Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club)

0:00Dominic Sandbrook:Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.

0:18Dominic Sandbrook:Hi there, it's Alastair here. Welcome to The Rest is Politics. And today we've got a very special guest from our stablemate podcast, The Rest is History. Dominic Sandbrook, welcome. Thank you, Alistair. It's nice to be on a proper professional podcast for once. Ah, it's not always you say that. Now, Dominic, you are here to discuss your new show, and it's called The Book Club. Tell us about it. So it's a show that I do with my producer on The Rest is History, who's called Tabitha Syrett, and we always chat about books and what we're reading, our favourite novels. And we did a mini-series together on The Rest is History for Rest is History Club members, where we talked about some of our favorite books the listeners liked it amazingly so we decided to launch it as a standalone show we've done four or five episodes and we recently did an episode that might appeal to you alistair because it's on a very political book it's actually last week's episode and it was george orwell's 1984 which i think you read when you were at school is that right i think i read it in 1974 so i read 1984 in 1974 i think that's why i remember it and my god yeah it is so relevant it is so relevant when i look at what's happening in the states right now whether you you know you look at ice and you think oh this is all a bit big brotherish yeah you look at the way that trump communicates and you're tempted to say this is all a bit orwellian i mean orwell and orwellian and 1984 have entered the language even for people who have never read that book yeah we were talking about this on the show actually it's such an interesting thing because there aren't many books that embed themselves in the imagination so successfully and a lot of the concepts that Orwell comes up with so the idea of Britain as airstrip one the idea of double think so in other words having two ideas in your head at once and one of them you know is a lie but you force yourself to believe it anyway the thing about big brother the thing about room 101 I think what's so interesting to me is that I don't know whether you would agree with this is that it's obviously you read it's a massively a book of its time so shaped in the second world war and the cold war and what all i was writing about is the totalitarianism of stalin in particular but as you say you look at the world now so so his idea that you're being observed through your telescreen um and it's checking every detail of your facial reactions and whatnot and people are watching you the whole time and the party the sort of propaganda ministry is pumping out this stuff you know war is peace freedom is slavery that people must at some level know is not true but they're going along with it anyway it feel it does feel very relevant doesn't it and i think that the trumpian stuff you know trump's use of social media and the way in which ever since his first term the he and his administration would tell people things that everybody in the room knew were untrue and yet the mago movement kind of forced themselves to believe it it is pretty chilling actually what was the the phrase about you know not believing your own eyes because that's kind of where i felt we were in minnesota yeah i actually felt it we were talking uh on the podcast this week about trump's reaction to the death of robert muller so there's robert muller robert muller said you know he did the russia investigation the russia hoax as as trump called it, he dies.

3:43Dominic Sandbrook:And Trump, I mean, social media didn't exist when all was writing. It didn't exist in 1984. But his first instinct and his reaction is to put out a post saying, I'm glad he's dead. It means nobody else can be hurt. Now, that's horrible, but it's very kind of on message, on brand for Trump. But then to see every Republican who's out being interviewed on the day trying to say why it's not a terrible thing to say when deep down they know that it is and likewise you know charlie kirk gets assassinated and most right-minded people come out and say that's a horrible thing whatever his views etc etc etc but no for the trump magalot you had to come out and say he deserves half flags at half mast around the country we we should all attack the left because they killed him.

4:36Dominic Sandbrook:I think Berlusconi is a big part of this, the development of this culture that we now have. He was maybe the starter. He understood that if you get media, you get the hand on the levers of media, you get sport, as he did through football, only one of the biggest clubs in the world. And then he does the political stuff and he becomes prime minister. But then the guy who took it to the next level, I think was Putin. Nothing is true, anything is possible. That's a classic Orwellian. Yeah, it is. So they said, nothing is true, anything is possible. How Putin Remade Modern Russia, which is another book you should do for the book club, by the way.

