Alone in the possession of a memory
In the George Orwell book, 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith is having lunch with his colleagues when a telescreen announcement notes that, “there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week.” Smith is aware that only the day before, “it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week.” Smith looks at his colleagues and realises they have no problem with this lie. He wonders to himself, “Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
It’s part of the totalitarian playbook, of course, to call a thing something other than what it is and expect people to immediately comply. Early in Trump Disaster One, Sean Spicer insisted that attendance at Donald Trump’s inauguration was the “largest audience to witness an inauguration PERIOD, both in person and around the globe.” It was, of course, immediately clear to everyone in the room who wasn’t a MAGA cultist that was a lie. Trump’s first inauguration was poorly attended, and much smaller than President Obama’s.
In Trump Disaster Two, Trump’s latest press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted to the reporters assembled in the White House briefing room that “It is a FACT that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America.” It is, of course, a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of Mexico. We are “not alone in the possession of a memory.” Her emphatic, Spicer-like insistence is disturbing, and underscores the horror of the cultistic Trump phenomenon. We know we are in trouble when a regime expects instantaneous compliance with a lie.
I doubt that any of Trump’s parade of press secretaries, five in all, truly believed most of what they were told to say. Trump had no respect for anyone, particularly his followers. Trump’s third press secretary Stephanie Grisham admitted as much. “Trump mocked his supporters in private, calling them ‘basement dwellers,’” she said.
Stephanie Grisham remains one of the parade of former Trump cultists who admits the truth. Will Karoline Leavitt one day be among them? Eventually, possibly. Whether she ever admits it openly or not, I have no doubt that she is not “alone in the possession of a memory.”
In the end, the totalitarian playbook ultimately plays a joke on itself. After enough time has passed and they can no longer be touched by the cold dead finger of the old regime, former cultists often pretend they were never cultists to begin with. Egyptian-Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad puts it best, I think. “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.