How Was The Party Overthrown? 1984 Lore 

The system was permanently in decay. Eventually the focus on control may have led to loss of all the infrastructure that enabled the control.

The fact Winston is still remembered, makes me think that whatever happened, happened quickly, before there was time to completely eliminate every last trace of him.

I always thought it had to be a military coup. Any high ranking military officer would have to know that their life would be in constant danger if the inner party thought them becoming too popular with their troops. If the wars are real and the officers spend any time away from airstrip one, the chances of creating other loyalties would also be very real.

I think the Party fell because of the new generation's infighting. We see that Ingsoc is trying to mold the children into sociopathic spies for Big Brother, with the Parson children being a prime example. The issue is that, in their zeal to eliminate all enemies of Big Brother, the Parson children also have no qualms taking out totally loyal party members like their own father. I think you can see why this is a problem for Ingsoc. When the children are just spies, this works great, as it inspires yet more fear in the adult Party workers. But once the children grow up, this paranoid mindset isn't going to disappear, and they'll have no one left to accuse but each other. This would lead to infighting and factionalism as different groups accused other groups of thoughtcrime until the Party ate itself alive, allowing another form of government to fill the vacuum it left. We can see a real life example of this with China's Red Guard, which started off as a CCP youth paramilitary group that devolved into factionalism over different interpretations of Mao's statements, and even ended up having a minor civil war with China's PLA before being put down.

There is something else that might happen, no matter how unlikely; a rebellion might be done in Big Brother's name. If Big Brother is treated like a god, then one has to keep in mind no one has a real control over a god. They might see the ideals taught violated by the inner party and decided they need to be overthrown.

The party would need to win every day forever. Its victims would only need to win once.

My personal belief is that the Party itself eventually decided Newspeak was not going anywhere and memoryholed it. The Party is known to distract people with intellect, like Syme, with pointless endeavours intended to keep them occupied but which are not anticipated to ultimately bear fruit. It may have ultimately turned out that Newspeak had inherent defects which were not anticipated at the planning stage.

Dystopia, much like Utopia, requires such outlandish conditions to survive. And reality doesn't work that way, it's always changing and both require a level of stagnation that's just not possible. To bring up a line in Jurassic Park 'Life finds a way'

Perhaps there was a plague, When you consider how filthy everything looks. Also the party killed pretty much everyone who was educated, there would be very few people left who knew how to fight such an existential threat.

I always found it hard to believe that Oceania could hold onto such sparse and geographically isolated regions with as much control as they have over London. Revolts and breakaways are inevitable, just like if Hitler had held onto his acquisitions post-occupationally.

One major facet of Oceania that I think would ultimately lead to its collapse is its complete insistence of technological and cultural stasis, leaving it completely incapable of adapting to changing circumstances. Without educated men, what happens when plague spreads through the masses and no cure can be found? Without renewable energy, what happens when the fossil fuels run out and the entire war machine grinds to a halt? What happens when some extraordinary natural event (i.e. meteor impact, solar storm, global warming, etc.) occurs that completely shatters the party's image of invincibility? The party insists that they must control history, but in practice this is impossible, and eventually they *will* lose control to factors outside their control.

It was probably sheer Autocratic Incompetence. Obedience of that level necessitates stupidity and inefficiency to maintain control. It probably became a matter of just pretty much-checking boxes that weren't truly checked just to keep the party off their backs and if any serious problems occurred, no one was eager to report it.

I had always assumed (in high school lol) the party faced some existential threat like food production, resource shortages, or natural disaster. Since the empire is so antithetical to progress by nature there was nothing they could do.

If there’s one thing that will always haunt me when thinking of 1984 is that if the theory that it’s only Britain that’s ingsoc it would imply that either ingsoc is capable of holding off the us and others from liberating Britain or ingsoc is shelling its own cities and for some reason no one cared to even try to liberate Britain and just left it to rot not even North Korea was given that treatment

If I remember correctly the party always underestimated the ressources it needs for its people. That would mean they also did not produce enough tools or spare parts for machinery. So the infrastructure of ozeania would gradually break down.

With absolute, unreasonable rationing, eventually everyone is either living on black market goods and/or slinking off to work at the edge of farmlands, and the blue flu gets so bad no one shows up...

My view was always that the Party eventually does fall; because of the lack of infrastructure maintenance, the continued poverty and systematic dumbing down of the population, a self destructive society of universal distrust and suspicion, perpetual warfare destroying the world's ecology and exhausting much of the easy to access resources... The system finally collapses. I imagine Eastasia is the first of the three superstates to do so, it then gets gobbled up by Oceania and Eurasia in an engineered "victory" and the latter two collapse later close to the same time. After the time of the Party comes anarchy, not democracy or revival. A deepening of the dark age the world has already fallen into since the nuclear war of the 1960s. Because the population has no past to fall back onto, no heirloom knowledge or cultural history, it creates a social void that lasts for centuries. But shreds of the past do get found, the party didn't completely wipe out "Oldspeak" of course and may have even walked back attempts at totally erasing it but the attempt at "Newspeak" served its intended purpose, to dumb people down and decouple the past from the present, allowing the Party to survive perhaps well into the 21st century.

