My Reading

Decryption of Cognitive Manipulation by Oceania’s Ministry of Truth in 1984
My most admired writer is Orwell, the author of 1984. His novel profoundly depicts how a future totalitarian state manipulates people’s cognition through the Ministry of Truth. Now, I will reveal this to you based on the manipulation methods used by authoritarian regimes in the real world. You can read this and see whether you are living in such a country.
How does the Ministry of Truth brainwash Oceania through propaganda narratives? The Ministry of Truth’s system has never relied on a single sentence to brainwash people. It is an entire system—from institutions to technology, from media to social environment, from language to emotional control—everything is linked together. You cannot see it as someone deceiving someone else, but as a narrative machine that, after decades, has already become self-operating. Its purpose is simple: to ensure that people only see the narrative of national victory, never the reality of national failure, and to ensure that people always believe the nation is never wrong and that it is always the individual who is not working hard enough.
How does this machine operate? It can be understood in several layers. First, it analyzes your sources of information, then tells you that only what we say is correct. In Oceania, X, YouTube, and foreign dissident media are blocked. The government's control of dissenting information is not accidental but an institutional design required by authoritarian regimes. From the moment you begin to engage with the world, Oceania tells you: your understanding of the world comes from the Ministry of Truth; your perception of international politics comes from the Ministry’s “reference news”; your understanding of economics comes from the Truth Newspaper; your judgment of social events comes from the Ministry’s curated trending topics. Any voice inconsistent with the official one is labeled as rumor or foreign hostile force. Without alternative sources of information, you can only accept the worldview designed for you. Thus, it is not that Oceania’s people cannot understand the world, but that they never have the opportunity to read another version of the world.
Second, the Ministry of Truth never talks about facts; it talks only about positions and enemies. Its propaganda does not tell you what happened, but tells you how you should think. When you turn on the Truth News Channel, its 365-day logic is always: Herenland is declining, Prettyland is collapsing internally, Sunland is sinking, Chickenland is anxious, Duckland is chaotic, Woof-woof-land is struggling—only Oceania prospers. If you ask why Oceania is “prosperous,” it gives you no data, no logic—only: “Because we are great, correct, and glorious.” It is not giving you information; it is giving you posture.
Going deeper: propaganda does not lie outright; it selectively tells the truth. Oceania’s brainwashing method is not pure fabrication but giving you part of the truth so you draw incorrect conclusions. For example: shootings in Eagle Country explode in the news; slums in Heaven Country explode; air-combat crises in Stick Country explode. But major technological breakthroughs in Prettyland are not reported; economic growth in Central Country is not reported; Sunland aggressively recruiting global talent is not reported; Prettyland remaining a top center of innovation is not reported. As a result, the Prettyland you see becomes dangerous, chaotic, and collapsing—while in reality it has many problems but remains one of the most dynamic nations in the world.
The Ministry of Truth’s propaganda enlarges flaws, hides strengths, and twists your perception. It also always attributes national failures to external enemies. Real estate collapse, unemployment, demographic decline, shrinking demand, bankrupt companies, pathological inflation and deflation—these problems’ true causes are structural errors, a rigid bureaucracy, and Oceania’s own economic model. But the Ministry will tell you failure is caused by Sunland hurting us, the economy is bad because enemies suppress us, technology lags because hostile countries “strangle our neck,” small hardworking businesses die because of “disorderly capital expansion,” and youth lose hope because they “fear hardship.” The conclusion is always: the nation is never wrong—others are.
Even deeper: the Ministry relies on emotion, not logic. It favors emotions like humiliation, hatred, siege mentality, being oppressed, brave resistance, hardship, and defending the motherland. Why? Because emotion is easier to control than logic. When people’s minds are filled with “we are bullied,” they automatically stop thinking. The Ministry does not need you to understand the world—only to take sides.
The Ministry also gives you the illusion that you stand together with the state. As long as someone believes “national strength = my pride,” they will ignore their own reality: low wages, unaffordable housing, expensive healthcare, divided education, unstable pensions, insecure jobs. The Ministry’s real purpose is not to help you understand the nation but to bind your personal fate to the state’s narrative, making you ignore your own suffering. That is why so many people accept “the country strong, myself weak”—because propaganda makes them feel national glory equals personal dignity.
