"For The Love Of Big Brother"

I've been playing with 1984-esque regimes for some time now, as we all know. I first tried it out in The-Story-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and while I had fun, I couldn't take it to its logical conclusion. It's now mostly back/side story there. Still, it was fun recreating it from scratch.

I played with it with alternate history scenarios as well, and there's a whole thread dedicated to that.

In the past week, however, I've decided to try my hand at creating 1984 with the twist that it's set in modern times. I mean, yeah, 1984 was only 32 years ago, but I mean in the near future.

It's a variant of the Oceania in One Country theme, and it does require a few suspensions of disbelief.

The Second American Revolution occurs in 2020 after the combined effects of a global economic depression, a costly and Vietnam-esque war in the now collapsed Saudi Arabia, and the most beautifully fake election in American history. There are three major factions...

The New Silver Legion. Based upon the old Silver Legion from the 1930s, the New Silver Legion is made up of disillusioned ex-Trump supporters, radical Tea Partiers, and ultra-libertarian elements of the alternative-right. Donald Trump's 2016 campaign had galvanized the right wing of American society, but his presidency disappointed most as he became "Clinton-lite" and seemingly abandoned his previously politically incorrect and nationalist stances. Their members are known as the "Silver Shirts". American Worker's Party. Though it sounds socialist, it is actually a far-right populist movement that is trying to attract leftists via solidarity against the government. Curiously, though its initials should be "AWP", several of its inner elite use the initials "NSAWP" on official documents. The AWP broke from the Silver Shirts due to their collaboration with the next group on the list, as well as their overt authoritarianism (the Silver Shirts doggedly claimed themselves to be libertarians). Democratic Socialists of America. Once a relatively peaceful organization, the DSA became radicalized by both the loss of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and the rise of ultranationalism in 2018. Though they're called the 'Democratic Socialists of America', many of its members support a Marxist-Leninist social order. It is because of this that the AWP's alliance with them led to the Silver Shirts declaring them both to be degenerate groups.

The revolution devolves into a civil war as several US states secede from the union. It threatens to become a nuclear civil war at one point, but cooler heads prevail. China and Russia are eager to capitalize on the chaos, and global markets remain in turmoil since what was once the #1 economy has turned on itself. President Trump cancels the 2020 election and declares martial law. More nations throughout the world begin to go the route of America. It seems like civilization is breaking apart.

But then... On 15 March, 2022...

Donald Trump announces that he's now in exile, that while he's still acting as America's legitimate and democratically elected president, he no longer has control of the government. In fact, most members of the government are now dead. Washington D.C. is under control of a new party.

And nobody knows who it is. The Silver Shirts, the AWP, and the Demsocs are all confused. Even Donald Trump, as well as Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies, do not know who has assumed control over the Disunited States. The NSA, the CIA, the FBI, as well as other shadow organizations, are purged.

On 16 March, 2022, a figurehead known only as "Brother Number One" declares that he has consolidated all power. There is no longer the United States of America, nor are there any separate republics of former states. Now there is only the Greater Panamerican Nation, known in short as 'Panamerica' or 'Panam.'

From now on, I'll assume the role of Brother #1.

After taking over America, I shut down all communications. A few EMPs oughtta do it. The Internet goes. Free speech goes. All power is consolidated into myself: Brother #1. I create a shadow organization known as "The Brotherhood". Simple and memorable. There is a very minor cult of personality around myself as Brother #1. People will be taught to believe that I am omniscient and omnipotent, but they will never know who I am. In fact, everything about the Brotherhood is shrouded in secrecy. There are no official names of who is and isn't a part of the Brotherhood. Just titles like "Brother #2", "Brother #3", "Sister #1", etc. Brothers and Sisters (the Sisters have their own sub-group, the Sisterhood). Of course, you have to take our word that a "Brother" is not actually a "sister" and a "Sister" is not actually a "brother". You will never know the gender of anyone in the Brotherhood. The word becomes meaningless.

All media stations become state-owned. In fact, *everything* becomes state-owned. Everything within the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State— and **I** am the State. Of course, who am I? I am Brother #1.