My theory is that the Party was not overthrown, but changed form. It found more subtle, insidious ways of maintaining total control without the need for direct rule. It allowed itself to be "replaced" with facades: new governments and new institutions. But these "new" institutions are still part of the Party organism. The Party didn't die, it evolved.

There's a book called "1985: What Happens when Big Brother Dies," it was written by an Eastern European dissident and is meant to be an unofficial sequel to 1984. I bought it and read part of it - not a fan but it's an interesting piece of lore.

I like the idea that the government eventually just stopped caring , or lost its motivation to rule as tightly as it needed to be sustained. Just like what Aldous Huxley said in his letter to Orwell, he couldnt imagine a government with such an arduous means of ruling being very sustainable, which is why he thought the government in Brave New World would be more successful in the long run. It's easy to imagine Ingsoc had a terrifying, but short reign, and with that in mind it's easier to see some of their more extreme ideas (eg replacing English with Newspeak) not as genuine possibilities but as the egotistical pipe dreams of a mad dictatorship. It's like when Mussolini tried to ban all non-Italian words from the language. Dictators get wild grand ideas about how to completely reshape society but they can only do so much

As someone who never touched 1984 ever in my life, this is going to be an interesting bit of lore.

It might be wishful thinking. I read the novel twice in my life and felt depressed by it both times because there was no happy ending. The appendix on Newspeak might be there to give the reader an easy out. However, such a society is going to collapse sooner or later. It might linger on for a few decades but sooner or later it will murder itself, we've seen such societies in world history that were either fascist or communist that eventually spiraled out of control. The Proles were bound to have a part in it. In the movie Gandhi he's quoted as saying that the government can't control the people if millions people refuse to comply with it, force and violence only goes so far when things get intolerable and unlivable. A bunch of women fighting over pots might not cause alarm, but several million women fighting over craps of food means all hell is about to break loose.

The society described in 1984 is closest to North Korea... North Korea almost collapsed in the 1990s due to economic issues, with flooding that almost broke the camel's back. It's likely that Oceania would too suffer primarily from economical collapse due to their decaying economic system. In 1984 there's no China to save it, as North Korea did. Another example, if we look into the Soviet Union, the original state control system first collapsed under Lenin due to economic reasons leading to the NEP, then it was reformed again under Khrushchev also largely with economic aims in an attempt to raise living standards. Then it collapse for good in the 1980s-1991 also largely due to economic issues... I think it's a good bet that any collapse would be caused by the worsening of living standards, inflation, reduction of rations, and similar issues since those would create a loss of trust and the formation of a large black market that would be hard to control since it might be the only source of basic necessities for most that partake on it. Weakening central authority and undermining legitimacy.

Such a preposterous idea! This is doubleplusungood! The party would never fall!

The current toalstarianism of INGSOC formed in the mid 60’s after the consolidation of the party. Think about that. The system that people keep saying is invincible is only around 20 years old. There is no reason to think this system will last forever.

Plot twist: The humans of Britain end up being overthrown by an animal revolution, led by the pig leaders of Manor Farm, as prophesied by Old Major in Orwell's own "Animal Farm". This is definitely what happens. (Seriously though, I wouldn't be surprised if the Manor Farm in "Animal Farm" ends up meeting the same fate as the Soviet Union it's based on. Napoleon's empire ends up crumbling in both film adaptations of that book. But much like with 1984, I feel like it's up to the reader's interpretation as to whether or not these totalitarian systems will ever be overthrown.)

Another great one as always I think Winston being 'cured' is as good as him being vaporized from the point of view of the tragedy of the text. When I was a younger man it always frustrated me that the book wasn't more about overthrowing the party but it definitely is more powerful that it technically doesn't have a happy ending. It certainly fits the tone more. As to how I feel like it's inevitable and that Winston and you are on the right track 'If there's any hope it lies with the proles'. I think there is a little classism here though. I feel like any person no matter how uneducated will have a point that you can't push them past without a reaction and when some reacts in a situation like that things can happen very fast. Can't wait to see what facet you get me thinking about next

When you think about all Totalitarian Systems, controlling thought becomes a very, very expensive venture - even with technology. The cycle of continually proving political purity would eventually degrade the government from managing the (lack of an) economy. There has to be some proof that the system of government is working for the benefit of the people, or the seeds of its downfall will sprout. I agree with the premise of this video - there is still hope for Oceania and the people of Airstrip One. No lie can be maintained forever, as eventually the lie will ask for more and more to be sacrificed to it to keep it alive. In 1984, we see the Party on the knife-edge of being overthrown, as they have wasted too much energy in trying to police thought.

My headcanon post ending for 1984 is that while The Party suffers an internal struggle which causes the collapse of The Party, The Party lives on after its death in spirit resulting in an "Anarcho-Ingsoc" for a lack of a better term, as in a post totalitarian anarchism in which while the government may be gone everybody whether out of fear or brainwashing continues on living as if nothing has changed.

