1984 - Censorship of the Internet?

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Around 5 decades ago, when I was in school, I read a book titled Nineteen Eighty Four. The book was written around 75 years ago by George Orwell. What is so strange is that I am now living in this book.

The book tells the story of a man living in a world where all communications is controlled by the government. There is no free speech.

The main character in the story (Winston) lives in a country where the government controls all communications. They prohibit free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Speaking out against the regime is a dangerous act that can result in the death of you and your entire family. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen.

Who would guess that within my lifetime, this place actually came to exists in our world.

Last edited by Cornflake on 04 May 2025, 4:05 am, edited 1 time in total.: Tweaked the title

I was communicating with a friend and he began talking about his life experiences. He had studied many of the world religions in great depth and one of them was Tibet. I was discussing their religious practices of which I had very little knowledge about and my friend said the entire region was taken over by China. That happened over 50 years ago.

So I search the Internet and what he said was TRUE.

But I also found something else. Our internet is being partially controlled by China. They have found a way to hack into the internet and destroy communications they do not want anyone to see. They have become Big Brother.

So when I searched using Google for "Tibet Occupation", many of the results were blacklisted.

Chinese Occupation of Tibet by Free Tibet, I immediately received the following notification:
Your browser is out of date. Update your browser to view this site properly.

I got the same message when I opened Ending Tibet's Occupation by International Campaign for Tibet

I got the same message when I opened History of Tibet by Free Tibet

When I searched Tibetans revolt against Chinese occupation by History.com
I was able to read the article for about a minute and then received:
Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).

Prior to the Chinese invasion in 1949, Tibet had been a sovereign state for the better part of 2,000 years, coming under modest foreign influence only during brief periods in the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. China invaded Tibet with 100,000 troops in late 1949 and in 1951 formally annexed the country.


China's Invasion of Tibet | Connecting The Dots


Has anyone else on this site noticed this censorship of information?

Wrong Planet moved this topic to Art, Writing, and Music

What does this topic have to do with what is happening across the world today. Censorship of the Internet?

I request it be moved back to New and Current Events or Random Discussions.
Even Politics, Philosophy, and Religion might be a better fit.

I studied 1984 as part of English curriculum back in the early 1980s (ironically very close to 1984). Orwell's intention isn't overtly advertised through the characters but it boils down to basically power corrupts. I think the evil is in the eye of the beholder. Following WWII many could relate to Napolean and the pigs to Hitler/fascism while in America during the Macarthy era I am sure teachers were prone to compare Napolean to Joseph Stalin.

the reality is "all of the above" and more.

Dissect the common threads
Free speech impinged
Government controls the narrative
Free thought is discouraged
Sex is highly regulated
Individuality is not encouraged
Speaking out against the regime is dangerous

Wow! doesn't that just describe what's happening in America right now? why draw on China? China has never been shy to hide their imperialist/authoritarian credentials. It fits the program neatly.

But what about the US?
Free speech impinged - cancel culture/DOGE waging war
Government controls the narrative - MAGA propaganda
Free thought is discouraged - higher education and critical thinking discouraged - books banned
Sex is highly regulated - Christian right has long waged war on sex, gender
Individuality is not encouraged - identity politics - war on minorities been waged since Americans first set foot on land
Speaking out against the regime is dangerous - FBI head Kash Patel says we are coming for you, pardoned MAGA Jan 6s also given carte blanche to roam the streets again, Anyone says anything and you will be deported for not having immigration papers

that book isn't banned

kissing with all the world leaders isn't exactly oppressed

the cia- took dl away, even india's a-bomb is somehow linked with dl, but not going to look that up
opp paperclip, tibet and the nazi's


omg...... curated curated
my archives
http://www.trimondi.de/EN/expose1.html
enneads the next great work, esalen the dl "speaks" to dead theosophic aryans (not jesus, jesus is a semite)
link
enneads , "phoenician manipulations" plotinus plotting feelings against plato (neo-platinists)
The Enneads - Plotinus - Google Books
A fusion of Platonism, mystic passion and Aristotelian thought, The Enneads offers a highly original synthesis of early philosophical and religious beliefs, which powerfully influenced later...

I moved it to Art, Writing, and Music because it appeared to be about George Orwell's book, "1984". Perhaps if the topic title had been more explanatory than just "1984" this could have been avoided; I've edited it to be more informative.

It was still accessible in News and Current Events as a "Moved" link, and in Art, Writing and Music - but I've moved it to PPR. (and having moved it again it's now available in three forums: twice as a "Moved" link in News and Current Events and Art, Writing and Music, and now here in PPR as the primary link. I'm pleasantly surprised the forum software was able to keep track of it all ).


BTW, it's not possible for China to control the Internet at large as you suggest (although it is from within China).
I searched for "Tibet Occupation" as suggested, using Google, and all of the links on the first page - including some you named - worked as expected. I didn't dig any deeper.

Please post here the links you're having problems with.

I was initially going to argue against this, but when I went to argue each point, I couldn't. I still don't think we're at 1984 or Nazi levels, but you make valid points.

There were 2 sides in the Spanish Civil War. One deeply committed to tradition, religion, and enthusiastic acquiescence to authority (I won't call it Fascism per se). The other side was basically Marxist. That side didn't promote authoritarianism as part if its program. Was it in fact as authoritarian in practice as the other side?

Orwell volunteered to take part in the Marxist ("Republican") side of the War. It has been my personal impression that both Animal Farm and 1984 resulted from his subsequent "realization" that he'd been duped in his youth. You could argue that growing up under the influence of American Cold War propaganda led me to that conclusion.