The highest level of the Ministry’s work is making you believe you are thinking independently. Its strongest brainwashing is not making you believe propaganda, but making you think it is your own opinion. For example, “Prettyland is declining” comes from propaganda; “Sunland is finished” comes from propaganda; “the West is collapsing” comes from propaganda; “Oceania is rising” comes from propaganda—yet people say in chatrooms: “These are my own observations.” This is the ultimate success: when implanted thoughts become self-generated thoughts.
The Ministry’s final goal is to make you too afraid to question reality. All brainwashing leads to one conclusion: you must not question the state. Why? Because the Ministry tells you: questioning equals unpatriotic; questioning equals wanting chaos; questioning equals giving knives to foreign forces; questioning equals betraying the nation; questioning equals siding with enemies. Once you're too afraid to speak, too afraid to think, too afraid to express dissatisfaction, the Ministry has succeeded. Brainwashing is not about changing your opinions; it is about making you incapable of having opinions.
The ultimate truth: Oceania’s propaganda system is not designed to make you patriotic, but to make you too afraid not to be patriotic; not to help you understand the world, but to prevent you from understanding the world; not to make you stronger, but to make it easier for the state to control you. The weaker the country, the stronger the propaganda; the more despair in society, the more intense the propaganda; the uglier the reality, the fiercer the narrative. Brainwashing exists only to manipulate emotion.
Based on this, we then ask three questions. What is the Ministry of Truth’s operating mechanism?
The Ministry operates through propaganda and suppression. It does not spread truth; it edits reality. Its essence is not journalism, but selection, deletion, alteration, and production of reality. You see only the fragment of the world it wants you to see. How does it do this? Four key mechanisms:
First, news is not reporting but uniform narrative. Many believe news works by reporting events. In Oceania, events are defined by the Ministry first. Media must follow this definition. Attitudes are set first; information follows. All reporting must ask: does this benefit the leader’s image? If not, do not report; if yes, amplify.
Second, the Ministry deletes; authoritarian violence silences. These two sides form a complete information-control chain. Everything you can see, discuss, or believe is within the controlled ecosystem.
Third, the Ministry is not a department but an ideological supply chain: newspapers, radio, TV, political education, academic discourse, film censorship, entertainment censorship, social-media trending topics, police monitoring, state-security arresting “rhythm makers.” Everything you see is filtered. Oceania not only controls media but controls your attention.
Fourth, the goal is not brainwashing but shaping the emotional structure of citizens: who you should fear, who you should hate, who you should see as enemy or friend, what you should consider normal, honorable, dangerous, unnecessary. The aim is not to make you patriotic but to make you incapable of questioning.
The Ministry does not create brainwashed people; it creates a worldview you cannot escape. It prevents you from seeing facts, fearing narratives, normalizing injustice, accepting oppression, fearing freedom, worshiping power, doubting yourself, and avoiding looking outward. The more educated people are, the easier they see through it.
We summarized the 21 most commonly used cognitive traps of the Ministry:
The first trap is the map trap, which frames the problem within boundaries they can control.
Common statements include: “Heaven Country also has problems.” “Don’t look at the negative; we are much better than Duck Country.”
This shifts the discussion from “whether we have problems” to “who is worse.”
Core logic: change the comparison target, change the conclusion.
The second is the false binary trap, forcing you to choose between two pre-designed options.
Do you support Chicken Country or Duck Country?
Do you love the country or betray it?
If you criticize the government, do you want national chaos?
It reduces complex issues into a rigid either-or trap.
The third is intentional concept confusion: the state equals the government, equals the party, equals the people.
If you criticize a policy, they say you criticize the nation;
If you criticize the government, they say you oppose the people.
This is the trap Oceanians fall into most easily.
The fourth is shifting the focus:
When discussing the economy, they shift to diplomacy;
When discussing livelihood, they shift to technology.
You mention youth unemployment, they immediately say, “Do you know how many nuclear weapons we have?”
They drag the discussion into areas where they have advantage.
