George Orwell’s astonishingly prescient novel, 1984, describes a mechanism whereby events — whether historical or current — which are embarrassing to the regime are cast into the “memory hole” or are “memory holed”.
When I first read the novel in my teen years, I immediately identified the memory hole with Pravda, the official news organ of the late Soviet Union Communist party. Years later, during the “Iran-Contra” hearings I was astonished to see live examples of real-time memory holing in our own country. I found myself in a location which was playing the hearings live, so I had a pretty good understanding of what happened in the hearings on that particular day.
However, watching the news that very evening and then reading the news the following morning, I had the distinct feeling that the “reports” of that day’s hearings were either utterly dishonest or the reporter was at another hearing with no relation to the event labeled “Iran-Contra Hearing”. It was breathtaking.
And eye-opening.
I recalled my father telling me about Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter whose mendacious reporting about the glories of the Soviet Union won him a Pulitzer prize which to this day has not been revoked let alone denounced despite the knowledge that his reports were utter nonsense — to put it charitably. I had believed that Duranty was an exception. However, after Iran-Contra, I was not so sure.
Now, of course, such shenanigans are so commonplace we run the risk of shrugging them off without pausing to consider the danger such actions pose to us as a free people.
In January of this year, an explosion and fire shook and damaged the pediatric area of a hospital in the city of Valencia, in the Venezuelan state of Carabobo. El Carabobeño, a local newspaper, carried a snippet on the event, noting that they had been unable to get an “official” explanation as to the cause and the extent of the damages, other than that there were no casualties and all affected patients had been successfully evacuated.
The Caracas Chronicles also carried a short article on the event, noting that it was not the fire brigade or any government agency that had contained and eventually extinguished the fire: “It was not the fire brigade; the catastrophe was averted by the doctors, the nurses, the janitors, and other employees.”
The reporter — whose name is withheld — makes a serious observation:
There are many reasons this barely made the headlines, even within our own state. There weren’t any casualties and with so many crises in our country, it is impossible to keep up with them all. Power outages lasting several hours are still common in Carabobo. But we cannot ignore censorship as a key factor. As soon as we were discussing how to handle work the day after the fire, there was a consensus not to make any public statements. It is not like most health workers support the government; far from it. But they fear the consequences of speaking out. And I include myself in that. I’m only human.
I did a quick online search of this event and found nothing (apart from the sources noted above. In fact, in one AI-generated reply, I was told there was no report of such an event!
In effect, this episode has been memory holed.
Our liberties are precious, including our freedom to speak the truth as we see it. These liberties came under serious attack during the recent “plague” years when even respected doctors and physicians were silenced or mocked into oblivion. Common folks — laymen — who questioned the wisdom of coercive actions taken by local and federal agencies were threatened and even dismissed from their employments. Now even the former persecutors are acknowledging, however indirectly, that the objects of their virulence actually turned out to be right. But no apologies, much less sincere mea culpas have been forthcoming.
We must defend our liberties or we shall lose them.
One way to defend them is to support — however we may be able to — an organization or person who, with integrity has been speaking truth especially in these past 5 or so years. They have been doing a work for us all. And they have paid a price. Such people can be relatively easily identified.
I’ll close this post with one more quote from the above-mentioned reporter:
The same state that normalized Carabobo’s blackouts — very likely causing this fire — is the same state that fuels a climate of fear, making it nearly impossible to even talk about these problems, let alone solve them. I still remember a little girl with a fractured leg. She had a fever and had to be evacuated that night, with nurses administering medicine outside to keep it under control. She kept repeating, “Don’t make me go back to the hospital! I’m scared!” Because of the incompetence of the corrupt elite that rules us — people who will never set foot in a public hospital — Venezuela’s most vulnerable children are forced to endure trauma. And as if that were not enough, the fear of speaking out against the dictatorship has left people just like the hospital that night: in complete darkness.
