Over the cliff we go

Chris Beattie I 16 April 2024 I The Spectator Australia

George Orwell wrote?1984?and?Animal Farm?in 1949 and 1945 respectively, a time when the future – our present – seemed such a very, very long way away and the world was still recovering from the horrors of the second world war. Surely none of his prophecies would come to pass, commentators said at the time. The world could never accept a despotic, dystopian future in which autonomous and largely anonymous quasi-government and government agencies could intrude into every aspect of our lives, dictate what we’re allowed to say, when we can say it, and who we can say it to. And the idea that their reach and influence would extend across borders, so that by virtue of global telecommunications, they could preach their mantras across countries and cultures, seemed way too far-fetched at the time.

So here we are, in 2024, 40 years down the track from Orwell’s prophetic?1984, and we live in a time when the two most stifling and intolerant movements on the planet have our politicians, commentariat, education system, and now the ubiquitous social media environment almost entirely in their grasp. I speak, of course, of the Wokest of the Woke movements, the doomist Green movement that preaches its end-of-the-world-is-nigh dogma to our unquestioning children from the time they first attend school, until they leave as confirmed converts, only a year or two shy of their enrollment to vote.

And then we have the socialist-inspired PC brigade, who share this mass control. Everything is subject to their interpretations and condemnations, from gender biology to daily terminology, so that between them, the Woke and the PC have become virtual arbiters of what we can think, do and say. Literally.

And aiding abetting this global anti-social, socialist movement is their ally, the all-knowing, all-consuming social media movement in the form of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram etc, etc. Overwhelmingly, they adhere to a very left-of-centre doctrine and worldview, in which certain terms, thoughts, ideas, and conversations are simply not tolerated. And woe betide you if you breach their narrow guidelines because you will be de-platformed, as they now say. But in reality, you will be publicly eviscerated and then censored – locked up in a kind of cyber jail where you will not be permitted visitors or conversations – and you will certainly not be permitted the social media version of a phone call.

Even Orwell would be amazed at how stunningly accurate his horrific vision of the future has become, but in a strange kind of way it seems that?1984?has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Under the leadership of Big Brother (The Green/PC/Woke Movement/UN), the Thought Police (anyone in control of any kind of media, including the so-called ‘mainstream’) exercises control over every aspect of people’s lives, altering news bulletins and history texts at will to suit whatever narrative is fashionable – or permitted – at the time. And all under the ever-present threat of global war. Sound familiar?

Venture out into any public space in the 2020s and tell me I’m wrong and that Orwell’s?1984?is not now just around the corner – or just beyond the cliff edge…

Everywhere you turn you see examples of the mind and information control that is now all-pervasive. If you’re still ancient enough to watch TV, you’ll see it everywhere, from the ads (the guy is always an imbecile, the all-knowing woman is always in control, and at least one is non-gender-specific) to the messaging (the ‘we are carbon-neutral because we are saving the polar bears/planet’ slogans from everyone from makers of toasters to operators of airlines).

So much of this messaging is fed to our brains from ‘devices’, which feed us exactly what ‘they’ deem we need to see and hear via mysterious algorithms. Overwhelmingly, this comes to us from our phones. The vast majority of people spend an inordinate amount of time viewing the world around them via a tiny screen in the palm of their hands. Even when they are supposed to be watching what’s happening in actual reality right in front of them.

And so we have the tantrum-throwing Greta Thunberg, the insufferably pompous Al Gore, the lecturing pair Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern, the stern Bill Gates, laughing jokester Elon Musk, and patronising Twiggy Forest, and countless other moral ‘leaders’ whose overwhelmingly left-wing opinions are accepted without question by the vast majority of our media distributors and social commentators. And increasingly, also the vast majority who absorb the new media.

Their messaging is mostly subtle – save for the thundering Thunberg – but it is all about how governments should have more control over their populations, including ominously more and more demands for control of what we are allowed to say and what ideas are now deemed ‘acceptable’.

Right now we are at a tipping point in terms of Western Civilization, which, while it confronts challenges to its dominance in hotspots around the world, including such scary scenarios as the almost certainly insane Vladimir Putin and his belligerent counterpart in Beijing, is heading for a cliff edge. And at quite an electric-powered pace.

We in the Woke West are now led by governments and industry ‘leaders’ who demand that we clean up our acts in the name of saving the planet. So the big push is now on for ‘clean energy’, which according to those in the know means solar and wind, rather than the far cheaper coal, gas, oil, and nuclear. Otherwise, Gaia is going to get even angrier and curse us with more floods, scarier pandemics, faster-rising seas, more tsunamis, and bigger earthquakes and volcanoes. It’s all our fault so the race is on to … go electric.

In other words, we are going to switch over to far less efficient and far more costly and unreliable energy sources so that we can drive vehicles that use far more electricity – of which we’re going to have much less of. The totally Pythonesque logic behind this new movement to race headlong and headfirst towards this cliff edge is, of course, entirely lost on any generation that came after the Boomers.

We’re all in serious trouble. Doomed probably. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. George warned us all those years ago that this brave and grave world was coming if we weren’t careful and took our eyes off the ball for too long. But instead, our eyes are now firmly focused on tiny pretty coloured screens that tell us endlessly what a great world we’re all headed to. Just over the cliff, actually.

So I propose that we initiate a ‘George Told Us So’ award that we could hand out annually to whoever came up with the most bizarre, liberty-threatening, planet-saving Woke idea and right now I reckon our own Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and the federal Labor Party are the leading contenders as they march us blindly and mindlessly towards the cliff edge in search of lower emissions and cleaner energy.

The real worry is that the electric dream car we’re all in doesn’t have a reverse gear and it’s starting to pick up speed…

Author: Chris Beattie