5:08And then we now have Trump, who he's nothing is true, anything is possible.

5:14Dominic Sandbrook:I agree completely. So I think at the core of this is the idea of truth and is there such a thing as identifiable, verifiable truth? And in 1984, you may remember that one of the ways in which they break Winston Smith, when they've, you know, Winston is the main character. He's tried to rebel and they've taken him into room 101. one and one of the things they basically get him to do they want him not just to say that two plus two equals five but they want him at some level to believe it so there's a line that goes from Stalin's show trials in the 30s he broke like the old Bolsheviks the people who'd been at his side in the 1910s and 1920s they came out and they confessed that they had been plotting against him and working with the allied powers even when they hadn't and they you know it's always been a question did they actually believe it themselves and I agree with you that you now look at people particularly in America, and you think to yourself, do they believe, you know, Trump's spokesman or whatever, or J.D.

6:06Vance or Rubio or whoever, do they actually believe deep down

6:10Dominic Sandbrook:in what they're saying? Or when the cameras are off, do they walk away and do they say, well, actually, you know, I'm just being cynical. I'm just doing this for personal advancements, and I don't really believe it. It's hard to know, though, isn't it? Because the first people they convince with their lies are themselves, don't you think that people often fool themselves a little bit? I don't believe that Rubio believes what he says now. If he does, then the character that we've seen over the decades he's been building his career, he was a fraud. One of them is a fraud. And I think it's the one now because basically Trump has remade the Republican Party.

6:45Dominic Sandbrook:He's become all powerful within it. And the only way to advance and to stay advanced is to be, you know, as far up Trump's backside as it's possible to be. When we interviewed on Leading, we interviewed the Polish Foreign Minister Sikorsky, and I was asking him about Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, who I'd always sort of felt was a quite impressive figure in his own right. And so I said to Sikorsky, look, you've met this guy dozens and dozens of times. Is he impressive? Is he a serious diplomat? And he said, well, he was, but he's not now, because his entire existence now depends on essentially echoing whatever Putin says, does or wants.

7:30Dominic Sandbrook:And I think that's where the people around Trump are now. It's why I've got to say, I mean, you know, when I was in working in government, you know, we got accused of spin and of lying and of manipulation all that stuff now i can defend what we did but the point the reason why i think i am able to defend that is because in tony blair we had a leader who didn't only not fear being challenged internally he expected it whereas i think we now have in trump and putin and probably erdogan and probably modi and quite a lot of the big leaders around the world i think we have people who are deliberately surrounded by echo chambers.

8:13Dominic Sandbrook:And I think that's dangerous. Don't you think that what we have now, though, is a media landscape, a sort of political landscape, in which you're capable of creating a gigantic echo chamber now in which actually people come to... And it's not just the echo chamber, but it's also that people simply don't... It's impossible for people to identify where the truth lies. So when Trump says relentlessly, I actually was cheated in that previous election, in 2020 and even though you know you and i know that he wasn't and that he lost fair and square but he says it so relentlessly and the the media ecosystem that he's created so not just truth social but x and his loyal tv channels and whatnot they pump that message out and you just i just wonder somebody in 10 years time you know somebody who's a child now who wants to look into it what will they believe and what will ai tell them what will they know is the truth you know that's That's quite a chilling thing, I think.

9:07Dominic Sandbrook:The other thing that I'm mildly obsessed with is Trump's... So he uses these percentages all the time. We've cut your prescriptions by 300%. What does that mean? It's impossible to cut it by more than 100%. You cut it by 100%, it means it's now free. Cut it by 300%, it means you're paying double what you were paying. But you hear people then repeating. This is Rest is Politics Bingo, I know, but this is uh like boris johnson and his new hospitals isn't it just make up a stat and um and and people will believe it and people will repeat it sticks in their minds some people believe it and what what the trouble with what's happening now with the echo chamber with the algorithmization of life is we can all end up only consuming the stuff that reinforces our beliefs all the time yeah i think that's what's good about these long-form podcasts is that you know we do at least try to get to base all our very very strong and strongly held opinions on something that is factually accurate but you know the thing about Orwell I mean I obviously I do most of my talking now on the podcast but I still go to the BBC quite a lot and there's that statue there's amazing statue of Orwell outside the BBC and it's you know he's leaning forward it's larger than life and he's leaning forward.