With propaganda now blaring through the airwaves, I construct a highly mechanized army. Why use humans in a military police force when I could use a cold, unfeeling, forever-loyal army of machines? Of course, I *do* employ spies. "Stay wise to the spies." Every person will have at least two other people behind their backs.

All people are to be microchipped. Anyone who refuses is to be incarcerated at one of my LoveCamps.

I establish a central intelligence agency known as the Ministry of Life. This is basically the CIA and the NSA all wrapped up in one glorious package and given 5,000x more power. AI will be used to create the world's most complete panopticon. Drones will always be flying. Robots will always be patrolling. Spies will always be listening. I will always be watching.

More than that, I want to use some cybernetics. What I need to do is to control the youths.

So I enact Operation: Love. With this, every single newborn child now belongs to the State. You have a birth? The Brotherhood will gladly take them. I said we'll take them. You don't get a say in the matter.

All these children will be placed in what I call "studentries." A Studentry is a type of boarding school where you raise a person from birth. This way, I don't need to waste time waiting for multiple generations to come and go— I can get results in a single generation. Any parent who objects? To the LoveCamps you go!

In these Studentries, I mold every single aspect of these children's minds. There will be two classes of children: an elite class who are allowed to learn "English" and an underclass that is taught "Yinglis".

The elite students are Alphas. There will only be one Alpha at every Studentry. They are allowed to learn about some outside details, but they're still very heavily indoctrinated. They are exposed to other viewpoints, but they're viciously taught to accept other viewpoints as inferior. We'll shock them, whip them, rip off their nails, whatever we can do to make sure they understand that the Brotherhood is always right.

The underclass is called the Betas. They are indoctrinated like you will not believe. They are not taught anything truthful. They are heavily drugged from birth, and we use animal methods to coerce them. The Brotherhood has always existed. The Brotherhood created all technology. 2+2=5. Humans are spawned by the love of the Brotherhood. The world exists in the form of 3 superstates— Panamerica (also known as 'Panam'), Atlantis, and Arabia. We are forever at war with each other; sometimes with one state; sometimes with another. They are demons; we are angels. If we are at war with Atlantis, then they are demons and Panam and Arabia are angels. If we are at war with Arabia, then Panam and Atlantis are angels. If you fail to accept this and wholly believe this, you will suffer extraordinarily. We will choke you, resuscitate you, and choke you again and let your classmates watch— and they'll laugh. We'll teach you all that human life is worthless. Absolutely worthless.

In fact, from birth, you are fed human meat. It is perfectly normal to engage in cannibalism. It is perfectly normal to kill a prole (a subhuman worker) and eat its flesh. There are so many other people out there that the other person is worthless. Even you are worthless. The only reason you're alive is because you're useful at the moment. Should you become useless, you should take it upon yourself to slash your own throat.

We can read your thoughts. We know what you are thinking. We see you when you're sleeping. We know when you're awake. We already know what you will do years, decades before you do it; it is purely out of the Brotherhood's infinite love that we do not punish you now.

So about Yinglis. Have you ever heard of the Piraha tribe? They have a very limited language that does not account for time, numbers, or colors. They can't even add 2 and 2 or count to 10. There you go: that's Yinglis. It's an even more honed, advanced form of the Piraha language. You are never taught anything relating to time. The world existed only as far back as your oldest memory. However, you must equally accept in your mind the fact that the Brotherhood has always existed. You must accept these two contradictory truths and believe both of them.

Language is heavily controlled. There is no "I" or "my", for example. Only "we". There is no individual. You are worthless.

There is no concept of freedom or democracy or liberty or any of that. There is no concept of voting. There is no concept of worker ownership or free markets. In fact, I'm falling back on old tropes: there is no such word as "bad". Only "ungood." Very bad? "Plusungood". Extremely bad? "Doubleplusungood." It doesn't go higher than that; there is no word for "triple".

Numbers exist. However, not as concepts; just names.