Hello mate I must say I'm thoroughly enjoying your content, when it comes to totalitarian regimes they all eventually fall. There's a quote by Integra Hellsing from Hellsing Ultimate. "A monster's reign of terror may be bloody and long, but it's only a matter of time before they fall." The party may try to control everything but the human spirit, morality and free will always triumphs in the end, you can't control history or language or thought or people forever. And who knows maybe after Ingsoc and the other super states are gone maybe the different countries and people can finally reclaim what's left of their history, cultures and try to rebuild a better world with democracy going forward. Evil can never win, good always triumphs. Anyway keep up the good work mate and greetings from Australia.

My headcanon is that after the party was defeated, society went to the other extreme and brave New world society was made

I played this video while I was doing the shopping and walking back home in terrible rain. I understood nothing for other things demanded my attention, but your voice is very pleasing to listen to, impeccable vibe! (I had an umbrella so I'm almost dry, thank you for asking)

No, winston was *not* being monitored for 7 years. 7 years is how long he had spent at the ministry of love being 'cured' this is stated explicitly in the novel

The world of 1984 is a world of decay and rot. Everything is falling apart. There are continual shortages, continual decay of buildings and machines. Apparently rampant petty corruption and Party that seems intent on self devouring self destruction via constant purging. One of the things I always found amusing in 1984 is that although there are continual shut downs of heat, electricity, gas etc., and buildings and infrastructure are decaying it appears that the devices called telescreens don't seem to breakdown or not work. For example assume a part doesn't work anymore would the parts be easily available, would it be repaired quickly etc. I doubt it. I consider that to be an apparent flaw in the novel. I would think in "real life' those devices would be offline a lot of the time. It appears that the overall rot would likely cause the system to eventually implode. I would also just like to say that O'Brien is an idiot. His utterances to Winston while Winston is being tortured are amazingly stupid.

One thing to notice is that Winston had his diary because there was one blind spot in the house where the TV could not watch and he could write there. If, like in the Soviet Union, his flat was actually copypasted, it means *every flat* has a blind spot, it's just a matter of finding it. How many Winstons are out there, unchecked? What if one of them becomes closer to V from V for Vendetta, making bombs in their blind spot with black market materials, and blows up the Parliament?

Ingsoc relied totally on its complete control of all communication to stay in power. If whichever of Eurasia or Eastasia that Oceania was at war with at the time managed to knock out the party’s communication apparatus, so if even just for a day or two Big Brother was *not* watching, then that would have been that.

There are two perspectives on the Newspeak Appendix. Some assume that it is a text that exists in-universe, just like the excerpts from Winston's diary and Goldstein's book. It is then regarded as a text from the post-Ingsoc era, written by some unknown academic or historian who looks back on the (failed) plans of the (former) regime to establish a new language. The other perspective is that the Newspeak Appendix does not exist in-universe, no more than the main text of the novel does. It is just George Orwell using the format of an academic essay to do some extra world-building and fill in some details that he could not easily fit into the main text of the novel. The perspective of the essay is then not after, but BEFORE 1984; Orwell is adressing his original audience in the late 1940s, telling them more about the hellish future society he has described in the novel. But it is still fiction, and so written in the past tense, simply because that is the near-universal convention in English novels. Even a novel set in the future is not written in the future tense; that would sound ridiculous. As for which interpretation of the Newspeak Appendix is the correct one, I believe a definite answer is provided by a single occurrence of the word "already": "The A vocabulary. ... was composed almost entirely of words that we already possess -- words like hit, run, dog, tree, sugar, house, field ..." There you have it. "Already." An academic in a post-Ingsoc future would instead have written either "words we STILL possess" or "words that already existed in Oldspeak". But no. The perspective of this essay is not after Ingsoc, but before it. "We" who "already possess" these words are George Orwell's original readership in the mid-20th century. Therefore the Newspeak appendix is NOT a text that exists in-universe, it is NOT written by some future academic after the fall of Ingsoc, and the fact that it is written in the past tense does NOT imply the future failure of Ingsoc. Sorry. Strictly speaking, we obviously know nothing about what happened after the mid-1980s in the fictional timeline. Orwell's novel doesn't cover any later period, except for mere plans of the Party (like definitely abandoning Oldspeak by 2050, or O'Brien's long-term visions of a world with no art, literature or science, indeed not even orgasms). We may like to imagine that Ingsoc somehow failed in the end, but Orwell's intention was apparently to describe the "perfect dictatorship" that could never be overthrown, or that might at least cling to power for thousands of years. It can only be fought by not letting it solidify in the first place. Once the system is in place, it is too late, forever.

It probably fell the way the USSR did: any attempt at reform immediately sends the whole lot crashing down. The system here, which is authoritarian, is very vulnerable to change--easily toppled from within as well as without.