His opus is probably more interesting nowadays for its literary and historical significance rather than as some sort of cautionary tale about our present.

This book isn't banned today but remember this book was written 75 years ago and at the time it was banned.

George Orwell and Recent Censorship

Censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc., that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

In today’s current political climate, the word “censor” is quite loaded. What can be censored? What should be censored? The answers to these questions have changed drastically, even just in recent years. Banned Books Week celebrates the overturning of heavy censorship for numerous topics. Some of the novels once labeled as “banned” are now considered some of the most renowned works. Maya Angelou‘s autobiographical I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Harper Lee‘s To Kill A Mockingbird; William Golding‘s Lord of the Flies; and, appropriate for today’s social climate, George Orwell‘s 1984 are all works that previously have been contested and banned. My high school’s English curriculum exposed its students to each one of these previously banned works. If these novels contain such graphic or politically unacceptable content, why are they currently being taught in schools? Censorship is still a huge factor, and occasionally, obstacle, in the way we as a society receive information. I recently saw a meme that connected this to Banned Books Week.

The novel 1984 and its themes are more relevant to the internet of China, not the United States or in general the western world, by comparison.

In China, there is a 'great firewall' that effectively blocks a large portion of foreign internet websites from being accessed by Chinese citizens, especially those websites which are deemed to be in conflict with the interests of the Chinese government.

China also prevents the internet from working properly on some smartphones, particularly those that have embedded foreign technology. Google services such as Google Play don't work as they should in China and there are common VPN services that are blocked too, including NordVPN.

The main instant messenger over in China that people use, WeChat (Weixin), does not use end to end encryption technology and is routinely monitored by the Chinese government. If you say the wrong thing on there, you can end up with the local police knocking at your door.

Historical atrocities such as the Tiananmen square massacre are rewritten to absolve the Chinese government of any blame, within the Chinese mainstream media.

Many people in China believe falsehoods such as Covid-19 supposedly having originated in the United States, not China.

You have to link your passport to any sim card you buy for a mobile phone, as a foreigner and photo ID is demanded often at places such as airports (not just once but several times) at different points.

If you think the United States is a surveillance state of any sort, then you haven't experienced China.

That is precisely what I am trying to say. China = 1984

In the United States we are seeing a small fraction of the censorship that is currently happening in China. China has taken the form of Big Brother. They are trying to control what people think or talk.

In that case, I agree with you.

The following article was written in 2006. Since that time, China has expanded its scope of control. This includes some control of the internet in the U.S.

Political censorship is built into all layers of China’s Internet infrastructure. Known widely in the media as the “Great Firewall of China,” this aspect of Chinese official censorship primarily targets the movement of information between the global Internet and the Chinese Internet.

Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is overseen technically by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). Policy about what substantive content is to be censored is largely directed by the State Council Information Office and the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department, with input from other government and public security organs. Physical access to the Internet is provided by nine state-licensed Internet Access Providers (IAP), each of which has at least one connection to a foreign Internet backbone, and it is through these connections that Chinese Internet users access Internet websites hosted outside of China. The individual Chinese Internet user buys Internet access from one of several thousand Internet Service Providers (ISPs), who are in effect retail sellers of Internet access that is in turn purchased wholesale from the nine IAPs.

Internet routers, devices that deliver and direct packets of data back and forth between networks, are an essential part of Internet networks. Most of today’s routers also allow network administrators to censor or block—or, as the industry calls it, “filter”—the data going through them, programming the router to block certain kinds of data from passing in or out of a network. This filtering capability was initially intended so that Internet Service Providers could control viruses, worms, and spam. The same technology, however, can also be easily employed to block political, religious, or any other category of content that the person programming the router seeks to block.

The first layer of Chinese Internet censorship takes place at this router level. According to the 2005 technical analysis of Chinese Internet filtering conducted by the Open Net Initiative, IAP administrators have entered thousands of URLs (Internet website addresses) and keywords into the Internet routers that enable data to flow back and forth between ISPs in China and Internet servers around the world. Forbidden keywords and URLs are also plugged into Internet routers at the ISP level, thus controlling data flows between the user and the IAP.

This router-level censorship, configured into the hardware of the Chinese Internet, is reinforced by software programs deployed at the backbone and ISP level which conduct additional “filtering” of political content. (In many countries such censorship software deployed at the backbone and ISP level is a product called SmartFilter, developed by Secure Computing. China, however, has developed its own home-grown filtering software.) Such filtering programs are used globally by households, companies, and organizations for all kinds of purposes: they enable employers to block employees from surfing pornography or gambling online from the office, and enable schools to prevent young students from accessing age-inappropriate content.

Source: How Censorship Works in China: A Brief Overview

China has been expanding its influence across the world since 2006. When COVID-19 struck the world, China used its influence to block the fact that this pandemic originated in China at Wuhan Institute of Virology. They were conducting lab experiments at the time and it caused the pandemic.

We are living in the George Orwell's world of Nineteen-Eighty-Four.

It wasn't clear to me that the focus of this was squarely on China.

Nowadays, we in American are predisposed to assume that if the topic of 1984 is raised in a discussion, it's intended as part of a commentary on the present-day government here, a government over which China has very little obvious influence.

But you could be right. Strange though that at age 72 I feel no need to concern myself.

I've read 1984 twice me

China cannot control what the Internet at large carries - it can only control what is allowed to pass in or out of China.

Assuming you're not based in China or are using some China-based ISP, the results of your previous search are not blacklisted.