10:24Dominic Sandbrook:And I've got to say, I wonder whether the BBC people are conscious enough of what it says on that statue. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. And that's absolutely right. And that should be the role of media. Completely. It should be to challenge and to scrutinise. And right now, I feel that because of the magnification of global politics, I feel that at the moment, they're not really doing that to, I would argue, to the right. I don't think they did it during Brexit. I don't think they did actually tell people what they didn't want to hear.

10:59Dominic Sandbrook:They told them what they did want to hear. One of the reasons why we're in the mess that we're in. So, without further ado, here for you all is a clip from our episode of The Book Club that Tabby and I did about George Orwell's 1984, and we hope you enjoy it. so this is a world of total surveillance and when winston reaches his flat he reflects that the the telescreen in his flat will capture every sound and gesture so he lives with the assumption that everything will be overheard every moment scrutinized he even says at one point that there's only there's one kind of safe moment in his day and that's when he's in his bed with his eyes closed in the darkness yeah and as the story unfolds he starts to kind of gradually rebel in very very small ways against the suffocating grip of the party and big brother so for instance you know it's really really small he buys an antique journal and starts keeping a diary because the reason that's a rebellion is because that's kind of his own it's his own thoughts and considerations it doesn't belong to the party um he has seditious thoughts of his own and he buys an amber paperweight from this kind of antiquarian shop and the reason that's seditious It's from a former age.

12:14It's from the past. It's from the past, exactly. And the past doesn't exist anymore. And perhaps most memorably, he starts an illicit affair with a character called Julia, who's his colleague. And together they become involved with another colleague called O 'Brien, who they think is part of a resistance group called the Brotherhood.

12:32Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. This doesn't end well, does it? No, it's a big spoiler alert. It doesn't end well. So as lots of readers will know, they're arrested and Winston ends up in the dreaded Ministry of Love. The most nauseating name. Yeah. And specifically in its most feared room, which is Room 101. And we'll come back to what happens in Room 101. So 1984, it's a dystopian political warning. It is a doomed love story. It's a horror story. It's a work of science fiction. it is a reflection on the importance of history um a warning about the corruption of language but more than any of those things i mean that'll you know those are those are aspects of it but at bottom it is a really gripping and terrifying story i mean it is a brilliant read my son read it when he was about 11 or 12 and he absolutely i mean he didn't care about any of those things he just loved it as a gripping story totally i mean it's it's a page turner throughout and And Orwell is a master of suspense.

13:32He builds that as we go on. And it's a phenomenon. I mean, I think probably unmatched in the 20th century, maybe apart from by Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. And surprisingly, that's a comparison that we'll touch on later. You wouldn't think to put them together, but you can. And its legacy is just, it's gigantic. The words and concepts from 1984, for so many of them are really familiar today you know big brother room 101 both of which interestingly have spawned reality tv shows so that's the idea of being of being watched so it's george orwell the progenitor of love island and then you have thought crime double think the two minutes hate airstrip one etc all of this and the word orwellian has actually come to donate something in itself it's associated with totalitarianism with kind of the curtailment of freedom like people even used it i remember during the the covid lockdowns of course yeah yeah massively and the above all the surveillance culture that i think most people today are so familiar with so there's loads loads to talk about here there's all well he's a very interesting figure the times that he lived in what this book's all about why it's endured and has seeped into culture in the way that it has and also i always think it's interesting like to explore whether or it is a period piece born of that particular moment or whether or not it's actually a prophecy

