http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Thoughtcrime



He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed — would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." Winston, Nineteen Eighty Four , Part 1, Chapter 1 "He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed — would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

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How the Appeal to Force and the Ad Hominem are codified into law.

Whenever a dystopian government tries to control the speech and actions of its citizens, it'll label what it considers dissent as Thoughtcrime, and take whatever steps needed to quell Thoughtcrime, by every means possible. The clever trick here, since in most stories the government has no access to these thoughts, is that it trains the oppressed to oppress themselves via internalizing what is seen as disapproved thought.

If a reason is ever given at all, apart from the obvious, Thoughtcrime can be explained as "intrusive thoughts," and their repression leads to "a happier society".

It is nearly impossible to remove Thoughtcrime policies once enacted. The definition tends to expand until whistleblowing is illegal—after all, only a communist/fascist/atheist/religious fanatic etc. would be deceptive enough to claim that our glorious and beneficent regime could possibly make errors, suffer from wishful thinking, or be corrupt.

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Of course, by inherent nature, trying to not think what they forbid you to think about will always fail - and expect one or two citizens to be trapped by this thought process and then get captured by the Secret Police (or worse) for their "trouble". Taken to extremes, this may lead to everyone getting punished.

Naturally, when no one is allowed to guard the guards, the guards abuse their power left, right and center. Add to that the fact that no person or organization on this earth is capable of getting everything right, and even the best-intentioned crimethink laws end up convincing people that their purpose is to keep the masses from knowing too much.

Overlaps with Culture Police. Compare with The Heretic, for a religious equivalent. Related to The Evils of Free Will. In more nuanced stories, some of these guys sincerely believe they're using Brainwashing for the Greater Good. For others, it's just business as usual. As a means of propaganda, if the methods combating Thoughtcrime are known to the public, the government (or their corporate benefactors) might attempt to paint it in a lighter vein by calling them Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Political Correctness Gone Mad often occurs when a free, democratic society is the one that tries to codify such rules.

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Examples:

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Comic Books

2000 AD: Anderson: Psi-Division: Played for dark laughs when Anderson is driving her Lawmaster before suddenly stopping to beat up several confused perps who only looked in her direction. She tells control to pick them up for "insulting a Judge and resisting arrest". Nemesis the Warlock: Under Torquemada's rule over Termight, it is illegal to even think of opposing him, and his Terminators scan the planet day and night to look for thought offenders. Purity's father was sent to the vaporization vats for committing thoughtcrime in his sleep.

The Punisher 2099: When Dr. Doom puts the Punisher in charge of the police force, he starts prosecuting people for having criminal impulses.

After he acquires Brainiac technology in the bad ending of Injustice 2, Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe reveals that Superman has expanded his totalitarian activities by arresting and jailing those who have criminal thoughts.

Low: In the Underwater City Voldin, optimism is a capital crime.

Fan Works

Film

THX 1138, which is Nineteen Eighty Four-esque.

Equilibrium takes this to an even more disturbing conclusion; "Sense Offense" or emotion crime. Their leader extolls "The revolutionary concept of the hate crime." Dubbing the "hate" the important part of the "crime" essentially makes this entire trope Not So Crazy Anymore.

Fortress (1992): The "unauthorized thought processes", i.e. erotic fantasies. Brennick receives an electronic shock from Zed-10 after it reads his mind during REM sleep.

Minority Report: Most of the "crimes" which the Precrime Division stops seem to be this. Suspects are caught in the attempt to commit a murder at times, but many don't even get that far. In the latter case, an ordinary charge of attempted murder could be made. For most though, they're only "crime" is just wanting to commit a murder, but not actually doing so. They're all detained without trial regardless. Becomes outright dystopian as the convicts, rather than being regularly imprisoned or executed, are tortured with footage of the precognition every waking moment, all to ensure they keep the criminal thoughts that got them convicted in the first place.

Literature

Christian Nation: The US Constitution is supplanted by the Fifty Blessings, religiously-inspired laws, many of which are vague or unenforceable, dealing with such vagaries as coveting. The laws against 'sexual deviancy' are all too clear, and there comes a presumption that any single person above a certain age must be gay.

Trope Codifier comes from Nineteen Eighty Four, by George Orwell. To hammer it home, the main character of the novel, Winston Smith once wrote in his diary, "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death."

In the short story "Harrison Bergeron", being smarter than another person is outlawed, and smart people must wear devices to disrupt their thoughts lest they take advantage of others with their intelligence (naturally, the Handicapper General is very intelligent, and free of this impediment to do her duties).

