{"id":235968,"date":"2016-04-04T20:49:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T20:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ministry-of-truth-bbc-to-erect-george-orwell-statue-outside-london-hq\/"},"modified":"2016-04-04T20:49:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T20:49:44","slug":"ministry-of-truth-bbc-to-erect-george-orwell-statue-outside-london-hq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ministry-of-truth-bbc-to-erect-george-orwell-statue-outside-london-hq\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministry of Truth? BBC to erect George Orwell statue outside London HQ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.04\/thumbnail\/570276b0c36188385d8b4591.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        Despite his resignation from the BBC in 1943, when he grew tired of \u201cpushing propaganda,\u201d a statue of George Orwell, author of the dystopian \u20181984\u2019, will soon be erected outside the broadcaster\u2019s London HQ.<\/p>\n<div readability=\"83\">\n<p>The statue of Orwell \u2013 real name Eric Blair \u2013 will be accompanied by a plaque that reads: \u201c<em>If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,<\/em>\u201d the Guardian reported on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Sculptor Martin Jennings told the Guardian: \u201c<em>I was delighted when I visited the site to find it littered with cigarette butts \u2013 that is absolutely the place for Orwell, who was rarely seen without a cigarette in hand, to the grave detriment of his health.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/juVlSSHMKbs\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>He would undoubtedly have been out there in the cold with the smokers for most of his time,<\/em>\u201d Jennings added.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u20181984\u2019<\/em>, perhaps Orwell\u2019s most famous work, tells the story of an unfortunate everyman making his way through a fictional authoritarian Britain locked in an everlasting war against an indistinct enemy. In the dystopian scenario, civil liberties are eliminated and the citizenry constantly watched as they are fed lies by a shadowy government organization called the Ministry of Truth.<\/p>\n<p>Plans to erect a statue to Orwell were dropped in 2012, allegedly because the Spanish Civil War veteran was viewed as being too left-wing. For one reason or another, the plan has been revived.<\/p>\n<p>Orwell himself was once employed by the BBC as a producer on the organization\u2019s Eastern Service.<\/p>\n<p>The terrifying torture chamber depicted in \u2018<em>1984<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 Room 101 \u2013 was even named after a stuffy conference room in the BBC HQ to which Orwell apparently took a severe dislike.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GZ5PlOBXB94\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In his 1943 resignation letter, available in the BBC\u2019s online archives, Orwell attacks the corporation\u2019s tendency to broadcast \u201c<em>hopeless<\/em>\u201d propaganda on India. It was later found that the kind of radio sets the BBC broadcasted for were not widely in use in India, and that the signal was so weak it would have been unintelligible anyway.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign for a statue of the man, who many consider the father of political journalism, was launched by the late Labour MP Ben Whittaker.<\/p>\n<p>His widow Janet told the Metro newspaper on Monday: <em>\u201cOrwell\u2019s resonance is international. Wherever powerful governments falsify events, suppress freedom of information or dehumanize their processes, people recognize the satire in 1984.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/338386-orwell-statue-bbc-headquarters\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite his resignation from the BBC in 1943, when he grew tired of \u201cpushing propaganda,\u201d a statue of George Orwell, author of the dystopian \u20181984\u2019, will soon be erected outside the broadcaster\u2019s London HQ. The statue of Orwell \u2013 real name Eric Blair \u2013 will be accompanied by a plaque that reads: \u201cIf liberty means [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-235968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}