Emmanuel Goldstein should remain alive till the end of the story. He is the principal enemy of the state in George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984. No one has seen the enemy, but the fear of it kept the people united, and hate towards the enemy made them ready to have a fatal fight.
Fear and hate are crucial for radicalizing the political spectrum; this brings people of the same cult closer to each other and prepares them to fight against the other cult. The fear drives people’s cohesion in the cult based on shared beliefs. The hate, on the other hand, makes them ready to fight against the imagined enemy to protect or gain their assumed rights.
The plot of hate and fear go hand in hand in favor of the ruling bourgeoisie to govern the masses or, more precisely, to rule them brutally. Throughout history, the leaders have always built their reputation as protagonists, and the power in that role gets cumulative with the increase in hate and fear towards the antagonist -the enemy from other cults. Every real-life political, social, or religious cult ensures to keep the dispute alive and gives enough room for the growth of the antagonist in the story. The antagonist without whom the world would be a better place to live, but that evil in the plot is equally essential for the continuation and survival of the protagonist’s regime. Both must flourish and expand simultaneously to keep the story going.
For the continuation of governance and to counter the hate and fear, the people are not only needed with their will to fight but also the ammunition to fight. This triggers a domino effect and kicks in the recursive loops of the circular economy. More hate and fear means more cavalry, more infantry, more garrison, more artillery, and more and more firepower. The money that could have been used for peace and love by having more schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and community services was consumed to protect and destroy the enemy. The rule of games would change drastically if one could remove only two factors from the pride of the cult — hate for others and fear of others. That particular ‘other’ is primarily an imaginary and self-created cult to keep the circular economy robust and the production line of firearms occupied. If the protagonist is not aggressive, then the sheer accumulation of ammunition is justifiable in the name of self-deterrence. The fear justifies keeping the nukes in place and making them ready with ‘the little red button’ — just in case of need.
By keeping the production line busy with more and more ammunition for hate, the protagonist in the story keeps the masses satisfied. As long as factories are working and people bring back one square meal every day at their food tables — almost little or no attention is paid to whether the factory in which they work is used to destroy or construct humanity. As long as their essentials from Maslow’s pyramid are met, most people become content and give up the desire to move upward. This helps both the protagonist and antagonist side
In a typical fiction novel, and just like in real-world declassified archives, leaders prepare their followers to fight against the antagonists of other cults by fusing fear in every speech. The countless and continuous intrusion of fear in the followers’ minds makes them ready to fight against the followers of the antagonist but not with the antagonist. The hate brings people of the same cult united to fight and makes them prepared to slit the throat of the followers of the antagonist, but the main evil — the antagonist, should remain alive till the end of the story.
The thrills end once the evil dies with the hand of the hero, and that’s the epilogue of any story that no one likes to see mid-way. To stretch the story as lengthiest as possible, the evil should remain alive, and hence, their evil followers should be. The fight should happen among the followers of the protagonist and antagonist with little and absolutely no harm to their leaders, and both shall remain untouched. The story continues generation after generation, century after century, and dynasty after dynasty. The protagonist should not only harness the governess of their own cult but also ensure that the antagonists from other cults remain alive throughout the story. Many efforts are consumed to keep the enemy alive at the expense of people from both sides of the cult -and that’s the actual plot of the story
The adversary among the people of a different cult shall remain alive until the leaders of that group want it to be. The adversary supersedes tolerance, and hate overrides love. On the contrary — the antagonist of other cults is the protagonist of their own cult. No one is on the righteous path in the game of hate and fear.
The followers of both cults are perceived differently based on the amount of hate and fear infused in them by their leaders. The infusion of hatred and fear is in the interest of everyone among the bourgeoisie class — the objective is simply that that evil should remain alive to keep hate alive; you need the effort to do this and fuel it with more toxic hatred every day. Fueling the hate with more toxicity is the single most crucial attribute that makes hate drastically different from love, for which you don’t need to make any effort.
The love among the people, regardless of their following, remains alive. People get united over festivities, feasts, and seasons. You only need the absence of hate to keep people connected regardless of any imagined boundaries. You only need hate when you create boundaries and build an armory to shed the blood of the people on the other side of the supposed edge. This makes hate very different from love because, for love, you don’t need any measures to control it; it will remain alive because it is eternal. Only hate is transient; that’s evident from the post-climax in the story plot — the moment the antagonist is terminated, the fiction comes to an end. In the game of power, neither the protagonist nor the antagonist wants the fiction to come to an end.
Asif Durrani
02 Oct 2022
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asifdurrani
Also published at Medium
Asif Durrani 