Victoria sees the titular state forbid the use of any technology that wasn't in general use by the late 1930s, including television, computers, and cars capable of making more than purely local trips. The good people of Victoria attempt to write this into law, to the horror of the heroes who imagine the police state needed to enforce it. Instead, they settle on making it a cultural more, much harder to change, and encouraging people to ostracize, ridicule and abuse their technology-using neighbors.

Live Action TV

A mundane variant comes from the Doctor Who episode "The Happiness Patrol", where enforced cheerfulness was the law on the planet Terra Alpha.

Star Trek: Voyager had an episode where they came across a people who were extremely telepathic, so sensitive that any extreme emotions would incite them to act out on those feelings; having violent thoughts was a crime in and of itself. Torres was put on trial for having a brief violent thought when someone bumped into her, and Tuvok's investigation into the planet's culture found a sort of "violent thoughts" Black Market. Of course it examined the issue that when something was so taboo, it meant their own people were unable to handle it when confronted with the situation.

In Babylon 5 the Nightwatch organization was set up to report not just actions, but potentially seditious attitudes (as could be "inferred" from casual remarks and such) among Earth Alliance personnel and citizens. As Earth Alliance slid further into despotism , it is mentioned that PsiCorps was routinely used by the Clark dictatorship to telepathically scan for supposedly seditious (anti-regime) thoughts.

Touched on in the aptly named Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Thought Criminal". The criminal-of-the-week is a man who has constructed a sex torture dungeon across the street from a playground, fantasizes about using it, and has all the signs of becoming a rapist and murderer of children. However, he hasn't actually done anything yet. The episode then revolves around arresting a man for something he might act on (and he almost certainly will), or letting him walk and taking the chance of future victims. The jury finds him not guilty, possibly with this trope in mind .

. Reaper follows the example of Christianity under Religion in showing one of the escapees from Hell being someone whose only sin was having sinful thoughts. The main character outright questions the idea that someone can be condemned to eternal torment for merely thinking sinfully but never acting on it.

Music

From the Prince song "Electric Chair": If a man is considered guilty For what goes on in his mind Then give me the electric chair For all my future crimes-Oh!

Newspaper Comics

The Boondocks: At one point, Robert punishes his grandson, Riley, not for thinking about doing something nefarious, but for looking like he was thinking it. Huey calls him out for this Disproportionate Retribution, but it's worth noting that actually Riley was thinking of causing chaos at the time. Robert just had no real proof.

Religion

Some of the most notable examples of thoughtcrime are the concepts of sin and heresy in some religions. Couple it with guilt and fear of eternal punishment for even thinking about it and an omniscient Judge who knows and sees all and you have a very effective method for auto-enforcement of policies.

A few of the classic Seven Deadly Sins, like Envy and Lust, seem to have more to do with thoughts or feelings than actions.

Some scriptures of The Bible point out that thinking of a sin is just as bad as doing it in God's eyes. For example, a literal reading of the commandment "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" would indicate that the proscription is not merely against the act of adultery, but the very thought or feeling of envy. Indeed, the Book of Matthew in The Four Gospels states that a man who lusts after a woman "hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Stand Up Comedy

Played for laughs in Paula Poundstone's standup routine. I live in San Francisco where the parking is impossible. I saw a sign on a guy's garage that said "Don't even think about parking here". So you know what I did? I sat right there and I thought about it. I yelled up at his window "Hey buddy, I'm thinking about it. Go ahead, call the cops. I'll just tell them I was thinking about something else."

Tabletop RPG

Paranoia. Under The Computer's rule every citizen is required to be happy. Anyone who isn't happy is a traitor and can be punished, such as by being required to take drugs that make you happy.

Mindjammer: The Core Worlds of the Commonality ban memes like religion, democracy, capitalism note though they allow Corporacies to run ramp shod over the Periphery

Webcomics

Sluggy Freelance's 4U City enforced mandatory happiness with involuntary drugging. And mandatory efficiency with mandatory drugging. And so on. The alternative was to be thrown down a judgement chute.

Western Animation

In a merge of Orwellian Editor, Avatar: The Last Airbender has the higher-ups of Ba Sing Se brainwashing everyone who dares to mention that there's a century-long war going on in the whole world outside the walls. The resident Lovable Rogue had this inflicted upon him, which led to his death .

. In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko is desperately looking for a place to park his car. He finds an empty spot with a sign that says "Don't even think about parking here." He does think about it for a second, but a policeman sees him and gives him a ticket for it.

Real Life