at congregation meetings. Increasingly it has become thin and insipid, old articles and tropes regurgitated. "Same meat, different gravy," is often the tired refrain.

You were supposed to call everyone 'comrade'.
You are supposed to refer to everyone as 'brother' or 'sister'.

Duckspeak

At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in the Fiction Department. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. It was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front - it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Convention speakers, one after the other, speaking in a style unique to the Organisation, tied rigidly to their outlines, spouting theocratic rhetoric - simply mouthpieces for the Society.

Parsons...

was...one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges...on whom the stability of the party depended.

The hanging
Men, women, and children, family members and friends - all attend the public announcement that "So-and-so is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses." From that moment on they are to be viewed as dead.

Children

[Those children] adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother - it was all a sort of glorious game to them.

"Listen. obey, and be blessed," is the catch-phrase. Children have always been a target for the Society.

I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end.
The end of this system has always been 'just around the corner.'

Deflection/Distraction

Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.

The act of hiding one bit of news behind another. Stealth changes. By concentrating on the new understanding - or, idea - that the great crowd could now be counted among the "domestics," the majority could be distracted from the fact that the teaching about the "faithful and discreet slave" had been overhauled. In 1935, Rutherford expelled the great crowd from the kingdom of the heavens by highlighting the idea that they need not consider themselves as a disapproved class any longer.

Two fingers of his right hand were ink-stained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you.
Just as a study Watchtower that is not dutifully underlined might betray you.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
The history of the Organisation comes through the filter of the Governing Body. Personal research becomes increasingly difficult as the Society gradually phases out its back-catalogue of literature. The Watchtower Library on CD-ROM only takes the Watchtower magazine back to 1950, and the Awake! to 1970. The online version contains almost nothing prior to the year 2000.

The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no evidence outside your own memory?

Each new release documenting the Society's history seems to water it down even further. It is now history being repeated by those who learnt it from the Proclaimers book rather than having lived it. Governing body members are either blissfully unaware of the truth - ignorance is strength, after all - or are deliberately misleading the flock.

It will not be too long before it will be impossible to prove that the Society ever used the term "present truth," or referred to congregation members as "rank-and-file," or that Joseph Rutherford ever declared, "I made an ass of myself."

Memory Holes

In the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

This is where "old light" gets consigned to when "new light" takes its place. The same thing applies to letters addressed to the body of elders when official policy gets reviewed. See page 2 of this recent example. "The [insert date] letter to all congregations should be removed from the congregation permanent file of policy letters and be destroyed." In other words, throw it in the memory hole.

Doublethink

To know and not to 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, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, 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. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.

Doublethink allows the Society to write articles exposing propaganda, and yet employ the very same tactics when railing against apostates; it allows them to hate the Catholic Church and yet be just like them; it allows them to declare that they are fulfilling the scripture at Matthew 24:14, but not the one at Luke 21:8. There are too many examples.

Doublethink lies at the very heart of INGSOC

Doublethink lies at the very heart of JW.ORG.

'Rectifying' articles

The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify.

The Society has a history of rectifying articles. From very early on, reprinted editions of Russell's books "rectified" some of his overenthusiastic prophetic claims. In 1981 reprinted versions of The Truth That Leads To Eternal Life - originally published in 1968 - edited a reference which could imply the end coming in 1975. The January 1, 1989, edition of The Watchtower claiming that the Apostle Paul was laying a foundation for "a work that would be completed in our 20th century," had been "rectified" to read "in our day," by the time it appeared in the bound volume.

As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of 'The Times' had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance...The written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

There were the huge printing-shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs.

And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat.
The same is true of the Society who produce two versions of the Watchtower Study Edition, one regular and one "simplified."

The great purges

The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years.

Each year tens of thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses are disfellowshipped. Very often regular members of the congregation have no idea why.

More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them.

Life stories

There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed.

Speakwrite

Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and began dictating...

Questions

...in Big Brother's familiar style: a style at once military and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them ('What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The lesson - which is also one of the fundamental principles of Ingsoc - that,' etc., etc.), easy to imitate.

Pick any Watchtower study article at random and you can see exactly the same method employed.

Unperson

Withers, however, was already an UNPERSON. He did not exist: he had never existed.

The man in the cover on the left is now an unperson. He does not exist; he has never existed. His wife and child are collateral damage.

(No) Friends

Perhaps 'friend' was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others.

