(Lobotomy in the Service of Ideology – Memory Erasure)Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." This iconic sentence from the novel "1984" by the famous British writer George Orwell is one of the most famous monuments of free thought against totalitarian regimes, because it actually protects memory. The aforementioned monumental work also had a great impact on many technosceptics, who claim that the development of technology improves control over citizens and limits their privacy. Noam Chomsky regularly warns us that "the big man controls the little man" by sending wrong information, creating public opinion and media war, so that the majority of the planet's inhabitants get an image of it, as seen by the elite in power in a certain country. We should also mention the affairs caused by Julien Assange and Edward Snowden, which revealed to us "dirty diplomacy" and total control of citizens via the Internet.
More and more dubious actions in this field and the lack of freedom, brought back into vogue - good old Orwell and his Oceania. This imaginary country, in which the party dictates the way and styles of life, in which they are trapped: freedom, individuality, opinion, love, happiness; and then the community, in which the purpose of life is loyalty to the leader, the party and unquestioning obedience, really makes us think: are we also experiencing the same fate in contemporary Montenegrin society? When Orwell wrote his book, he did not know that a political "elite" made up of bad economics students would take it literally. As if by formula, his criticism of totalitarianism turned into a recipe for governing our citizens. "Big Brother" and members of his close party in Oceania tried to keep their subjects constantly in the dark, inventing enemies - external and internal. They, like our current rulers, came to the throne after the "revolution", and then subordinated the entire country to themselves and their will. Then they started creating a "new" man, by forbidding his memory and exposing him to constant media opium that clouded his reasoning power.
The similarities between the Oceanian government and ours are really worrying: the very name engsoc, looks like our demsoc (“democratic socialists”); the main written media of the imaginary state was called the same as ours - "Victory" (English - Pobjeda), and their Telekran found a replacement in our state television. Media propaganda is also like a mirror: citizens are served information about how the country is constantly progressing, how the standard of living is increasing day by day, how more is being produced than before, how the current difficult situation is a product of the global legacy, while every "bad thought", i.e. criticism of the government takes the shape of an anti-state element.
Critics of the government are seen as heretics = apostates from the official doctrine, who want to destroy the state and the achievements that the community has achieved through their work. Oceania was at war with either the imaginary Eastasia or the imaginary Eurasia, and while at war one of the two was a friend and the other an enemy. Citizens could not distinguish from whom their young men were dying because media information was constantly changed, and old news was remade and burned. In addition, the main slogan of the big brother party was: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS POWER.
That's how we used to be ignorant and lead the most shameful "War for Peace". We told the Croats that they were "Vienna's groomsmen", sang to them "The Zeta flows through Montenegro, and soon the Neretva will too", and then set out to burn Dubrovnik - looting and killing civilians. Today we have very good relations with the Republic of Croatia, and the same people who led Montenegro then lead it now - and of course, they do not recognize their wartime past. The same is the case with Bosniaks or Muslims.
When the "demsoc" started their war campaign, it was not popular to belong to the religion of Allah, because as such they were deported, killed or sent to camps. (Today, the Bosniak Party is a coalition partner of the Warriors for Peace). So Eastasia or Eurasia - Croats or Muslims, who is the enemy and who is the friend? You will find the answer in our "Victory" and RTCG archives for the years 1992 - 1995, if they have not been cleaned.
And just as the leaders of engsoc in Oceania had to renounce their former national identity, so our creators also crossed the road - from Spartan Serbs to ultra Montenegrins, of course all for the benefit of the citizens. Critics of the authorities from the war years, opponents of sending volunteers to Croatia and deporting Muslims, preachers of the Montenegrin nation and state (mainly followers and sympathizers of the Liberal Union of Montenegro), were called "Ustasha" and "traitors of Serbia" in the media at the time. Then the Liberal Alliance fell apart, and the demsocialists saw pragmatically that it was worthwhile for them to incorporate some of their ideas into their ideological corpus.
Thus, a new twist was made in the media - it was no longer popular to be a Serb, Montenegro did not wage war in Croatia - but it was an "intervention" to prevent the war from being transferred to our territory, Muslims were not deported by the government, but - units of the RS Army that were LOCATED in Montenegro. After these facts (like the dragon from the joke about the seven seas and the seven mountains), anyone even remotely normal wonders - where do we live? And it's nothing. Like our demsoc, engsoc had a narrower and a wider part of the party. The inner circle enjoyed the benefits of government, they were not moral, they lived comfortably and were unquestioningly loyal to their leader.
The larger part - (in our case) petty sympathizers and voters, lived in poverty and misery, but with the conviction that they live in the happiest country, and with the knowledge that the leader is - handsome, tall and the best - because without him, the traitors would If Gora was returned to the enemy (Serbia) again, there would be no salaries and pensions. Those who were not in the party or with the party had their own separate caste - proles (proletariat). The proles were exploited, unaware of their power to remove the yoke from their necks, disunited, without the sense to organize themselves and the will to oppose the numbing influence of the ruling elite. Minipol and the Love Police from Oceania also have their equivalents in our society, as evidenced by the dark stories of former members of the "black trio". And just the judiciary? We and the Oceanians are experiencing the same thing - if we are infected with the freedom virus - we know what kind of punishment follows.
Probably Orwell, if he had been clairvoyant, would have made his dedication to "1984." wrote like this - "To a small but historically great nation, I dedicate this work, as pity for the torment that awaits him." One thing is certain - many sociologists, political anthropologists, psychologists and historians of mentality will be tormented by the question in the future - how did 600.000 citizens of one European country manage to live in delusion and collective delirium made up of lies, fraud and blackmail for a quarter of a century? Montenegro will really be a great field for research, an untouched virgin reserve of people, who formally live in democracy but basically do not know what it is. If Atlantis was mythical, Oceania imaginary, after one headline in "Pobjeda" about the demolition of the famous symbol of Podgorica, we have to ask ourselves - Is this an imbecile country, or is Big Brother making imbeciles out of us: "IT WASN'T DESTROYED, BUT THE HOTEL CRASHED!”
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