It is possible that the Party loses to an internal rebellion that swept the country without much resistance. Similar to the fall of Zaire Focus on supression>ignores state maintenance>drop of quality of life>state withers, local bureaucrats empowered>rebellion, state is powerless, country is now a confederation of de facto "duchies"

They probably fell due to a domino effect that was likely started by some environmental disaster / crop failure / plague. INGSOC like all totalitarian regimes had an all or nothing philosophy. Every possibility, outcome and factor had to controlled to occur in their favour with the only alternative being them having no power at all. A single instance of weakness would unravel the entire system, with decades of their actions being inevitably questioned by the populace in the process. This of course always leads to intense dissent and usually Revolution. The problem is that not all factors can be controlled. A plague can devastate any society and is rarely foreseen. Mass crop failure would tip the scales too much in the direction of abject suffering which will make the proles have absolutely nothing to lose. Environmental disaster is self explanatory. It also doesn’t help that the structure of absolute power that is maintained through absolute cruelty only encourages individuals in upper echelons of government to be inherently power hungry as a means to protect themselves from political purges or political opponents trying to get one up on them. This only creates the perfect conditions for factionalism that would quickly grow out of control when even inner party members feel the heat of previously mentioned unforeseen circumstances. The infrastructure as seen in 1984 is obviously in a state of total disrepair due to the nature of government; basically ensuring that it will be the first thing to go when external crises put any pressure on the already fragile system. The habit of excessively promoting loyalty over competence alongside liquidating skilled personnel only ensures that basic maintenance of things will be extremely difficult. Even competent individuals would be forced into a fear induced incompetence when confronted with liquidation for revealing an unsavoury truth about the system to an inner party member. There are many more factors that could play a part as well. The army which seems to be related to but mostly separate from the party could always overthrow said party when guarantees are no longer provided, which again could easily be brought on by external crises. Or alternatively the natural entropy of nation states which would be accelerated by INGSOC’s method of governance would just run its course and result in a collapse of the system due to time. The main point about these systems is that they’re not sustainable. They try to do what can’t be done and touch what shouldn’t be touched. In my opinion I think an INGSOC collapse would contain elements of cubas special period, the soviet collapse and collapse of Chinese dynasties via Mandate of Heaven (environmental disaster domino effect)

Look at how the real USSR and Nazi Germany collapsed. Hitler's breathtaking incompetence regarding the execution of WWII led to a lot of attempted coups by the military to try to create a "smart Hitler." It collapsed because of the war, but it would've fallen eventually anyway. As for the USSR, Goldstein is really obviously based on Trotsky (real name, "Bernstein"). Trotsky claimed that the revolution had been betrayed by Stalin, and a lot of communists in the rest of the world started to sympathize with that view. What really killed the USSR, though, was that it wasn't really feasible to keep up that level of oppression. They had to relax a bit, and that was when the proles realized just how bad things were. The USSR collapsed within the decade after that.

Grid failure. That's how it started. Most folks don't understand that an electrical grid is a dynamic system that requires constant fiddling and fixing to work. By SKILLED smart people! The very first thing to go is the grid. After that the water stops being pressurized and pumped. Food stores only have 2 to 5 days of food in rich capitalism stores, and even when stocked they need power for cooling the food. Petrol storage needs pumps to USE the stored petrol. After the power goes off the petrol powered stuff shuts down in 3 to 5 days. Look at South Africa, where the grid is failing in real time. Stupid people can't make the power work no matter how motivated they are. I would venture a guess as to how this happens. Slowly until it happens suddenly without warning. Something trips a breaker or downs a power line and the grid has cascade failure due to either inadequate base load available, or phase variance not managed fast enough. (AC power from multiple sources need the waves to be synchronized, or it fights it's self causing power loss or destruction of transformers )

I think the book does hint at what happens, notice the statue of cromwell? I belive this is a hint of that after a revolution leading to such a bad regime, people return to the old system prior, flaws of that included that is aluded to in the book

Historically, most popular revolts against repressive regimes happened after failed or aborted attempts of reforms, or "periods of thawing". When the system tries to put on a friendlier face, but then throws it away and desperately tries to restore its air of implacability. Thusly exposing itself as fallible and disoriented, and confirming that alternatives to the iron heel do in fact exist. It is fun to speculate how such a scenario might have transpired in Oceania.

Ultimately, it can be summarized in the idea that evil destroys itself. While rebellions may be crushed by the mindlessly loyal fanatics, those same fanatics dont really make competent governors. It would fall into decay, meeting its end in some sort of fate, whether it be rebellion or just general collapse.

As a prol I can say that prols aren't as stupid as people assume. Also what they say and what they think are not the same. Playing dumb is a strategy. Quantity has a quality all it's own. Revolution has happened and can happen when a certain point is reached.

There’s an amazing quote by Charlie Chaplin in his iconic 1940 film The Great Dictator. “so long as men die liberty will never perish.” But, what if your ruler isn’t a man. What if your ruler is an idea, a notion, a concept. Something that can’t be outlived, can’t be dispelled and can’t die. That is what makes George Orwell’s 1984 so terrifying and why humanity needs to be so careful. How do you defeat something, that cannot to be defeated?

One thing I notice was not mentioned is the references to texts and dates that should have been eradicated, like the fact that they mention the 1960s, and the Declaration of Independence. By nature, the Declaration of Independence would have been destroyed by the Party to keep members in line. So how do you guys think it survived?

I always took the book's meaning to be a hopeless, unchangeable situation that's supposed to scare the reader. It's basically an example of the worst possible thing we could do, and a warning not to let it happen.

No junta that has ever been has been composed of selfless characters like O'Brien. Every Junta succumbs to the personal ambitions and weaknesses of their own top eschelon. The internal stresses within and the mis allocation of resources will cause a fracture.

I always assumed in 1984 that oceania was a rumpstate inhabitating the british isles pretending to be the worlds dominate power like north korea

Have you read The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier? There was an interesting take on the fall of INGSOC (though obviously not canon).

Another important point is that totalitarian states always tend to incompetence. Anyone being too good at their job results in a power imbalance, which results in their being punished. Thus you end up with a state where the people who actually need to be good at their jobs aren't, because of the fear of a coup. But that means eventually the very people who have to be competent to keep the regime in power aren't, because the competent people in the political police have been purged. So they lose the ability to detect actual threats. And with the continually declining standard of living and the increasing insanity of the forever war idea, the whole state implodes.

I think the main reason why IngSoc would fail is if it had a dissent group within the Inner Party. Histrory shows time and time again that revolutions and revolts against an elite by the lower classes rarely succeeds if it doesnt have backing from a parallel elite who also want change of some sorts

My hypothesis is that at some point an individual in the inner party managed to gain dictatorial power, an even more powerful and paranoid Stalin. After all, the inner party attracts the power-hungry. After a decade ot three of the inner party being oppressed by the tyrant, they lost the will to maintain power through fear and oppression and they either slowly reformed or were unwilling to fight a growing movement against the party.

1984 should absolutely be a fandom, it kind of is vaguely is a fan club already

All it takes is one bad harvest season / natural disaster for all hell to break loose

TBH the line "He loved big brother" almost reminds me of how people born and lived in the Soviet Union before its collapse have a nostalgia of how good the Soviet Union, even if they may have not agreed with the system at the time. Winston was looking for some form of control at a time when he felt he didn't have any. Now the party has fallen there is likely some form of anarchy and chaos just like the USSR as it transformed into Russia in the 90s. So Winston is now looking for some form of control again so he takes a more nauanced look at the party.

Great video! The movie and then the book struct me hard as a teenager... I went into this video wondering how anyone could expand on the 'Lore' of that story and your analysis really surprised me!

It would have fallen appart just like Soviet Union did. Soviet Union eventually failed because of inherent human reasons. You can propagandize people to the point of being completely detached from reality and have near total conttol, it won't last. True belivers and skilled people who set up the ststem will inevitably die out and be replaced by the less devout and skilled but who are much better at skullduggery and intrigues because these skills are much more suited to gain power within the system. Entropy is inevitable, no matter how strong the system is.

I’ve always held this theory in my head that Oceania as described in the book doesn’t exist. It’s limited to the UK, and the endless war going on outside with Eurasia and Eastasia is nothing but propaganda. In effect, Oceania and Airstrip One are something of caricature of what we see in North Korea in terms of what the regime there says is true and what is false.

My personal belief is that huminity itself will save the world. Characters like Winston, who require years of being watched and months upon months of continued torture to finally break will prove to be too much for the party to ever keep up with. If every outer party member took as long to break as it took winston, if each one resists for as long as Winston did, it would be too expensive and too laborious to break each and every man and woman. Humanity itself will overthrow big brother.

Control has a heavy opportunity cost; it takes a lot of work. Even with machines the maintenance and production of those machines requires large and complex organizations.

I like to think that, over time, deserting soldiers on the equatorial front created little communities alongside the local inhabitants, simply because life was more pleasant there than it was at home. I imagine that they play both sides off each other, collecting weapons and building up quietly, eventually forming a united front against the superpowers, initially just to protect themselves. Of course, no one outside of the inner party knows this.

I've always thought that a fps video game similar to Wolfenstein The New Order but more realistic set in 1984 universe where we fight as a real resistance to overthrow INGSOC would be the best thing ever.

Yeah. I definitely got the vibe that dissidence in the outer party was much more entrenched and active than INGSOC was willing to let on. Their classism also makes them underestimate the prolls to a dangerous degree. It’s pretty easy to fool someone who thinks your entire societal class is too stupid to rebel. There may very well have been a secret organized resistance of outer party members and prolls that Big Brother was frantically trying to hide from the rest of the public.

