The idea of “doublethink” emerges as an important consequence of the Party’s massive campaign of large-scale psychological and linguistic manipulation. Simply put, doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time. As the Party’s mind-control techniques break down an individual’s capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing information that runs counter to what they are being told.

For example, people are able to accept the Party ministries’ names, though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the center of the Party’s operations of torture and punishment.

Propaganda and surveillance are pervasive in contemporary society. Orwell takes both propaganda and surveillance to extreme limits: total surveillance and total propaganda. He brings important aspects of each into sharp relief: in the novel they are not just accidentally related but essentially linked. They play complementary roles in an absurd project of total social control directed not just at behaviour but also thought.