TOTALITARIAN TURNCOAT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 15 October 1941, Page 6

TOTALITARIAN TURNCOAT

“There are several vital differences between totalitarianism and all the jrthodoxies of the past, either in Europe or in the East,” said Mr Jeorge Orwell in a recent address. The most important is that the ortholoxies of the past did not change, or it least did not change rapidly. In nedieval Europe the Church dictated vhat you should believe, but at least t allowed you to retain the same beiefs from birth to death. It did not ell you to believe one thing on Monloy and another on Tuesday. And the me is more or less true of any ortho'X Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Musn to-day. In a sense his thoughts are •cumscribed, but he passes his whole e within the same framework of aught. His emotions are not tarnred with. Now, with totalitariansm, actly the opposite is true. The pecurity of the totalitarian State is that, augh it controls thought, it does not it. It sets up unquestionable dogmas d it alters them from day to day. needs the dogmas, because it needs solute obedience from its subjects, t it cannot avoid the changes, which ? dictated by the needs of power litics. It declares itself infallible, and the same time it attacks the very iccpt of objective truth. To take a ide, obvious example, every German to September, 1939, had to regard ssian Bolshevism with horror and arsion, and since September, 1939, til 22nd June of this year, he had to, lord it with admiration and affec-,