Great analysis. Its always been my impression that Big Brother was simply the machinery of state oppression that devoured its creators; so even people like O'Brian were simply victims, programmed nodes of control within a system that became self sustaining. Certainly anyone mentioned who seemed to have had an ideology was destroyed or broken by the Big Brother system. This is perhaps illustrated by the fact that Big Brother, when exposed, reveals absolutely no ideological justification for its existence. It was a means that became the ends. Within that context Big Brother's failure to provide for the masses would have been impossible to correct, it was a system of oppression not improvement, and only accepted the illusion of truth it created. So (happily) revolution was inevitable. Given Orwell's era, I think a military uprising of the type that started the Russian revolution was the most likely spark. Certainly since Orwell many similar systems to those described in 1984 have fallen due to a gulf that grew between the governing and the governed. Their fall came about quickly, and when it did none made an appeal to ideology to save their system, or if they did they were so weak they were ignored.

You cannot win forever. It may take generation, but things change. It's the way of life. At any one moment in time, some people with responsibility and power will want to stay alive, or won't be content with what they have, or just die, and leave a hole in the structure of power and things will simply start failling apart. The frightening things is that you can aply this to any form of power, from tyranny to democracy

This is more a criticism of the book/fundamental position of the writing but I somewhat reject the notion that the Proles would not either revolt or just collapse as a class (mass refusals to work and so on) and thus bring everything down with them because it assumes that they would not want change or life to be better. Humans who are in poverty with terrible conditions *inherently* want life to be better, in fact this seems to be an innate desire in almost all people but it grows exponentially in intensity when we're exposed to adversity. The book seems to completely ignore this despite the fact that we have fantastic real world evidence to prove that even under the most dire, crushing, literal starvation death camp oppression people still seek improvement and opportunities to rebel. Really the only way to prevent this type of discontent would be to alleviate a significant amount of their poverty to placate them. If we look to nations like North Korea then it becomes clear that food scarcity in particular is *extremely* destabilising to the lower classes as famines there are some of the only times we actually hear about the people being significantly upset and discontented, meaning it's strong enough and acceptable enough to go out to an international audience. Long term stability of the Proles could likely only be achieved with acceptable conditions on top of complete media control to placate them and make them think they have it as good as it can get. Even then however you would still expect widespread corruption and attempts at improvement which still leaves a significant amount of instability in place, just perhaps a 'manageable' amount if everything else is working and if they feel their leader is strong and doing the 'right' things. I do find the idea of internal power struggles at the top the most likely cause of an overthrow, though, as we see most dictatorships or similar go this way due to the internal pressure/ power struggles and inherent issues with subordinates and corruption that this type of government creates. They are essentially operating at all times as a finely kept balance of internal stresses and because the power must be delegated down the hierarchy this creates a situation where if any one high ranking official feels threatened the likelyhood of a coup attempt skyrockets. Even the Proles themselves being in discontent could likely be enough to cause a power imbalance at the top if it causes disagreements and tension. Oh and as a last note, the control of language in 1984 has basically been proven just not to work since we now know that ideas lead language, not vice-versa, studies have shown that the words available in languages do not seem to affect the ideas and thoughts people have globally. So people will simply seek out new ways of communication to replace old ones and they will adapt if they cannot get their ideas across. This is not how it works in the universe of the book though, so it is pretty hard to account for the effect it would have in a realistic way and I suppose if it did work that way it *would* be a fantastic method of control.

Someone here said that whatever happened, happened fast. My guess is that what may have happened is that a spontaneous form of protest shocked people to their core and also showed that the party in fact weren't all seeing and all knowing. Someone may have performed an act of martyrdom, throwing themselves at a member of the Inner Party during the moments of hate. Or got fed up with everything and charged one of the machine gun bunkers guarding the government buildings in a moment of depression or rage or insanity or a combo of all three. There is real life equivalents to some of these, the one I find most notable is Tunisia in 2010 when a man set himself alight to protest his harsh treatment by local officials. All it would take is the right thing at the right moment to move people into action, to show that even in death they can have an impact and the entire INGSOC Party could come crumbling down.

Perhaps the military got sick of fighting the forever war, and there was a coup.

It’s also possible that the people, simply, rose up, someone realized that the resistance was fake and started their own, or perhaps there was an active rebellion somewhere else in Oceania, like America

I always believed the system collapsed after some natural disaster started the domino effect of change. The system the party created doesn’t seem flexible enough to handle outside challenges. A nasty plague or a mass crop failure may cause enough death to push the proles over the edge.

Good analysis. It seems staggeringly unlikely that all Inner Party members are maniacal enthusiasts like O'Brien. There would be many who would doubt the existing system, perhaps for no other reason than the lack of personal advancement you refer to.

No system, no matter how well constructs, can last forever. This is true of both good and bad systems. So while creating an eternal utopia on earth is impossible, so is creating an eternal dystopia.

I think it's a cool thought experiment, but I doubt the appendix intentionally implies Ingsoc is overthrown. Many science fiction novels are written in the past tense, even if they take place in the future (Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949.) Orwell may simply have followed convention and set the Appendix in the past tense, just like the story itself, without meaning to imply anything.

I have always wondered why Eurasia and Eastasia never allied against Oceania, it seemed like this was never considered even as a theoretical possibility by anyone. I have thought this might be one way events could change.

