Grinding empires

Way back in the nineteen forties, George Orwell (Eric Blair) wrote the novel “1984” about a dystopian world where three empires were at perpetual war against each other with shifting alliances: Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia.

From the political map of today's world in 2022, there is an almost exact correspondence with existing power blocks: The Western Empire, Russia and China, and they are all competing with each other for power and influence across the world.

So Eric Blair knew exactly what he was writing about, as a former civil servant in the eastern parts of the declining British Empire of his day.

And we have now arrived with open conflict between the Western Empire and Russia in Ukraine, with intense propaganda on both sides of the conflict.

A good example being the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to anti Russian activists this year.

The slogans of Oceania in “1984” were: “War is Peace!”, “Freedom is Slavery!” and “Ignorance is Strength!” And then they had “Newspeak”, a politically correct language.

Sounds eerily familiar, eh?