You are #235. The idea of a name like "John" sounds blasphemous. That's treated like an insult. George Washington is not a name; George Washington is a number. How is it a number? It is. It is logical. I'll go off on a 1,000 page explanation about how it's logical, even though none of it makes any sense. As long as I sound logical.

Not that you could understand most of that explanation anyway.

Your vocabulary— or 'talkbag'— is very limited after all.



My vocabulary is rather small, though I believe that it is for the greater good that I know the words of Dear Brother One." "Our talkbag be unbig; we pluslove talkbag be doubleplushelp for work B1." The weather is pleasant for this time of year. It is not too hot, nor is it too cold. I'm sure that Dear Brother One enjoys such days. "Skylook good. Skylook unwarm uncool. We pluslove B1." I wanna check Reddit to see how many dank memes are on the front page. I bet Dear Brother One would love 'em. "We lookit ungoodhouse to look B1 lovetalk. We mind B1 good yes."

I'm gonna come down hard on any dissenters or possible dissenters. Gotta check those EEG readings at all times. Make sure the algorithm is listening so that anyone who dares try to create a new language is vaporized.

So besides the Alphas and Betas, who else resides in Panam?

There are Former People. Mainly parents and enemies of the State. They're sent to a system of LoveCamps I call PAPA— the Pan-American Penal Administration. Combine every black aspect of the Concentration Camps, Death Camps, Hanoi Hilton, Camp 14, GULAGS, etc. Junko Furuta? Looking to her death for inspiration. Every blackened, depraved act of ultrasadism goes on in the PAPAs.

I don't like talking about it much... oh what the hell, of course I do!

Epic amounts of rape. Like, wow. Holy shit. We even build rape machines. Rapebots. Rape-rape-rape-rape-rape. We rape babies; we rape grandmas. We rape everyone. We'll rape you with a light bulb. We'll rape you with a porcupine. We'll rape you with a tapeworm. We'll rape you with knives, swords, glass, wood, volcanic slate, live wires, wires on fire, tire irons, zippers, stitches, needles, fangs, ants, bones, bullets, keys, spoons, you name it, we'll rape you with it— we'll even rape you with rainbows. We'll rape you up the dick, out the skull, with your own penis and tongue. We'll rape you with gympie gympie plants and shove in a poisoned cactus afterwards.

Loopkill. It's the best! So we torture you to death, then resuscitate you. Just so we can torture you to death again. And again! And again! And again! However long as we please. We decide when you live and when you die, you sniveling little bitch.

decide when you live and when you die, you sniveling little bitch. Bland torture. It's all been done before.

Absolute experimentation. Anything we can do, we will do. We'll inject you with hydrochloric acid and milk while freezing you in liquid nitrogen.

Deathdays. Lucky people get to choose how they die from a list. If they have enough work credits saved up, they can possibly even choose a painless death! Of course, the guards can determine whether or not they decide to consider your credits "valid". Sometimes, you just get handed a bad hand.

PAPA is run by the Ministry of Revolutionary Affairs.

Then there are the Degenerates. These are my favorites! They're a bunch of babies taken from their parents and thrown out into wild preserves. If they live, they live. Most don't. Some do. They become feral humans completely and utterly incapable of any sort of civilized behavior. Devoid of emotion, devoid of intelligence, devoid of empathy, devoid of creativity. If they happen to be too smart, a good lobotomy or three will change that.

Uh oh! There are Attacks. Since we're forever at war with two other superstates, we sometimes get attacked. That's the nature of war. Of course, this isn't true at all— Panam only consists of the continental United States, but they don't know that. It all started when some far-right rebels holed themselves up in Chattanooga early in my regime. I could've sent in the military, but there were too many civilian supporters of the rebels and I didn't want to overstretch myself or cause needless suffering. So I nuked the bastards. A couple of megatons oughtta do it. If not, nuke the place again. Salt a neutron bomb with cobalt and drop it for good measure. Oh, some losers survived? There's no hope for them. They're in the most unimaginable, hellish pain you can experience, and their deaths have only just begun. The rest of Panam didn't know it happened since I control all media and the Internet is perpetually down.

