One often hears reference to the phrase “War is Peace” from George Orwell’s 1984. VJM Publishing mentions it all the time. In fact, we mention it so much, that I often cringe when making essay compilations, because it comes up so often. I say “surely this is a cliche now?” In truth, it’s not a cliche because 1984 is as relevant as The Iliad. Everyone knows the basics of it by now because they must.
In 1984, Big Brother has three mottos. The first of these is “War is Peace”. The application of these mottos is how order and control is maintained (this ordering and controlling is discussed at length in the book-within-a-book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which is in my opinion the most important 20 or so pages ever written in English).
It’s understood by most that this phrase refers to external war. If an authoritarian government provokes a state of war with a neighbour, the people’s anger will be deflected from their government to that neighbour. Thus authoritarian rulers start wars to deflect blame for how poorly run their countries are.
Many of us were taught about Saddam Hussein as a classic example of this phenomenon. Hussein, the television told us, attacked Kuwait to deflect the dissatisfaction of those he ruled over onto an external enemy. This is actually a pattern common to Middle Eastern rulers in recent times, and also in various other times and places throughout history.
But not enough people understand that this phrase also refers to internal war.
If the ruling class can set the masses against each other, they can secure their own position at the top of the pyramid. They do this, in practice, by fomenting discord along every existing social fracture line, and by creating new ones. The middle class is set against the working class by telling the former that the latter are lazy, and telling the latter that the former are greedy. Whites are set against browns in the same manner. Men are set against women by telling the latter that the former are trying to control them, and by telling the former that the latter are trying to vote away all their money.
In this manner, everyone is encouraged to have someone to hate who isn’t the ruling class. All discontent is directed horizontally at someone else on the same level. This leaves the ruling class safe and secure above it all.
Without this concept, the modern world can’t be explained.
It’s simply impossible to explain why Western ruling classes imported so many Muslims and Africans without reference to War is Peace. Everyone honest and intelligent knew that these Muslims and Africans would attack and harm the people in the neighbourhoods they were dumped in. But it must be understood this was precisely the point. The point was to subject working-class families to countless violent and sexual crimes. The point was to encourage those working-class people to hate the newcomers. In doing so, the working class would forget their grievances against the ruling class. And thus the position of the ruling class was secured.
It’s also impossible to explain the War on Drugs without such a reference. Why would the political establishment destroy so many of the finest minds of their younger generations by saddling them with criminal convictions, when all they wanted to do was explore consciousness and spirituality? War is Peace explains: the ruling class wanted the pro-drug and anti-drug segments of the population to be at each other’s throats. So it must either err on the side of excess restriction (War on Drugs), or err on the side of excess liberty (as with alcohol): it cannot take a reasonable middle ground. In either case, rationality must be eschewed, because that would lead to peace, which, viewed from the perspective of the ruling class, is war.
It’s also impossible to explain why the mainstream media pushes so much cortisol-raising fear porn unless this concept is understood. Why does the mainstream media constantly stir discord and misunderstanding? Why does it platform the worst examples of almost every demographic, and ignore the best? Because the owners of it want discord and misunderstanding. Not because it “drives clicks” – they don’t need money. They want control. They want to be the boot stamping on the face of the masses, forever. To achieve this, they need to foment war among those masses.
Everyone with any real chance of becoming part of the ruling class understands this principle, and habitually applies it by setting normal people against each other. Demonstrating an ability to do this is how people audition for a place in the ruling class.
Essentially, the logic behind “War is Peace” can be explained as: war for my enemies is peace for me. This is relevant because the Western ruling class is using this exact logic to destroy the Western middle and working classes. In most cases where there is clear evidence of social dysfunction or decay, the War is Peace principle is being applied somewhere.
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