By Lida Prypchan
Truthfully, it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between propaganda and information because the world is divided into two blocks, the Soviet Union and the United States. On the Soviet side, a rigorous censorship prevents any means of contact with the outside. Only a small number of newspapers and foreign films reach the Soviet Union and they are subject to rigorous censorship. The State and the Party order news and commentaries to follow the Party line. Literature, education, movies, the arts and even the sciences follow the same doctrine and are also used in spreading propaganda. To be sure, in the U.S. information circulates more freely and censorship doesn’t appear to exist. However, there more than anywhere else, opinion may depend on the information media which, under the dictates of profit, tend to pander to the masses and bias them in their opinions. News is undoubtedly supplied in large doses and the government does nothing to withhold or change it, but it is exactly because “it is so precise and detailed, that no one has time to read it.”
I am referring above solely and exclusively to a global reality, or the way in which both the Soviet Union and the United States manipulate information. When it comes to the truth of the matter, there is definitely information cover-up: in the Soviet Union it is brought about by restriction and in the U.S. by confusion with an excess of detailed information. Although each country uses different means and approaches, both manage to manipulate the masses.
At this point I am reminded of another opinion on how information may be handled in the future. I am referring to one of the major books of our times: 1984. The author, George Orwell, presents his prophecy partly as an essay, partly as a novel – the style has something of each. It is a vision of the future under a totalitarian government which totally destroys individualism. It is the ultimate manipulation of the masses by means of fear and political propaganda. In addition, the State and the Party control and distort information, using it as a weapon for their own convenience. In 1984, one single party with a central figure known as “Big Brother” is all-powerful. One of its propaganda slogans is “He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past.” This phrase becomes very meaningful if we explore its relationship with information control as described above. It essentially means that “what is true today has always been true, and will continue to be so until we decide otherwise.”
Or to put it more explicitly, “We will change the past, the present or the future if it is advantageous for us so to do.” An example of this can be found in 1984. If publishing the truth about a past event is of no use to the party represented by “Big Brother,” they just change the information, destroy any evidence of it in the press and fabricate a lie which then becomes the written record. Then if “Big Brother,” using the rice harvest as political propaganda, predicts that production will be twice as high – and exactly the opposite happens when the harvest arrives – they look for the publication containing the incorrect prediction and change it. The purpose is to make everyone think that “Big Brother” is never wrong, when in truth all information is altered to suit the Party – just to prove the omnipotence and accuracy of a pernicious regime.
As far as information is concerned, I find it interesting to compare the present to George Orwell’s future. I also think there is a similarity between Orwell’s prophecy and the way information is manipulated by the Soviet Union. I believe that 1984 is a warning from a perceptive mind not to permit the immense Soviet power to infiltrate any other country.
Speaking of totalitarianism, my opinion regarding what is happening in Venezuela is as follows: our country has been living under a democratic totalitarianism monopolized by AD and Copei*. This totalitarianism has permitted a small group of people motivated by personal or party interest to destroy Venezuela. With everything one could hope for from a country as wealthy as this, all they have succeeded to do is mismanage it and load it with debt. The mandate seems to be to lie to the poor and keep them poverty-stricken so that there is something to offer when the next elections come up, meanwhile to impoverish the country through corruption.
How long is it to continue, I wonder, this regimen of lies disguised as love for the country and regard for the people?
* Democratic Action and Social Christian parties
