Saturday, June 25, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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I recently reread Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New Work Revisited,” which he wrote in 1958. In the intervening 27 years since writing “Brave New World,” much had happened in the world that Huxley was able to include. He had seen the rise and fall fascist Germany under Hitler, communist Russia rising to a world power, American lives destroyed by Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts, and George Orwell writing the anti-totalitarian fairy tale “Animal Farm” and novel “1984.”
Unfortunately, much of what Huxley wrote in “Brave New World Revisited” remains true today. Mass communication is used to spread false propaganda, though far more rapidly than the TV and radio of 1958; politicians speak to large crowds repeating falsehoods until the followers accept them as truths; and attendees are encouraged to chant slogans. Self-identity is lost. Never is an independent analysis made of their leader’s truths, and all of his words are accepted as fact, no matter how inane. Thusly, Hitler became the unchallenged authority ruling Germany in 1933. True believers fully supported him. Others knew better but feared him and cowardly bowed to his power.
Our country nearly lost its democracy to insurrectionists encouraged by a corrupt president on Jan. 6, 2021. Will 2024 confirm American democracy, or be a repeat of 1933 Germany ceding power to a dictator?