We see at the end of the most recent version of the film that even Inner Party members are subject to purges. Three Inner Party members are seen at 12:37 in the same holding area as Winston -- the cafe, playing chess while waiting to be executed, as was Winston. Sooner or later, two or more major factions within the Inner Party would go at one another in civil war and shatter their hold over Oceania, just as constant civil war was the chief reason the Roman Empire collapsed, because they became such a drain on resources, the Empire could no longer hold back the barbarians, or in this case hold back aggression from East Asia or Eurasia. And these powers too would at some point suffer their own internal struggles. Revolutions ALWAYS end up eating their own, with the American Revolution perhaps the only real exception. At some point during an Oceania civil war, the temptation to integrate millions of Proles by feuding Inner Party factions into their fighting forces as an advantage over rival factions to counter Army and/or Outer Party members support alone would be too great to pass up. And that would crack the entire system. BTW: The Russian Revolution, born out of the catastrophe of World War I, the Communist totalitarian rule that took over, and all the mind perversions and organized secret police terror necessary to maintain their control, was the inspiration to George Orwell for his writing 1984. Big Brother symbolized Stalin, and IngSoc symbolized Communism. Goldstein symbolized Leon Trotsky (whose real name was Bronstein) -- who, just as Stalin, was a key figure in the Revolution. In fact, Trotsky was higher in rank originally than Stalin. Trotsky commanded the Red Army and was one of the most important Communist theoreticians next to Lenin, while Stalin handled the bureaucracy and did the work considered vital but unglamorous and messy. This set the stage though for Stalin to outmaneuvered Trotsky for power once Lenin died. Stalin eventually had him executed by an assassin in Mexico City where Trotsky had fled to live in exile. Once Stalin took power, Trotsky became the omnipresent symbol of impurity, treason and perversion just as Goldstein was in IngSoc propaganda. And similarly Goldstein's last name implies he was ethnically Jewish as was Trotsky, even if Goldstein was a convenient fiction used by the Party's propaganda. To this day, there is a small but vocal pro-Trotsky faction -- the Trotskyites -- who believe they are the pure vision of Communism which was corrupted by the Stalinists and other deviant factions. I'd imagine there'd have been a similar vocal faction of Goldsteinites as well who the Inner Party feared.

All empires are defeated by time, all that begins, ends.

"Welcome welcome to city 17 you have chosen or been chosen to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centres I thought so much of city 17 that I elected to establish my administration here in the citadel so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors I've been proud to call city 17 my home and so whether you are here to stay or passing through on your way to parts unknown Welcome to city 17"......its safer here.

Likely a large part of the revolution was the inability for the current party to pass down this absolute power to those underneath them. Once the few people who make up big brother have died or are aged well beyond their time, a revolution is much more possible with the younger group split over how to run this government they’ve been gifted.

Both on a Watsonian basis and on a Doylist basis, the Party must have failed. To take the latter first, George Orwell deliberately wrote the appendix as he did, referring to the Party in the past tense. He was after all a democratic socialist, and understood that the system he describes in the book wasn't stable, even though O'Brien thought it was. On the latter, the Party's whole approach was based on a series of huge mistakes, and therefore it carried within itself the seeds of its own eventual dissolution. A state of permanent warfare - actual warfare with bombs falling and troops killed - would inevitably not just use up excess resources, but would lead to a slowly worsening standard of living and a breakdown of infrastructure. A state of constant hostility is one thing, a state of constant war something quite different. And totalitarian states are always in danger from power struggles within the ruling party. Hitler deliberately set the leading Nazis in competition with one another in order to keep them from competing with him, but the Party in 1984 has been in power long enough for the Inner Party to be presumably really a mass of different groups competing for power. And the more secure the Party seems to be in its power, the greater the temptation for these groups to fight one another, eventually bringing the whole thing down. And leading, one presumes from Orwell's own views, to an actual socialist state governed by the people for the people, not by a clique for the clique.

A pet theory i like to imagine is the idea of a Second American Revolution. Of all the lands in Oceania the former United States seems like the prime candidate to launch a revolution against big brother

Talking about the end of ingsoc makes me wonder how it began, in what lead to its composition and who or why it got formed

Sometimes an appendix is just an appendix. North Korea, our nearest living parallel to 1984 is 75 years old or three generations of isolation, and shows no sign of ending. Most in the hermit kingdom know nothing of another existence. People face starvation, yet no one revolts. One risk one's life for any form of contact with the outside world, the perpetual enemy, especially the United States. The USSR, the inspiration for 1984 fell to a dictator as is often the case when a power vacuum, and chaos is created upon the collapse of a society. Marxists do this intentionally in order to insert their regimes.

😂 this is literally the question I always asked myself after reading this in 2014. And i never had a good answer. Thanks for this video! Great style of RU-vid video! You got another sub!

What are the dynamics of the overthrow INGSOC given the existence of Eastasia and Eurasia? Who does what, if anything. Do these enemies even exist?

