- Thought Police
The Thought Police ("thinkpol" in
Newspeak) are the secret policeof Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel " Nineteen Eighty-Four". It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrimeand thought-criminals, using psychologyand omnipresent surveillancefrom telescreens to find and eliminate members of society who were capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority. The government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labeling unapproved thoughts with the term "thoughtcrime", or, in Newspeak, "crimethink". It was the thought police that had arrested Winston and Julia.
It also had much to do with Orwell's own "power of facing unpleasant facts", as he called it, and his willingness to criticize prevailing ideas which brought him into conflict with others and their "smelly little orthodoxies". Although Orwell described himself as a democratic socialist, many other socialists thought that his criticism of the
Soviet Unionunder Joseph Stalindamaged the socialist cause.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Special Higher Police in Japan was sometimes known as the "Thought Police".
The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness, or preemptive policing where a person is apprehended in anticipation of the possibility that they may commit a crime, in any modern or historical contexts.
Jay Lenosometimes exclaims "thought police" if the audience finds a joke in his monologue offensive.
List of fictional secret police and intelligence organizations
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