Soviet-era doublethink about sex is compounded by the role of male rape in prison culture, and the stigma attached to its victims: opushenny, "made low" or debased, for life.Yet unease and distaste, more than overt hostility, have governed public attitudes.
In the same way, the English writer George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) incarnated brilliantly the nature of the political choices that are open to 20th-century humanity, and, with terms like "Big Brother" (i.e., the leader of an authoritarian state) and "doublethink" (belief in contradictory ideas simultaneously), modified the political vocabulary.
To be British is to be inherently suspicious of the shrill false patriotism that screeches "traitor" at anyone with different beliefs; that takes refuge in Orwellian doublethink to claim that the way to liberate the poor from poverty is to make them poorer.
Yet this doubletalk and, indeed, doublethink made him an attractive figure — according to one poll, the most popular politician in the empire before it collapsed.
"Big Brother" and "doublethink" and "thought police" are frequently cited as contributions to the language.
(This is not doublethink: it is exactly the way people are).
It's a little uncharitable to call it doublethink.
Try a Web search for countless contemporary uses of Newspeak, the thought police or doublethink — the expressions, that is: a glance at the political pages or op-ed columns provides plenty of examples of what those brilliant coinings describe.
In the 65 years since its publication, "Big Brother is watching you", "newspeak", "doublethink" "prole", "thoughtcrime", "unperson", "reality control" and "the Two Minutes Hate" have become inseparable from the English language.
Alfredson shows how the profession of secrets meshes with sexual shame, heterosexual and homosexual: perhaps because married womanisers and in-the-closet gay men are good at pretence and doublethink, and perhaps because they yearn for a world which makes a virtue of deceit.
"When you mention Nineteen Eighty-Four to the average reader," McClatchy says, "they'll remember Big Brother, they'll remember doublethink and thoughtcrime, but the real emotional point of the novel seems fuzzy to them".
