Democracy Watch: Are We Living in an Orwellian World and Being Told to Believe That 2 + 2 = 5?

By TOM FIEDLER, Asheville Watchdog

Like many others heading into last weekend, my plans extended little beyond preparing for the major winter storm barreling our way, then hunkering down to watch sports, catch up on light reading and suffer defeat at board games against my more skilled wife.

Instead, I remained fixated, stunned and horrified by news reports from Minneapolis showing in second-by-second, granular detail the killing of Alex Pretti, a VA Hospital intensive care unit nurse, by a scrum of masked federal agents who had knocked him to the ground and, when he was prostrate, fired 10 shots at him.

I then watched as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blamed Pretti’s death on himself. I watched dumbfounded as she spun an account of the killing contradicting everything that I had witnessed, over and over again. She claimed, with no evidence, that Pretti was brandishing a gun and was intent on harming the agents.

Pretti did have a pistol; but he was licensed to carry it and never removed it from its holster. What he was brandishing was a cellphone, used to lawfully record agents’ actions. Bystander videos showed an agent grabbing the pistol from Pretti’s holster and running away, a second before others shot him.

Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff and, as homeland security adviser, the architect of the unprecedented, aggressive mass-deportation ICE campaign, said on X that Pretti was “a would-be assassin who tried to murder federal law enforcement.” From the Oval Office, Trump shared photos of Pretti’s gun and questioned why the nurse was carrying a weapon, implying that the agents were under threat.

We’d seen a similar scenario play out only days before when an ICE agent, Jonathon Ross, killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three, shooting her in the head. Trump and other administration officials said then – conclusive evidence aside – that she tried to hit him with her car.

In both tragedies, the rush to opposing judgments from opposite sides was instantaneous. This was murder, many viewers said, certain because of what they believed they saw with their own eyes.

The administration’s responses to the public were equally certain and without evidence: Don’t believe what your eyes and your reason are telling you. Believe what we are telling you.

George Orwell’s warning

Where does this leave us? In his chillingly prescient novel 1984, George Orwell warned us that lying in the face of evidence is how totalitarian governments gain and keep control. He wrote in a memoir after World War II:

The organized lying by totalitarian states is not, as some may claim, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that will continue even as concentration camps and secret police are no longer necessary. Totalitarianism demands the continuous alteration of the past and, in the long run, it demands disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.

Orwell summarized this with a simple example: Totalitarianism demands everyone believe that 2 + 2 = 5. Or else…

Until a year ago I would have labeled Orwell’s fears as hyperbolic, the product of an overly cynical world view shaped by the horrors of Hitler, Stalin and those who accommodated them. No longer.

As a journalist for more than 50 years I haven’t come to this conclusion easily despite living through the lies of Vietnam, the evils of segregation and such events as Kent State and January 6.

My mission has been to report facts as best I can and to accurately and objectively present competing views on matters before the public. I practiced a catechism that said the public would reach a good decision if I gave it a fair rendering of a situation. It counseled me to take a leap of faith in the collective wisdom of an informed public. Although that faith was occasionally shaken, I abided by that belief through the turbulent 1960s and countless political scandals.

But that faith depended on a belief that Orwell’s dystopic world couldn’t happen here.

What we have witnessed in recent weeks can be labeled only as lies, lies that warn us we may be nearing an Orwellian world. I use that word rather than “contrary view” because the falsehoods are deliberate; they depend on facts being omitted or distorted.

All of this may seem far from this column’s focus on elections in western North Carolina, but our elections are impacted by the events in Minneapolis. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously wrote in 1963 in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.

King wrote his words in reply to skeptical clerics after being arrested for protesting against the cruelties experienced by Blacks in the segregated south. The critics, including pastors of local white churches, called him an “outside agitator” and urged him to tone down his striving toward racial equality.

A ‘single garment of destiny’

We in North Carolina are tied with those in Minneapolis in this “single garment of destiny.” Yet many Republican candidates on this year’s ballots seem flummoxed as to how to react to the tragedy in Minneapolis.

At the top of the local Republican primary ballot on March 3 will be Michael Whatley, the GOP’s leading candidate for U.S. Senate and the party’s former national chairman. Whatley is choosing to stay silent on this and all ICE issues. A centerpiece of his campaign’s social-media site is a photo of the president and himself containing the words “One year down.”