15:03Dominic Sandbrook:with lessons for us today so i love george alwell um the man as much as the books he's load star for me for lots of uh as he is for many writers um i once made a tv program about Britain in the early Cold War that touched on 1984 and actually when I was I mean you were good enough to read one of my more inflammatory columns yeah oh the title of one of my more inflammatory columns I mean I probably in my in my days as a columnist for Britain's best loved mid-market newspaper I must have quoted from George Orwell about 6 ,000 times he's one of those writers that basically whenever you when you run out of a when you've run out of ideas and you're groping desperately for a conclusion orwell is the writer that you um that you read for but interestingly actually tabby i have a sense that um orwell appeals much more to men than than to women so i've never really heard you wax lyrical about george orwell and i don't think i'm giving too much away when i say that the person producing this podcast alia is not an orwell fan no she described this as a boy book and i think she is not entirely wrong there at all i mean i think and I remember thinking this the first time around as well and I was struck by it this time it's clearly you know ingenious and highly original but I think there's a big difference between admiring a book and liking it and I don't really like 1984 and I think there is something in the idea of it being much more of a boy book than a girl book I actually I did a bit of digging and they did a YouGov poll in 2014 which showed that men were much more likely to read 1984 than women I think there's various various reasons for that I think in part because it's a book that deals much more in kind of structures and kind of systems, power systems and structures than relationships.

16:51It's not very interior. It's emotionally really, really stark and cold. There's very little kind of relational fulfillment. And the whole thing is centered on one man's perspective. You know, it's the male gaze throughout. and I just I found it you know reading it in a in a chilly you know London January on the quite 1940s-esque northern line back from work every night for the shadows closing in I found it a

17:21Dominic Sandbrook:pretty bleak read oh no this is shocking we'll explore that a bit more later the the the idea of kind of perhaps the the sexism in 1984 but first of all talk about George Orwell your your hero okay so the funny thing about Orwell is Orwell is renowned for his clarity and his honesty and his sympathy for the underdog and his hostility to authority but there's an irony here because he's a son of empire he's a son of privilege and he's a former imperial policeman who writes under a name not his own so his name is actually Eric Arthur Blair so he's born in Bengal in 1903 his father was in the Indian civil service and he basically worked as a on the export of opium His family, interestingly, he describes them famously as lower, upper, middle class.

18:09Dominic Sandbrook:Orwell was fascinated by class, basically because his family were genteel, but they didn't have the money to sustain it. So that meant that there's always a huge or a widening gap between their expectations and their capacity to pay for them. And that meant that Orwell reflected a lot about the sort of social caste and so on. He's a very bright boy. He wins a scholarship to prep school and then another scholarship to Eton. a King's scholarship to Eton, where he was taught French by Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World. That is a great detail, though. The two kind of fathers of dystopian literature.

18:44Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. So he wasn't a great star at Eton. His parents thought that he probably wouldn't win a scholarship to university and they didn't have the money to send him. So they applied for him to join the Indian Imperial Police, which he does. He passes the exam. He goes off to Burma. and some of his biographers see Burma as formative for him because of course at Burma you know he has an experience of repression and punishment and surveillance but he's on the other side of that equation because he's working for the authorities. Yeah and he really doesn't enjoy Burma does he? No not at all I think he finds it very awkward.

19:17Dominic Sandbrook:He wrote brilliantly by the way about his time in Burma there's a brilliant essay about shooting an elephant and everyone's sort of staring at him and the sort of pressure that he felt as the representative of imperial authority surrounded by all these people whose lives he didn't really understand. So that's why, I guess, he went back to England eventually in 1928. And then that's when he first had a stab at becoming a writer. Yeah, exactly. And a big, big change. He lived mainly in a sort of sleepy Sussex seaside town called Southwold. And that's where his family retired to. And that's when he takes the name George Orwell and he takes it from the king.

