this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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Would you not say that the State effectively replaced British culture with a perpetual state of emergency and war fervor? With the two minutes of hate, “prisoner of war marches”, war speeches, gamified recruitment and scrap drives, and other emotional outlets, the Airstripe’s culture is essentially an endless Total War, reminiscent of either a late war Germany or Bushido principle. The national identity is war, where nothing matters other than beating the enemy, even if that victory is a purposefully futile task.
We also do know that the nation has vestiges of a civilian culture since Winston mentions the proles consuming football news, sports magazines, mindless pornographic hedonism, and television programs, it’s just that Winston doesn’t partake since he feels alienated from that hollow culture since rewriting the past is his job.
Honestly, I understand what you’re getting at, though I don’t think that culture is inherently necessary to fascist states. The modus operandi of most fascists is an aestheticization of politics that permeates every aspect of Oceania.
Who needs culture when you have porn and your two minutes of hate? That is your culture.
The fascist state doesn't need culture but a human society does.
Nevertheless I see your point and I do partially agree, I just think Orwell exaggerates how much of human identity is annihilated by a fascist system. The bourgeoisie - even a fascist bourgeoisie - still want to preserve some kind of art and history even if it is heavily sanitized and revised to fit their absurd narratives. They are still humans themselves, even if they seem to hate everything good about humanity, and so still need a culture to enjoy for all the same reasons the common prole does. Something beyond just mindless entertainment, which is what Orwell gets wrong: fascism is high class, not low class. There is no poverty cult; there is an opulence cult. This is because it is a capitalist system. But Orwell was an idiot who believed Stalin and Hitler were the same thing with different names with no experience with either system or what they actually looked like beyond anti-communist propaganda. Looking at the content of his "critique" of the USSR it reads almost identical to Trotsky's, indicating exactly where he got his absurd ideas about Stalin from.