"Friends" in the Organisation is often used as an alternative to "the brothers". And friendship is always conditional - it will end if you walk away from the religion.

Proles/Outer Party/Inner Party
However one wants to view the class divide - proles being the "world," Party members those in "the truth," or proles as the rank-and-file, and Party members as those in Bethel - there is no denying that a hierarchical system exists on multiple levels.

Newspeak Dictionary, 11th Edition

"When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again."

The 2013 edition of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures has meant that verses from the Bible can no longer be taken for granted. Treasured scriptures can not be guaranteed to be worded in the same way. 2009 saw the release of a new songbook containing many new songs and a handful of subtle changes to a few of the old songs that made it to the new edition. Just a couple of ways the publishers are forced to "learn it all over again."

Newspeak

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'

The language of Jehovah's Witnesses. It does make thinking extremely difficult, hearing the same few words and the same few scriptures repeated over and over. It takes a long time for someone who has left the Organisation to stop referring to it as "the truth," or to erase the phrase, "end of the system of things." Reading any other Bible but the New World Translation seems unnatural, and one is convinced for quite some time that any other version simply won't be as honest.

Voluntary subscriptions

About a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.

Although the Society is determined to convince people that there are no collection plates, and all donations are voluntary, they are not afraid to employ 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2 to get the brothers to "set aside funds" for contributions. The new donation arrangement is now being seen by many as a pledge or a form of tithing.

Our new, happy life

"All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the completed figures..."

The phrase 'our new, happy life' recurred several times. It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty.

Our "spiritual paradise," anyone?

Fluctuating numbers

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes.

For many years the number of those who partook of the emblems at the Memorial was gradually dropping. Recently, however, those numbers have begun to rise again. In view of this the Organisation adjusted its attitude to the anointed, quietly shelving its long-held belief that the door to entry into the anointed fold had closed in 1935. For more than a century it was taught that from the first century onwards there has always existed a "faithful and discreet slave." In 2013 it was declared that actually this faithful slave had only come into existence in 1919 - oh, and it was only made up of seven men, the Governing Body. Would the publishers swallow it? Yes, they swallowed it. Just two examples of the ease with which the Society can alter its views and still maintain a hold on its followers.

The ideal

How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal - tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree - existed and even predominated.

The Society lives in a fantasy world portrayed in their photographs and dramas - beautiful people participating in a field ministry where everyone contacted is an interested person. Brothers and sisters smilingly doing their chores and going about their work. Young ones dutifully reading the Bible in the school canteen.

Facecrime

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself - anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.

You can be called out by an elder for imperceptibly shaking your head at an announcement. Speakers on the platform are in a prime position to notice any adverse reactions to what is being taught. It will be stored away and discussed later.

Winston's Wife

Winston was married - had been married, at any rate: probably he still was married, so far as he knew his wife was not dead.

Jehovah's Witnesses can find themselves in the same position as Winston - separated, even divorced, but still scripturally "married".

She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her.

The women of the Party were all alike...

...Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel...

...and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

The children's history textbook
My Book of Bible Stories

The Photograph
Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford - the significance of these three names comes in the fleeting possession of a piece of evidence, a photograph:

Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed - AFTER the event: that was what counted - concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds.

The equivalent of this Times article is the legendary letter of September 1, 1980, addressed to all Circuit and District Overseers - positive proof that at a moment's notice, whenever it feels like it, the Society can crack down on thoughtcrime.

(If you want to read the letter in full it can be found on pages 341, 342 of Crisis of Conscience.)

But did such a letter ever really exist...?

An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of Winston's vision. It was a photograph, and there was no question of its identity. It was THE photograph.

'It exists!' he cried.

'No,' said O'Brien.

He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.

'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.'

'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.'

'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.

The Community Centre

This was the second time in three weeks that he had missed an evening at the Community Centre: a rash act, since you could be certain that the number of your attendances at the Centre was carefully checked.

Try missing more than a few meetings at the Kingdom Hall without it being brought to your attention.

Ownlife

It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: OWNLIFE, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.

Proverbs 18:1 is a regularly referenced in the Watchtower publications: "Whoever isolates himself pursues his own selfish desires; He rejects all practical wisdom."

Informant culture

For perhaps five seconds exaltation made him careless, and he stepped out on to the pavement without so much as a preliminary glance through the window.

Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his bowels to water. A figure in blue overalls was coming down the pavement, not ten metres away. It was the girl from the Fiction Department, the girl with dark hair. The light was failing, but there was no difficulty in recognizing her. She looked him straight in the face, then walked quickly on as though she had not seen him.

For a few seconds Winston was too paralysed to move.

This is feeling you have when you bump in to someone while coming out of an 18-certificate movie.

Confession

It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair.

The Society knows it goes on, and they have even dramatised it: Part 1, Part 2

Swearing

A thing that astonished him about her was the coarseness of her language. Party members were supposed not to swear, and Winston himself very seldom did swear, aloud, at any rate.

Hours

'I'm due back at nineteen-thirty. I've got to put in two hours for the Junior Anti-Sex League, handing out leaflets, or something.'

'Putting in' hours is a practice Jehovah's Witnesses are all too familiar with.

Breaking the rules

Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could...The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same.

To the exasperation of many elders and circuit overseers, this does seem to be the mindset of many young ones in the Organisation.

Goodthinkful
Meaning naturally orthodox, incapable of thinking a bad thought.

Denunciation

Katharine would unquestionably have denounced him to the Thought Police if she had not happened to be too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of his opinions.

Party members live under the constant fear that wives will denounce husbands, husbands denounce wives, and children denounce parents. You don't have to spend very long searching jehovahs-witness.net to find examples of similar denunciations in the Organisation.

Music

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator.

The Society are very proud of their Music Department.

Nothing exists except an endless present...

...in which the Party is always right.

Advance copies

'Have you seen the tenth edition of the Newspeak Dictionary?'

'No,' said Winston. 'I didn't think it had been issued yet. We are still using the ninth in the Records Department.'

'The tenth edition is not due to appear for some months, I believe. But a few advance copies have been circulated. I have one myself.'

There was often a clandestine glee detected in the voices of Circuit Overseer's who quoted from publications that had not yet been received by the local congregation.

We are the dead

When finally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help our members...You will have to get used to living without results and without hope. You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that you will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead.

This whole section in which O'Brien describes the fate of 'the Brotherhood' rings true to those labelled as "apostates".

Changes

There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once.

Rarely does the Organisation state that a change in understanding has occurred, it is up to discerning members of the congregation to pick up on any alterations. And, of course, there are never "changes," merely adjustments.

Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia
Jehovah's Witnesses have always taught the Kingdom was established in 1914.

Winston stopped reading...

...chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety. He was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous impulse to glance over his shoulder or cover the page with his hand.

Furtively glancing over the shoulder, or covering the page with the hand is the default position for any Witness reading questionable literature.

Property Ownership

Collectively, the Party owns everything in Oceania, because it controls everything, and disposes of the products as it thinks fit.

So it is with Bethel homes, Assembly Halls, and Kingdom Halls.

Inner Party members

By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter - set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party

This well describes life in the Bethel homes, in particular for those higher up in the Watchtower hierarchy.

Oceania/Eurasia/Eastasia

Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life in all three super-states are very much the same. In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare.

The Society vilifies three pillars of this system - (false) religion, government, and big business. The Organisation is, of course, part of false religion, whether it wants to believe so or not, therefore it is constantly at war with itself. It is variously at war with 'the kings of the world,' or materialism. In reality, though, it is indistinguishable from that which it villifies. It conducts itself as a rulership, and it is steeped in materialistic practices. The Society is the world in microcosm.

Ambition

Ambitious members of the Outer Party are made harmless by allowing them to rise.

Men are appointed as congregation elders.

A Party member is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts.
Jehovah's Witnesses are encouraged to train their powers of discernment.

Crimestop

The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body.

It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as 'two and two make five' were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors.

The secret of rulership...

...is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes.

Family

It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty.

"Let us always stay close to Jehovah and his motherlike organization, not separating ourselves from their direction and loving counsel." - Brother Gerrit Lösch, a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It was starting, it was starting at last!
The judicial process - it is just as Raymond Franz describes in Crisis of Conscience: "It was as if some massive legal machine had been put in motion and was grinding along in an unfeeling, unrelenting way toward its ultimate objective."

Violence

There was a gasp and a thump behind him, and he received a violent kick on the ankle which nearly flung him off his balance. One of the men had smashed his fist into Julia's solar plexus, doubling her up like a pocket ruler. She was thrashing about on the floor, fighting for breath.