19:56Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, George. patriotic yeah a good patriotic man and then the local river because he sees it as a solid english name and then he really gives the writing his best shot and he writes down and out in paris and london and that's published in 1933 and then four books after that so there's burmese days a clergyman's daughter keep the aspidistra flying and coming up for air and none of these are very successful and let's face it we probably wouldn't know them well today if it hadn't been for his later works the common theme of those books is there's a central character who's trapped by his times he feels it's very claustrophobic and the character tries to escape and basically fails so this is a constant theme for Orwell and I think that reflects I mean obviously the theme of 1984 and I think that reflects his personality he's a he's a he's shaped very much by the establishment but also he's quite thoughtful, he's spiky, he's awkward, he's kind of a man apart.

20:52Dominic Sandbrook:He likes to see himself as a man apart. Anyway, the paradox is on the one hand he's quite anti-authority, anti-establishment but on the other, you know, he's very loyal to his old school friends so the people at his bedside when he was dying were all Old Etonians. They were the people he kept in touch with all his life. And that's led some people to think retrospectively that he might have been gay, hasn't it? I can't believe that people think that. Well, I can believe that people think it, but I think they're deluded. I mean, one of the great criticisms of Orwell now is that Orwell, you know, no woman is safe around George Orwell.

21:23Dominic Sandbrook:He's sort of pouring feebly at them or he's asking them to marry him. Anyway, talking about asking them to marry him. He does get married in 1936 to Eileen O'Shaughnessy, who's Oxford educated and basically becomes his typist. And then at the end of 1936, the defining political event of his life, he goes off to the Spanish Civil War. Before then, I think Orwell had, I mean, he'd be interested in politics, but he hadn't been fundamentally political. And the Spanish Civil War changes that. He volunteers for the Republicans, the left-wing forces. He joins a militia called the PUM. But what really is so formative is that the left-wing forces in Spain are fighting among themselves.

22:01Dominic Sandbrook:So there's a rift in Barcelona where he's been very excited and happy. There's a big rift between, on the one hand, all these different kind of sectarian militias like the PUM. and then the other the orthodox communists and the orthodox kind of stalinist communists basically stamp on these other militias and orwell is really shocked by this he's shocked by stalinism he's shocked by the experience of kind of truth and language being threatened by propaganda and by kind of totalitarian orthodoxy and and and that stays with him politically forever and that gives him his obsession i think with totalitarianism and with stalinism yeah and stalinism i mean stalin's shadow looms large in 1984 and obviously big brother i mean he's not he's not entirely stalin like as we said you know the shadows of hitler and him but the similarities between stalin and big brother are impossible to miss i would say i mean the mustache is not alone there's more than that as well yeah so the mustache is definitely giveaway because it's definitely Stalin's moustache and not Hitler's.

23:05And the description of the face, kind of raggedly, solidly handsome.

23:10Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, exactly. But also the way in which in the history books we discover they've been constantly rewritten to emphasise the role of Big Brother and to push Big Brother back earlier and earlier into the beginning of the revolution. And this is, of course, exactly what Stalin's court historians did with him. They wrote out the other leaders of the Russian revolution and put Stalin's centre stage. And there's also a lot of stuff. I mean, when Orwell has come back, when he comes back to England, this is the point at which Stalin's show trials are being reported. So people like Grigory Zinoviev or Lev Kamenev or Nikolai Bukharin, the so-called old Bolsheviks, they are being dragged in front of the courts in Moscow in these terrible show trials.

23:50Dominic Sandbrook:And the shadow of the show trials hangs over 1984. and there's three characters, Aarons and Jones and Rutherford, in the book who are basically like the old Bolsheviks of Airstrip One and the same thing, exactly the same thing happens to them. Yeah, and they're disappeared, aren't they? Yeah. So I hope you enjoyed that clip from our episode on 1984. To hear more, if you want to hear more, and I hope you do, then please search for The Book Club wherever you get your podcasts.

24:21We'll be right back.