I finished Animal Farm the other day! After reading something that had the blatant evolution of propaganda on full display, I think Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell is fitting for my next read. Under the cut is just unstructured thoughts about Animal Farm
I had assumed this book would be a little more subtle about it's propaganda, but no. Not at all. It felt like reading 1984 all over again (shocker, the two George Orwell books have similar themes) with the way history was simply edited over time. Truth became subjective and totally controlled by the pigs. I was heavily reminded of The Ministry for Truth and Winston's own job of editing past newspapers, as well as the constant war with a constantly changing enemy. When Napoleon was on good terms with Mr. Pilkington, he had suddenly never had good relations with Mr. Frederick, and vise versa
Obviously, the pigs treatment of the other animals was abysmal, but something that stuck out to me was the treatment of young animals, specifically the puppies that Napoleon raised. He essentially created propaganda-fueled child soldiers, right? I don't think they have any dialogue, so it's unclear if they're even capable of speech, or if they simply exist as living weapons for the pigs, incapable of change or rebellion due to their lack of education. We also saw how they started raising the piglets separately from the other young animals right around the time that they passed legislation granting the pigs even more privilege over the others, indoctrinating the next generation into their system
Continuing that line of thought, seeing the way that the pigs slowly raised their own status was interesting. They would frame what appears to the reader as an obvious privilege, such as eating apples or not doing physical labor, as a sacrifice that the pigs made for the betterment of the farm. Frankly, it was over the moment Napoleon got away with drinking the milk. Having established that the other animals wouldn't push back on small things, they slowly encroached on the other animals' freedom and rights until they were powerless to stop it. It didn't matter what the pigs' logic was, as long as they could convince the other animals of it. They greatly took advantage of the fact that many of the others were less intelligent, and since the school they planned to build appeared only to be for piglets, it seems that they intended to keep it that way. They were creating an underclass of animals too uneducated to rebel, just like the puppies
I don't know how I've gotten this far without mentioning Snowball, but he is one of the most egregious examples of the pigs' propaganda, in my opinion. The animals were told to deny what they saw before their very eyes on multiple occasions in regards to him. His role in their first battle, the award he was given, and everything that he did immediately following the animals' liberation, they were told to believe that it didn't happen. Napoleon turned him into a figurehead of "the enemy." A terrible being who they cast out, yet who lurked among them. Simultaneously a powerful threat and a cowardly fool. It's the same logic seen in fascist regimes. They used his name to sow paranoia among the animals and spur wild confessions to crimes that likely didn't happen, which I believe is meant to parallel the Russian purges, since Orwell was pretty clear in his intent to criticize Russia. It is reminiscent of every far-right power that chooses an enemy group and begins to blame them for all things that are wrong with the country. When the windmill fell due to poor planning and inclement weather, against all logic, it was Snowball's fault. When crops failed due to either natural causes or the fact that the animals couldn't give them the attention they needed, it was Snowball's fault. Everything that could and did go wrong on Animal Farm somehow traced back to Snowball. Snowball's expulsion also spelled the end of their somewhat democratic society. It represented the suppression of novel, conflicting, or controversial ideas by sending the message: "This is what happens when you disagree." By disagreeing with Napoleon, any animal may become the enemy
I could keep going, probably for quite a bit longer, as I haven't even touched on my sympathies for Boxer, Clover, and Benjamin, nor have I brought up most of what happened in the end of the novel, but this is already very very long, so I'll end it in the same horrific manner that the book ends:
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
