Archive for January, 2009

Proposing, Veiling and Prosecuting Thoughtcrime

January 24th, 2009

[Reposted from ATC] In George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labelling disapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime or, in Newspeak, “crimethink”. In the book, Winston Smith, the main character, writes in his diary: “Thoughtcrime does not entail […]