Pure fascist propaganda

Yesterday, the United States Department of Defense released an AI-generated image venerating the leadership and strength of Pete Hegseth. Of course, there were problems, including the three fingers on one hand, but it doesn’t really matter how many fingers there are because the Party will tell you how many there are.

This Hegseth image is absurd, but do you know what you are looking at?

What do you see?

First, do you recognize this as pure propaganda?

Second, do you recognize this as pure fascist propaganda?

It is fascist propaganda using classic fascist iconography.

Let me help you understand what it is that these people are. I’m using three excerpts between Winston and his party torturer O’Brien from George Orwell’s “1984” to illustrate:

O’Brien to Winston:

Now I will tell you the answer to my question.

It is this.

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.

What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.

The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.

They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.

We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture.

The object of power is power.

Now do you begin to understand me?

Does O’Brien’s lecture to Winston about the future of children remind you of anyone?

No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer.

But in the future there will be no wives and no friends.

Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen.

The sex instinct will be eradicated.

Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.

There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.

There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.

When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.

All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler.

Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.

The final excerpt is about the demolishing of what is real, and what is true.

Does it sound familiar?

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'

'Four.'

'And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?'

'Four.'

The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four.'

The needle went up to sixty.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!'

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!'

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Five! Five! Five!'

'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?'

'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!'

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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