It could be argued that Jehovah's Witnesses are at least free from the violence present in Orwell's 1984, but this is to ignore the ever present threat of violence. Jehovah's Witnesses live with images of destruction at Armageddon thrust in front of them. These violent images are for no-one's benefit except Jehovah's Witnesses. they serve no purpose for those who don't believe that events are going to go down that way. They are only there to remind Jehovah's Witnesses what will befall them if they deviate from the path.

Jehovah's Witnesses are also constantly reminded of the violent deeds enacted in the Bible: Korah, Dathan and Abiram destroyed for questioning Moses' leadership; Achan and his family being stoned to death for stealing; 42 young boys torn apart by a bear for dissing Elisha; Ananias and Saphira falling down dead for deception. And so on.

The waiting

The dull pain in his belly never went away, but sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse, and his thoughts expanded or contracted accordingly. When it grew worse he thought only of the pain itself, and of his desire for food. When it grew better, panic took hold of him. There were moments when he foresaw the things that would happen to him with such actuality that his heart galloped and his breath stopped. He felt the smash of truncheons on his elbows and iron-shod boots on his shins; he saw himself grovelling on the floor, screaming for mercy through broken teeth.

Anybody who has been through the judicial process knows this feeling of waiting while the elders pass judgement on you in another room.

"Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth...

...It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane."

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'

'Four.'

'And if the party says that it is not four but five - then how many?'

'Four.'

The word ended in a gasp of pain.

To name just two examples of this torture. It does not matter how clear it is that the Christian Greek Scriptures refer to God as the "Father," for the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses they must be satisfied with being taught that He is merely their "friend". 1 Timothy 2:5 might state that, "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus," but the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses must be satisfied with knowing that he is not actually their mediator, but only mediator to the anointed class.

The Ministry of Love

'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?'

'To make them confess.'

'No, that is not the reason. Try again.'

'To punish them.'

'No!' exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane!

Disfellowshipping is an act of love. It is the cure. It may help the unrepentant one come to their senses.

If you want a picture of the future...

...imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.

The Society's dictatorship over individuals will continue for ever - on in to the new system and beyond. Someone has to interpret those new 'scrolls.' How it is now, so it will always be.

The Party is immortal

"Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The party is immortal."

The Society always speaks in terms of "classes". Jehovah's Witnesses are going to survive en masse, as a people. Individuals don't matter. The faithful and discreet slave is a class. The anointed are a class. They are a whole. Whoever individually makes up that whole is unimportant. It is the whole that matters.

Consequences

'You did it!' sobbed Winston. 'You reduced me to this state.'

'No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was all contained in that first act.

The Society never accept responsibility for the actions of others. Disfellowshipped ones have brought it upon themselves - they knew what to expect. Those who were disappointed over the failure of the end to come on all the occasions the Society have been outspoken - 1914, 1925, 1975 - are roundly blamed for their own misplaced expectations.

The Party was in the right...

...It must be so; how could the immortal, collective brain be mistaken?

Room 101

'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'

Though they would hardly admit it, there is a fear that almost every one of Jehovah's Witnesses harbours: "What will happen to me during the great tribulation?" That brief period of time just before Jehovah steps in at Armageddon. That time when all of Gog's hordes have surrounded God's people.

Sexcrime/goodsex

The party member knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible. His sexual life, for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words SEXCRIME (sexual immorality) and GOODSEX (chastity). SEXCRIME covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them separately, since they were all equally culpable, and, in principle, all punishable by death. He knew what was meant by GOODSEX--that is to say, normal intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children, and
without physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all else was SEXCRIME.

It has been a number of years since the Society stopped interfering in what takes place within the marital bedroom, but the footnote in this article shows that they still hold to their position. the bottom line in The Watchtower of March 15, 1983, pages 30-1 is, "As already stated, it is not for elders to 'police' the private marital matters of couples in the congregation. However, if it becomes known that a member of the congregation is practicing or openly advocating perverted sex relations within the marriage bond, that one certainly would not be irreprehensible, and so would not be acceptable for special privileges, such as serving as an elder, a ministerial servant or a pioneer. Such practice and advocacy could even lead to expulsion from the congregation."

Jehovah

What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped 'false gods'. He did not need to know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the less he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the commandments of Jehovah: he knew, therefore, that all gods with other names or other attributes were false gods.