In Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’, the mysterious terrorists never appeared. Apart from a rogue plumber who fixed heating sytems with malice aforethought, there were only explosions to signal the presence of the ephemeral and probably spectral terrorists. Good film, but you might need to watch it more than once to work it out. There were no terrorists, it was just an excuse to keep everyone scared.
In Orwell’s 1984, dismissed by such worthy minds as Paul Flynn, Tom Harris and a few others not worth mentioning, people were encouraged to report their neighbours for anything out of the ordinary that might be a sign of thought crime. They might develop into terrorists under the control of the mythical Goldstein and must be stopped at once. These proto-criminals disappeared into the system for re-education. There was no Goldstein, there was no Brotherhood, it was just an excuse to keep everyone scared.
According to the Righteous who tell us it’s all tickety-boo and we’re all paranoid and delusional, it could never happen here.
I hope they never take a look at my lab waste. They have a photo of it on the police website. The things I grow…
Worse, I tick every box on this list. Look on my works, ye mortals and despair, for I am Ozytrainspotter, the scourge of all around me.
…or so it seems.
Orwell had it wrong. It’s far worse than he envisaged.