1984 INGSOC Thoughtcrime Print

Crimestop! Unthink Ungood Thoughtcrimes!

In the World of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Airstrip One is brutally lorded over by the one-party government of Big Brother and INGSOC. All forms of dissent, even down to peoples' facial expressions or questioning thoughts were a crime.

In the novel, crimestop is a term used that means to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts, i.e., thoughts that interfere with the ideology of the INGSOC Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime.

In the novel, we hear about crimestop through the eyes of protagonist Winston Smith:

"The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions -- 'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' -- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them."

As or more relevant today than ever before, Orwell's prose uncovers beautiful insights into how our modern society pounds out the cognitive dissonance of the otherwise rational mind. The deliberate lies that our governments and hierarchical social organizations perpetrate to hold and expand power defy logic, ethics, and reality, yet the seeming majority cling to them regardless.