The Brotherhood simulates war often, attacking cities and the countryside, killing people, dropping nuclear bombs. We parade "foreigners" around as prisoners of war.

Guns become symbols of the resistance. If you resist my regime, you're going to want to get a gun.

Guns are also the class symbol of the Thought Police. Only the Thought Police possess guns, so anyone coming to them to get guns has basically just come to them to pick the gun with which they're going to be shot.

I'll kill off 150 million useless bottom feeders easily. I'll make the rest breed like rabbits so I'll have more to kill. And the outside world doesn't dare thwart my plans: I have nukes. A lot of them, in fact. My droid army is making more.

We're making gigaton nukes. We're making cobalt-salted gigaton nukes. Remember those SLAM missiles? We got a thousand of them. We've got enough firepower to end a galaxy of worlds.

You fuck with me, I end the world and make sure *nothing* ever lives here again. I'll turn the surface to lava the world over. The crust will become indistinguishable from the mantle. It'll be a global ocean of Hell, hotter than the Sun, more acidic than Venus!

Will my citizens ever know what the year is? No. After the Former People die out, no one will be capable of understanding what a "year" even is. It won't even be 1984. It will always be the Love of Brother #1. They'll never be able to understand the passage of time. I'll beat it out of them. Time is my love. Nothing else.

Citizens who commit crimes, including thoughtcrimes, are erased. They are damned from memory . They never existed. Anyone who mentions unpersons may become an uperson themselves.

Stay wise to the spies.

Stay wise to the spies.

40 years pass. Civilization looked like it was about to collapse back in the early '20s, but it all worked out in the end. By 2025, the global crisis had passed. The rest of the world has advanced as normal, used to Panamerica being a prison-state. Defectors manage to make it. One woman swam all the way to Cuba. Another man dug to Mexico (though he claims the Brotherhood has put in place measures to stop this). The Canadian border is ultra-militarized. So is the Mexican border. In 2061, over a thousand people escape into Mexico. They are stunned by what they see. It's a first-world heaven of a place, free and full of luxuries they could scarcely imagine. In fact, Mexico is pretty standard for the world at this time. Even Africa is no longer the undeveloped continent it once was. Most of the planet is first world. However, roughly 800 million people live in absolute poverty. 850 million people live in poverty around the world. But 50 million of those impoverished still have some level of luxury. They are impoverished, but not starving or living totally without. 800 million live in absolute poverty, as if it's still the 1500's. All 800 million can be found in Panamerica.

There is no middle class in Panamerica. There is the Inner Party, Outer Party, and the Proles. Only the Inner Party live anywhere near "luxuriously", and only the inner elite of the Inner Party live in actual luxury.

The migrants tell of a hellish, dystopian world. Some migrants apologize for others— some people can't even speak. They are not taught anything. They are left to themselves, left to become wild men. Feral humans. Most people cannot speak properly. Language has become a class symbol— only the Inner Party speak Old English. Everyone else speaks Yinglis. Everyone save the elders who managed to survive to the present. In fact, it's an Elder saying all this.

Abraham Williams, also known as #8403135, is 64 years old, even though he seems 104. He lived in a Nevada cave most of his life, and he got to watch the world collapse around him. He smuggled some materials that the Brotherhood fed the masses. Williams actually has a book from the 2030s that has now been erased from history. His copy is the only copy that exists.

He's one of the lucky ones. Most areas of the United States are now fully surveilled, and there are very few places left to hide. It just happened that he found one of them early on. The Brotherhood can't map every single cave, after all: though they are very willing to try. Truth is, he was going to be found sooner or later. The air in Panamerica is dense with drones.

Using washed leaves and stones, he's been writing a biography about his life and a eulogy to America and hoped that someone would read it some day. At the very least, its ashes would grace the wind of another place. He feared the worst after a certain point. He always remained optimistic and told himself not to believe any of the propaganda that the Brotherhood delivered, but by the 2050s, he began to believe some of it. That the whole world was this way. That all hope was lost.

