In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, thoughtcrime, also known as crimethink in the official language of Newspeak, is the offense of thinking in ways not approved by the ruling Ingsoc party. It describes the intellectual actions of a person who entertains and holds politically unacceptable thoughts; thus the government of The Party controls the speech, actions, and thoughts of the citizens of Oceania.[.]
Thought control
In the story of
Nineteen Eighty-Four, the
Thinkpol (Thought Police) are responsible for the detection and elimination of thoughtcrime, and for the social control of the populations of Oceania, by way of
Surveillance and offender profiling. Such psychological monitoring allows the Thought Police to detect, arrest, and kill thoughtcriminals, citizens whose independence (intellectual, mental, and moral) challenges the political orthodoxy of
Ingsoc (English Socialism) and thus the legitimate government authority of the Party.
[.] In the detection of thoughtcrime—and to overcome the physical impossibility of simultaneously policing every citizen of Oceania—the Thinkpol spy upon the populace through ubiquitous two-way
, and so can monitor any person's
body language, reflexive speech, and facial expressions:
The universal, physical presence of the telescreen, in public and in private spaces, exerted chilling effect upon each citizen of Oceania to presume that they were under constant Thinkpol surveillance, and thus in danger of detection and arrest as a thought criminal; thus, whenever near a telescreen, Winston Smith was always mindful of that possibility: "If you made unexpected movements, they yelled at you from the telescreen."[Part III, Chapter 1, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)] Such surveillance methods allowed the Thinkpol and the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) to become universally feared by the citizens of Oceania, especially by the members of the Outer Party, which includes Winston Smith.
Crimestop
In the
Newspeak vocabulary, the word
crimestop denotes eliminating onself of unwanted, incorrect thoughts (personal and political), the discovery of which, by the Thinkpol, could lead to detection, arrest, and interrogation at
Miniluv (the Ministry of Love). The protagonist, Winston Smith, describes crimestop as a conscious process of self-imposed cognitive dissonance:
Moreover, from the perspective of Oceania's principal enemy of the state, in the history book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Emmanuel Goldstein said that:
Contemporary English usage
In contemporary English usage, the word
thoughtcrime describes personal beliefs that are contrary to the accepted norms of society; thus thoughtcrime describes the theological practices of disbelief and
idolatry,
and the rejection of an
ideology.
A similar term, wrongthink, emerged in 2014 on the US alt-right in a subreddit called r/SRSSucks, an anti-political-correctness community and use of the term increased in 2017 after James Damore was terminated from Google for making a remark where he claimed that women were biologically unsuited to coding.
Analogy in Iran
Various groups such as human rights organizations, journalists, and activists have likened the Iranian regime, along with the IRIB and IRGC, to an
Orwellian government. This sentiment is due to reports of the Iranian government distributing death sentences for the crime of "advertising against the holy system". “Zabane eghelab”, an Iranian phrase that translates to “tongue of revolution”, is used to describe the rhetoric used by the government to maintain ideological dominance over the population and is often compared to newspeak.
See also
Further reading