The fifth is allowing discussion only on superficial issues,
a safe-release mechanism.
The sixth is establishing zones of silence, where new concepts cannot appear.
People cannot imagine alternatives.
For example: discussions of separation of powers disappear, judicial independence disappears, freedom of speech disappears.
Without new concepts, there is no demand for change.
The sixth (again, in the original text) refers to the trap of emotional manipulation,
aiming to push you into emotional, not rational, thinking.
The seventh is the shaming trap:
Making you afraid to criticize because you fear labels:
“Do you hate your country?”
“Do you worship Herenland?”
“Are you a traitor?”
Shaming becomes psychological censorship.
The eighth is the shame-frame:
Using national humiliation to trigger instinctive defense against external criticism.
“We are being humiliated,” “Sunland exploits us and looks down on us.”
This is one of the Ministry’s strongest emotional weapons.
The ninth is manufacturing threat perception:
Making you feel the country is always under attack.
Hostile forces are everywhere; hostile forces never give up.
The goal is to create dependency and fear.
The tenth is sentimental storytelling:
Using touching stories to numb people to structural problems.
A veteran crying when the leader greets him;
A poor child getting into an Ivy League school;
A laborer being helped by a community.
Emotion fills the mind; structural issues are ignored.
The eleventh is anger-blinding:
Redirecting dissatisfaction with life onto foreign nations.
Unhappy with housing prices? Curse Herenland.
Unhappy with low wages? Curse Chicken Country.
Unhappy with the system? Curse Duck Country.
Anger redirection is a core skill of the Ministry.
The twelfth is the victim narrative:
Oceanians always cast themselves as the weak.
Once in the victim role, people ignore responsibility, forgive their own failures, and reinforce nationalist emotions.
As long as the nation acts like a bullied child, people instinctively support it.
The thirteenth is guilt-binding:
Making criticism of the government equal to harming family harmony.
“The leader is wise, policies are good; how can you criticize after benefiting?”
Power relations are disguised as family relations.
The fourteenth is information dilution:
Drowning truth in massive useless information.
A negative news story appears, then immediately floods of entertainment gossip, “positive energy,” motivational nonsense, and distraction topics appear.
They do not delete the truth; they bury it.
The fifteenth is the bubble narrative:
Using glorious history and grand future visions to numb the population.
The sixteenth is blocking original sources:
Preventing people from checking for themselves.
No raw data; only fragments; no verification allowed.
People must accept processed information.
The seventeenth is the information cutoff:
People have no reliable comparison group.
You don’t know real wages in Chicken Country, real safety in Duck Country, real politics in Woof-woof Land, or real culture in Sunland.
You only know the filtered versions.
Without comparison, you cannot judge truth.
The eighteenth is national personification:
Making the nation seem like a being with emotions and dignity.
“The country is angry,” “The country is humiliated.”
The nation becomes a giant family member.
The nineteenth is collective identity binding:
Making people believe their value comes from the nation.
“We are hundreds of millions; we are power.”
“You are an Oceanian; you must fight for the nation.”
The individual dissolves into the collective.
The twentieth is loyalty binding:
Making love for the nation a moral duty.
The stronger this emotion, the less people dare criticize.
Loyalty becomes moral coercion.
The twenty-first is alternative reality:
When real life offers no pride—low income, high housing costs, no freedom—
the propaganda offers a fantasy of a great Oceania and a collapsing world.
In reality you are powerless; in narrative you are magnificent.
If these 21 traps cannot blind your cognition, there is still the final one:
making awakened and resistant individuals physically disappear.
Finally, summarize these 22 points into one sentence:
The Ministry of Truth does not aim to make you believe something,
but to make you incapable of thinking about other possibilities.
Its purpose is not only to restrict your freedom,
but to reshape your cognition, control your behavior,
and turn you into fuel for the state machine,
a slave for the great leader.
Everything above, regarding the cognitive manipulation revealed by the Ministry of Truth as reflected in the film 1984, comes from associations inspired by the movie and from others’ sharing.
If, after reading, you find similarities with the cognitive control of regimes around you, it is purely a partial coincidence and does not represent a comprehensive understanding of the truth.