George ORwell
DEDICATION: Episode EF7 is dedicated to George Orwell. This episode builds off of the investigation started in Episode EF5 of what is the truth. Here, however, we add in the complex reality that important facts and truths are both manipulated by the organizations which dominate our lives — like governments, corporations and other institutions. Few have explored this particular art of mental manipulation better than George Orwell in books like1984 and Animal Farm.
Orwell worked in a literal propaganda department of the BBC during WWII called the Ministry of Information. His job was to send slanted views about the war to India and, in a hilarious twist of fate, almost no one he was targeting (college-age adults) got the fake messaging because they didn’t have radios! Oops. But thankfully that job existed for Orwell because it led him to create the four Ministries (Love, Peace, Plenty and Truth) in the fictitious dystopia of 1984.
HOW George Orwell INSPIRES EF7
Episode EF7 goes a step deeper into the dark arts beneath the end products of things like propaganda. That is to say, the unsavory but powerful characters of EF7 are learning how to wield ancient techniques of rhetoric to weaponize their words and manipulate the masses via political elections. If Orwell had lived to see the power of rhetoric and propaganda leveraged up by the laser-targeting of fake social media marketing — leading, for example, to the election of Trump in 2016 — he’d probably have another book to write, possibly called 2061
Politics is a game played with gloves off no matter in what corner you prefer to be. Episode EF7 tries to provide a backstage insight into the training for the fight. Orwell wrote in his diaries after his BBC work that “All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.” Have a listen to Episode EF7 if you’d
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