Big Brother
The Party's eternal face
Total surveillance, total ownership.
Heterodox Stalinist-MarxistOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Stalinist-Marxist hall →- Role
- State icon (fiction)
- From
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Region
- Oceania
- Social band
- Heterodox
- Placement
- −95 · +100 · +30
§ Where Big Brother stands
3 axesUnder Ingsoc the Party owns all production and plans the economy from the Ministry of Plenty, which rations goods and announces fictitious increases in output. Orwell makes the scarcity deliberate: permanent war burns off the surplus so the population stays poor, dependent and too busy to rebel.
Oceania is the model of total control. There are no laws, no elections and no privacy, telescreens watch every room, and the Thought Police hunt even unspoken dissent. Newspeak is designed to make rebellious thought impossible, and resisters are broken in the Ministry of Love until they love Big Brother.
The Party wages war on every older loyalty: it rewrites history daily, turns children into informers against their parents and replaces religion with worship of Big Brother. That hostility to inherited tradition tilts it toward the progressive pole, even though its puritan sexual code and enforced conformity are the opposite of liberating.
How close are you to Big Brother?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
FictionBig Brother is the figurehead of the Party that rules Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. He is never seen in person: his moustached face stares from posters and telescreens above the slogan BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, and the novel leaves open whether he exists at all or is simply the face the Party wears.
Orwell built the Party from the leader cults and propaganda machines of the 1930s and 1940s to warn how a modern state could rule through surveillance, terror and the rewriting of history. The name has since become shorthand for intrusive surveillance by governments and corporations, and it passed into everyday language and into reality television.
Notable for
- 01'Big Brother is watching you'
- 02Symbol of the surveillance state
- 03Newspeak and doublethink
Key works & moments
- 1949George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-Four, introducing Big Brother and the Party.
- Part OneWinston Smith starts a forbidden diary beneath Big Brother's gaze.
- Part TwoWinston and Julia's secret affair ends in arrest by the Thought Police.
- Part ThreeO'Brien re-educates Winston in the Ministry of Love until he loves Big Brother.
- 1984Apple's Super Bowl advert recasts Big Brother as a symbol of corporate conformity.
- 1999Dutch television launches the reality show Big Brother, borrowing Orwell's name.
In Big Brother's words
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”
§ Minds closest to Big Brother
All minds →
§ Also in the Stalinist-Marxist hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is Big Brother's political ideology?
Big Brother embodies Ingsoc, or English Socialism, the ruling ideology of Oceania in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. On the 99ideologies three-axis compass he is a Heterodox Stalinist-Marxist: a total command economy (−95), absolute authoritarian rule (+100) and a regime that tears up inherited tradition (+30) while enforcing rigid conformity. Orwell said the novel was not an attack on socialism but a warning about the perversions a centralised economy is liable to.
Is Big Brother left-wing or right-wing?
Neither label fits cleanly. The Party calls itself socialist and runs a wholly state-owned economy, which puts it on the far left economically, but it has abandoned every egalitarian aim: in the novel it seeks power purely for its own sake. Its leader cult and terror drew on both Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which is why Big Brother is read as a symbol of totalitarianism rather than of left or right.
Was Big Brother based on Stalin?
Largely, though not only. Big Brother's moustached face and personality cult echo Joseph Stalin, and the Party's hated enemy Emmanuel Goldstein is modelled on Leon Trotsky, whom Stalin exiled and vilified. But Orwell, who had seen Stalinist repression first-hand in the Spanish Civil War, also drew on Nazi propaganda and his own wartime work at the BBC, so Big Brother is a composite of the modern dictator.
Which minds are closest to Big Brother?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Big Brother are Joseph Stalin (99% alike), Lazar Kaganovich (97% alike) and Mao Zedong (96% alike). The furthest is Hans-Hermann Hoppe (0% alike).