At least now he can rest easy knowing he was always right. Mexico reminds him of America. Old America, before it became a piss-soaked hellhole. He doesn't remember America ever being this pleasant, actually. That's what's so sickening. America was once the leader of the world, heads above the rest. If Mexico could be so glittery, imagine what America could have been.

It really makes you sad.

Some motherfucker read 1984 and decided to try to replicate it to the best of his abilities. And he succeeded. More than that, he overachieved.

Williams confirms what the rest of the world knew— all social order in Panamerica is gone, and it has become an Orwellian hellhole. It represents the height of inhumanity, going further than any other regime in history has ever gone or may ever go again.

Brother #1? That sounds even more dystopian than 'Big Brother'. And just like with Big Brother, no one knows who he is. In fact, no one has ever seen his face either. There are no pictures of him, not even propaganda. No one is absolutely sure who runs Panamerica. They accepted that it's a group known as the Brotherhood led by a figure known as Brother #1, but even that may be a lie. They have no clue who is in power, or where the center of power is located. City #1 isn't considered special; in fact, all evidence he's gathered suggests that it is Detroit.

He talks about the Studentries. He's seen the Studentries in person, and they look like something ripped from The Wall. Colorless, imposing, Brutalist terraces, attended by kids in blue or black suits. Most students— not all, but most— have moptop hairdos; the boys tend to have sideburns. They are violent places; youth violence runs rampant around the Studentries and out in the world at large. Most civil homicides occur in or near the Studentries.

The children are beasts. They've been taught to hate their whole lives, and they have become primal hate machines. They have no sense of morality. No sense of right and wrong. They are taught that killing, rape, violence in general is good. They are fed humans from birth and told to engage in cannibalism regularly, so they don't see it as being a taboo. Many speak a strange, incomprehensible language that strips away all higher thought functions. There is no personal pronoun. There is no "I". There is no "my." Only "we." Only "our".

However, some only barely know this language. There are millions of children who are not only illiterate but also dumb or mostly dumb, incapable of speech beyond a few words.

They cannot fathom time. The past exists only as far back as they can remember, and the future doesn't exist at all. At the same time, they are taught that the Brotherhood has always existed and will always exist. They are taught that the stars are listening devices. That they are always watched, even in their dreams and thoughts. Should they ever sin, they will immediately be damned. And Panamerica's surveillance state is so complete, he doesn't doubt they can do it.

The vast majority of Panamericans live in slums, often crowded into a single room, but always watched. The Thought Police— yes, that's what they're really called— are everywhere, and no one can trust anyone else.

In the early days, most major cities were forcibly evacuated and their citizens were forced to live on agrarian collectives. Naturally, many perished, as they were unable to adapt to an agrarian lifestyle after being raised in an urban environment. However, some cities were filled past the point of insanitation. All modern conveniences were destroyed. Televisions were replaced with telescreens. Smartphones were destroyed en masse. Any technology that Americans post-1850 enjoyed was taken from them, and they were eventually convinced they never had them in the first place.

In 2020, the average American brought home $50,000 and could enjoy a comfortable life filled with luxuries. Nowadays, people don't actually work for money. In many cases, they are told to work and are never paid. If they dare ask for payment, they are beaten or killed. If they want to live, they must survive through sustenance farming. Some people, who lived full (if short) lives, have only ever eaten grass and insects that they could scavenge.

The nation is crumbling physically, as virtually no maintenance has been done since 2021. This isn't helped by the Brotherhood waging war on its own population for 40 years. The bomb they dropped on Chattanooga wasn't the last; only the first of many. Almost all of the American Southeast and a vast swath of the Southwest are desolate, irradiated nightmares where atomic weapons explode freely. Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Pensacola, and Charleston are all bombed-out. A few thousand people still live in Houston, living as scavengers, subsisting on rats and corpses, dreading when the next bomb will fall.

San Francisco was subject to bombing raids, and a whole fake army laid siege to the place. It was a modern day Stalingrad, with extreme brutality inflicted upon the citizens by the "invaders". Over a million starved to death. Williams thinks that number is too high; most almost certainly starved before that point. But maybe it's in fact too low. No one knows.