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michele Morrow posted on Instagram Sunday a photo of a protester being beaten by ICE agents with the words “ICE: Stop resisting!! Minnesotans.” She wrote: “Impede. Interfere. Obstruct. Resist. You can choose your crime but not your consequence. FAFO Minnesota.” The acronym stands as a threat: F— Around, Find Out.

On the line below on the Republican ballots will be the candidates for Congress in District 11, incumbent Chuck Edwards and challenger Adam R. Smith. Hours after Saturday’s shooting Edwards posted to his social media a photo of himself making s’mores at his kitchen counter.

It wasn’t until Monday that Edwards issued a statement about Pretti’s death: “I strongly support the men and women of law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day to keep our communities safe, and I support efforts to ensure dangerous illegal immigrants are identified and removed from our country. At the same time, as with any officer-involved shooting, the facts must be fully and fairly investigated.”

I emailed Edwards’s office to ask if he agreed with the characterization of Pretti by Noem and Miller as a “domestic terrorist” and have received no reply.

Smith, a former Army Green Beret who gained local acclaim for organizing a military-style rescue and recovery operation in the aftermath of Helene, told me that the Minneapolis situation has left him frustrated and angry.

“The loss of life is a tragedy,” Smith said. “The snaps to judgment to place blame or to label people is unacceptable on both sides. ICE has a legally justifiable operation taking place all over this country to deport illegal aliens. Interfering with that action is against the law.

“And peaceful protest – and I highlight the word ‘peaceful’ – is every Americans’ right,” he continued.

“Did [Pretti and Good] put themselves in a bad position? Absolutely. Did they deserve to get shot? I don’t think they deserved to get shot.”

His military experience has taught him that moments of tragedy can “cloud the understanding of what is taking place” by both participants and witnesses. “We have a responsibility to not allow the tragedy to cloud the overall understanding of what is taking place,” he said.

Retiring U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis was among a small group of Republican senators who quickly challenged the Trump administration’s narrative.

“Any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins [is] doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy,” Tillis posted, as calls for an independent investigation mounted.

While Edwards was making s’mores, one of the Democrats vying in the March 3 primary to oppose him had already publicly addressed the situation.

“Everyone involved in this violence should be held accountable,” Jamie Ager posted in a video from his barn. “Kristi Noem should resign or be removed.”

Former Gov. Roy Cooper, the likely Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate was quick to respond to the shooting, posting on X: “I understand the importance of federal resources to fight crime, including resources focused on deporting violent criminals – but these actions don’t make people safe and this chaos needs to stop.”

The blaming of Pretti for his death recalls the same tactics used after two other horrifying attacks on protesters. One was the killing of four Kent State University students by armed National Guardsmen. Authorities falsely claimed that the fatal shootings were in response to a sniper attack.

A few years earlier in Birmingham, Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor directed his officers to attack a protest march by Black children using high-pressure fire hoses, tear gas and attack dogs. The attack was shown nationwide by network television and newspapers and is regarded as a turning point against the violence previously used by white governments to enforce racial segregation.

Connor justified the attack on what was called the Children’s Crusade by claiming the young marchers were disrupting businesses.

Many supporters of the immigration crackdown have responded to Pretti’s and Good’s killings by decrying the violence and offering condolences, but – and there’s always the “but” – saying the tragedies wouldn’t have occurred had the victims stayed home and not exercised their constitutional right to peaceably protest.

In 1963, King had a response in his jailhouse letter to those clerics who implied that the protesters brought on themselves the violence they suffered, writing:

In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn’t this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?

Where do we stand? Some signs of light may be permeating the Orwellian darkness. Facing a national backlash, many Republicans are backing away from unqualified support of the Trump administration’s immigration tactics, with some directly criticizing it. A preliminary federal review of the shooting makes no mention of Pretti brandishing a gun.

The chief executioner of the Minneapolis immigration sweep has been tossed under the bus: Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol “commander-at-large,” was suddenly reassigned to California.

There are growing calls for Noem to step down or be fired, even from a few Republicans. On Tuesday, Tillis called Noem’s actions “amateurish” and said, “What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying.”

Yet to be known is whether our democracy will evade the fate predicted by Orwell.

This I know: No matter how often people in power insist – as Big Brother did in declaring that “War is peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength,” and that administration leaders assert that peaceful protesters are “domestic terrorists” – I have faith that most Americans will reply that 2 + 2 = 4.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Tom Fiedler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter and dean emeritus from Boston University who lives in Asheville. His Democracy Watch column appears every other Wednesday. Email him at [email protected]. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email [email protected]. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/donate.