(10/03/22)
One would think that in this day and age a book like this would feel very distant for the democratic world. But reading this in times when a war started right next to my country, by Russia invading Ukraine, feels all the more terrifying. Not only because of the war itself, but also because of the propaganda that follows it.
For days and weeks I've been hearing opinions about it from people around me. And reading opinions on social media, from both ordinary people and politicians, and a lot of times I felt like vomiting from all of it. Not only deep concern, but also disgust, was rising inside of me when some of my closest ones took the side of Russia, of the invader, of the abuser. They truly believed that all that terror, all that brutality and unspeakable crimes were just some myth, some hoax, some tale. They laughed at pictures of destroyed cities and testimonies of raped women and they laughed and laughed in the face of suffering, because they believed there was none. Or if there was, then those victims deserved it.
And my brain was being fried when I was trying to understand how people can be like this. How can they believe a narrative from Russia, that is not only constantly changing and altering in a way that suits them at the time, but also contradicts itself quite often. How don't they see it? And how do they believe someone that we all witnessed to lie about the situation from the beginning.
Tales and lies and hoaxes were shot out like bullets and spread like plague and made some of those around me just machines repeating everything their favorite pro-russian politician said. The past was being altered to fit narrative, facts twisted, lies constructed, wars called special operations. Disgusting, terrifying and sad as hell. All of it.
And reading 1984, I felt like the dystopian world in there was too true for my liking. Of course, it was taken to extremes in the book, but the naked point of it was happening around me, and suddenly I felt real fear, real threat, that this could really happen. That we truly never learn even when we have all the history still at our hands, and that maybe… it's not about learning anyway. Maybe that is just basic human nature that prevails through time. And there have been some that were more efficient at controlling it to their benefit, and maybe one day, there truly will arise a system that will last forever.
The story of Orwell felt like an essay, where his characters were a bit empty and bland, and the storytelling not exactly grasping, but the point all the more stronger and visible.
The real world, on the contrary, has deeper characters and billions of interesting stories, and the point is often somewhere in here with us too, but in a more subtle way, hidden beneath it all. Sometimes, it just hides in the shadows, parts of it dropping from the words of politicians, some flashes we see in the news, some we just feel, while walking aimlessly in a shopping mall. And then sometimes it comes out of its hiding places, wraps itself around our torso, squeezing the heart and breathing at our necks, and we can see it clearly around us. Like now. And I just really hope that we can withstand it all with more success.
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