A society so perfectly medieval should have collapsed decades ago. However, the Brotherhood possesses a mechanized army and workforce that keeps the nation from imploding. They developed this mechanized army early on after taking from DARPA top-secret developments in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence.

Though Google eventually created an artificial general intelligence, by this point they had already relocated to Japan. The Panamerican AI system is extremely primitive compared to those from the rest of the world, having not progressed beyond a point that the Brotherhood needed it to progress. Some estimates put the Panamerican AI network as being equivalent to the Google AI network from 2025.

It is intelligent enough to reproduce and understand some abstract concepts necessary for tasks involving warfare and societal control, but the Brotherhood do not dare let it improve itself. It is forever under their control. The AI, thus, can create Terminators that are capable of crushing any dissent as well as understanding when a particular EEG reading means a person has committed thoughtcrime, but cannot be used to improve crop yields or maximize the efficiency of factories.

Cities have been renamed. Los Angeles is now City #9. Las Vegas is City #16. He doesn't know what's become of Chicago or New York. Names have been erased, replaced with numbers. The past has been erased, replaced with myths. Malgenics is practiced. The dumbest are preferred. Retardation may be inflicted. People who question are stripped of individuality. Drugs are used to break people. Turn them into clockwork oranges.

And then there are feral humans. Williams didn't believe such a thing existed until just a few years ago, and even then he thought it was yet another one of the Brotherhood's mindgames. But it's true: they really have gone that far. There are humans so totally removed from civilization that they have reverted into a primal state. It's amusing to the Brotherhood, and they organize hunts for feral humans for their meat as well as for entertainment. It's like something straight from Planet of the Apes— humans who act like monkeys. Of course, these monkey people are those who were raised by monkeys. Some were raised by other animals. A special few were forced to survive entirely on their own, and their culture is the closest thing to "proto-human" we may ever see.

There are Alphas, of course. Williams is unsure if the Alphas still exist since biological immortality is now available, since the whole reason for their existence was to keep the Brotherhood alive well into the future. He's heard nothing about Alphas for decades now.

Williams mentioned that there are dumb people, as well as people who can only speak Yinglis. This is the most horrible aspect of it all, because it means there is no hope for the future. These people— the extreme majority of Panamerica, as much as 98% of the population— cannot spread culture. They're so broken that they have lost behavior modernity. In essence, the humans of Panamerica are becoming less human.

There is no hope and there is nothing they can do. All that the rest of the world can do now is weep and move on.

Of course, there is hope. The best Panamerica has are nuclear missiles and bombers. Even in the 2020's, these were becoming outdated. Now, in the 2060's, a war with Panamerica would be like the USA in 2020 fighting against Ancient Rome. There are orbital lasers and kinetic-energy weapons, as well as electromagnetic weapons that can disable any nuclear missile. Plasma railguns can destroy missile silos from across the planet.

The reason why the world hasn't intervened isn't because they're afraid of a nuclear holocaust. It's because of what Williams has already said: if they destroy the Brotherhood and depose Brother #1, they will have 800 million starved, brainwashed, inhuman Panamericans to deal with. It would be the largest humanitarian crisis in world history, possibly never to be equaled. They can't just bring these people into civilized society and translate their words so they can understand the world. They have effectively been devolved by the State, and their masochistic language means that they wouldn't be able to understand anything beyond the meaning of what the Brotherhood wants them to understand. Any attempt at communication will fail. And this rooting goes so deep that even emotional exchange via psychotronic technology won't do any good. They would need to engage in the most complete thought reformation in history if they want any chance at saving the Panamericans, and they just don't know if such a thing is possible.

They are the Dead. It is true. There is no hope, and there is nothing they can do.

And why? What is the Brotherhood aiming to do? Are they fascists? Communists? Neither. They are powermongers. Just like in 1984, the Party known as the Brotherhood exists for the sole pursuit of raw, absolute, undiluted, unrestrained power. And absolutely no one knows the identity of Brother #1. Never have.

Never will.