1984 Comes To 2012: Children Nowadays Were Horrible.

Arising from my previous post.

Excerpt: George Orwell, 1984:

"Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children." 

Excerpt: The Telegraph, 2012:

School children are being encouraged by HM Revenue and Customs to tell their teachers if they know of anyone "in their local area" who is not paying their fair share of tax … One module, headlined “tax responsibilities of a good citizen”, aims to help teenagers “understand the obligations if being a good citizen and discuss what should happen to those who are not prepared to work under such obligations”. One lesson plan – targeted at 14 to 16 year olds … continues: “Show class the remaining factfile slides on tax evasion. What do students think of those who refuse to pay tax … ? “Can they think of any example they may have heard of in their local area?”

 

I’ve written before on how the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, told his fellow revolutionaries that the West would not be won on the battle field, but they must instead play the long game: slowly infiltrate the schools, and capture the minds of the young.

He would be a happy man today.

Look at the ‘good citizens’ these children are taught to be in our schools, with all these ‘obligations’ to each other. And so strong is the programming, that I am confident more than ninety percent of those reading this would feel, deep down, that they have to agree with the teachers’ ethic here, with what this tax course in the schools is founded on: that self-sacrifice for the common good, is a noble thing, and the needs of others are what social democracies must hold at their centre. This is what New Zealand Socialist commentator, Chris - The Fist - Trotter forces on us.

But it’s a magic trick, an illusion, that’s been done in our minds by Gramsci, a linguistic sleight of hand, all the more evil because it initially appeals to our 'better natures'. All we need do to understand it, see the reality of it, is change the focus, the narrative point of view, and see what it really says, which is that for you to live your life, it is acceptable that the lives of others, total strangers, be sacrificed to you, their pursuit of happiness destroyed for you, and that the state will initiate force to back you up in this, and mince up the livelihoods, and freedom, of those who will not bow down to you. And part of being a good citizen, now, is for you to dob these people in, so they can be dealt to.

Free men know that the civilised society is not based on such an extinguishment of life, but founded on a bed-rock of the non-initiation of force, particularly the state against the people, and on each individual being responsible for themselves, and self-reliant. That a civilised society works on the natural love and affection between families and loved ones, on compassion and charity freely given for strangers, and on voluntarism.

So these are not ‘good citizens’ being trained in this course, on their social obligations; just as in the Orwell quote, these are spies, these truly are little savages. When I went to school, at the age of these children, William Golding’s frightening novel, Lord of the Flies, was on the curriculum. Just over thirty years later, the curriculum has been based on it.

Thus, aptly, I shall end with another quote from Orwell’s novel, and I’ve used it before:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.