I think also there’s an element to which the human mind itself rebells constantly, even when it’s not conscious of it. As Winston described, there is always the “mute feeling in your bones” that tells you that life is better than this and even seemingly loyal people like Parsons prove they harbour subconscious resentments. It reminded me of Fahrenheit 451 where a consistent thread throughout is that the people in this society are all subconsciously suicidal with the fire chief and Montag’s wife showing numerous times that they are not as content as they appear to be on the surface. It’s possible that the party ended up sabotaging themselves over time, in a thousand little inefficiencies and eyes turned the other way. Perhaps it would be a very long time before any of the anxieties could be spoken out loud, but I don’t think the human mind ever fully settles in to tyranny- always there’s a part, however suppressed, that tries to break free, even if that freedom means death.

1984 was, truly, one of the most terrifying things I've ever read. Orwell managed to create what could be seen as the pinnacle of oppression and did so to warn us all of the dangers of rushing into revolution and ending up with a worse version of Stalin. I've heard many debates from people who have also read this book regarding how the party would fail, collapse or be overthrown but they all seem to be some form of "copium" to help people deal with the fact that they read something that is truly terrifying to read. Accepting this great work of art means accepting the misery and hopelessness therein. Orwell wasn't trying to write an inspiring novel about how to be a freedom fighter, he was writing a depressing warning about letting this sort of world come into existence, and to get the full message of the book you need to accept that this system will, short of an alien invasion, never fail. It might change shape but the human race is screwed from here on out, and we did it to ourselves. That said, there is one possible ray of hope, and that is in the form of North Korea. The only argument I've ever heard that made 1984 seem slightly less terrifying is that Ingsoc and Airstrip One are this universe's version of North Korea. We had a dodgy revolution that made everything worse but it only happened here, the rest of the world is ticking along as it would and Britain is just that "weird country that you can't go on holiday too and occasionally gets into international news when it threatens to nuke France and everyone has a good laugh"

Marty Mcfly did it.

in re-reading the appendix in the last week or so, a thought came to me. Perhaps just as Orwell asks the reader to consider how society can turn into the complete totalitarian system he describes in 36 years, the appendix is subtly asking the reader to consider how such a system could be overthrown, and what could replace it

One theory I've come up with springs from a question I always had: in a world where those who are unpersoned lose all traces of them ever existing, why is Winston's story not lost to time? The only other person who would have the most complete picture of Winston's life would be O'Brien. So what if O'Brien had a similar snap to Winston and, as the first symptom of it, he smuggled out Winston's file from the Ministry of Love? After all, when your job requires you to be a bastard, what happens when you realize that you are, in fact, the bastard? It's not like you can unsee it... without extensive torture and reprogramming (brainwashing). So my theory is that something about Winston's case broke O'Brien, and he was able to help foster some kind of genuine resistance while seeming entirely loyal the entire time.

Great video, just found your channel at random. Such authoritarian systems can't hold together for long (North Korea being an odd outlier), as you say there are many threats to their existence. I think Winston said that all that was needed was for the Proles to be convinced that enough was enough, and it would be over almost overnight since they represented a big majority of the population. Hence the Inner Party doing their best to keep the Proles sated, stupored, and distracted.

One thing I get stuck on with the Party- it's very inefficient. They monitor Winston for 7 years, entrap him, and torture him. They get him to love Big Brother, but if they'd just done nothing, he most likely would've bitched and moaned and fucked Julia but basically gone along with what the Party wanted. He certainly never would have been capable of sparking a rebellion. It's a ton of wasted effort, and it points to a very brittle government.

I have thought about this at well. My theory is based on two factors. 1. An authoritarian regime has interest in uneducated people, for they have no knowledge to instigate a rebellion against the ruling class. 2. The foreign enemy is able to overrun and conquer its rivaling regieme, if it has the tecnological advantage. Combine these two and you are left with a loose loose situation, not only for one singular government, but totalitarianism as a whole. Neglect the education of your citizens to much and the enemy will have an advantage over you. Esucate them to much and the newly created middle class will rebell against you. There seems to be a counter argument countering this conclusion - the foreign enemy, given it is real, has no interest in conquering other governments, because it is in need for this very conflict to maintain its own grip on power. However, i dont think this holds up very well. The other powers do not trust each others, they cobstantly shift alliances and backstab each other. Its more like a gentlemens agreement and because they cant be shure the other powers will hold it up, they have an interest to end the constant and growing threat from outsinde. The whole geopolitical system is very much instable and is more likely to blow up with every passing year. It simply can not remain.

There is so little infrastructure maintenance that it is possibable that the infrastructure that the party needs to survive might break down and thus the party falls

one remark about this book I read on tvtropes that's been forever burned into my mind is "trying to classify Oceania as any form of government more specific than 'totalitarian' only reveals what form of government you most hate."

V: "Remember remember, the 5th of November."

My view is that a revolt is started by an outer or inner party defector. Some party member sneakily disguises himself as a prole, and leaves the party to live the rest of his life as a prole sneakily staying out of the party's sight and sparking a rebellion and is just never heard of again by the rest of the party for the rest of his life

The party's fall was hinted at by the fact that it was reducing chocolate rations and that tobacco and alcohol were also being cheapened.