Fact-free history
In The New York Times, an introduction to Vladimir Medinsky, Putin adviser and lead author of new history textbook for Russian high-school students. War is peace, &c.
Rewriting
The New York Times reports on Republican efforts to rewrite the events of January 6: “The message is clear: Adherence to facts cannot overcome adherence to the party line.” Cf. George Orwell: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Rewriting history
The New York Times: “The president tried to rewrite his history with advising Americans about the coronavirus. His own words prove him wrong.” Or as a non-Times writer once put it, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The Alabama loop
Hurricane Dorian has always been at war with Alabama.
As Orwellian as it gets
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani talking to Meet the Press: “Truth isn’t truth.”
Orwell on totalitarian history
“From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.”
Ministries of Truth at work
The Atlantic reports that the White House transcript of the Putin–Trump press conference alters the meaning of a key exchange. The Russian government’s transcript omits the exchange altogether.
Method and madness
Joel Whitebook, director of the Psychoanalytic Studies Program at Columbia University, writing about “Trump’s Method, Our Madness.”
“Past events”
From Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“They simply swallowed everything”
From Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Lies and inconsistencies
At Daring Fireball, John Gruber unpacks the lies and illogicalities in a three-sentence statement from the president-elect’s transition team: 235 words to parse just 42.
George Orwell on historical truth
On the demise of truth: "Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist."