Unity through Enemies: War, Fear, and Community in Nineteen Eighty-Four

In order to maintain absolute control over the state, totalitarian regimes rely on fear and hatred to create a unified community in which individuals are subordinated to a collective identity and a synchronized ideology. In Oceania, war functions as the central mechanism for producing such unity: the constant state of war legitimizes economic hardship and harsh emergency measures while redirecting people's dissatisfaction toward its manufactured enemies, all of which justify the state's totalitarian control. Moreover, by creating internal enemies and encouraging denunciation, the regime extends this logic inward, producing an internal war alongside the external war, which allows every citizen to act as a combatant of the state, thereby further consolidating social cohesion and individual loyalty to the regime.

In Oceania, the permanent state of war rationalizes the regime's absolute control over society, particularly over its economy. The endless crisis of external threat allows the government to justify its extreme measures as unavoidable, framing economic hardship and material scarcity as part of the citizens' civic duty. Rationing, chronic shortages in basic goods, declining living standards, and severe punishment for treachery are presented as necessary for the country's defense against its enemies. Moreover, by keeping the population in constant fear of war, the regime is able to redirect people's dissatisfaction and resentment from state measures toward an external enemy, creating a moral obligation for citizens to remain loyal to the Party's ideology. The Ministry of Plenty maintains strict control over the rationing of basic necessities and consumer goods. The Party's supposed "increase" in the chocolate ration from thirty to twenty grams after a military victory is not only a demonstration of the Party's manipulation of statistics, but also a tool for reinforcing the notion that living conditions are entirely contingent on the success of war rather than the regime itself.

Similarly, in "Dizzy with Success", Stalin also used manipulated statistics to reframe the disastrous agricultural and human losses of Collectivization into an ideological success, effectively redirecting public resentment away from his political decisions and toward alleged counterrevolutionaries who were being accused of failing to implement his policies properly. Stalin's justification for the use of violence against prisoners also parallels Oceania's harsh punishments for treachery, as both are framed as wartime necessities directed against, in Stalin's words, "the blatant and inveterate enemies of the people".

Oceania's war against Eurasia and Eastasia is not the only combat the regime is fighting; there is also an internal war within the state itself. These internal enemies are not limited to distant figures such as Goldstein, but also include ordinary civilians who commit thoughtcrimes and thus sabotage the Party from within. This logic has clear historical parallels: in Nazi Germany, internal enemies were Jews who "stabbed Germany in the back," while in the Soviet Union, they were defined as class enemies such as the bourgeoisie and kulaks. By manufacturing such internal enemies, the state sustains social cohesion through shared hatred, an approach that echoes elements of the völkisch conception of community, in which loyal individuals are united by national unity, hostility toward enemies, and subordination to the Führerprinzip, while placing the community above the individual. To further consolidate this cohesive community under a synchronized ideology, denunciation is widely encouraged and rewarded, as it allows every citizen to become a combatant in the internal war and to contribute directly to the regime.

The Role of Denunciation and the Limits of Control

The civic virtue of denunciation turns ordinary citizens into voluntary Thought Police, making the Thought Police omnipresent in everyday life. Even within the family, children who denounce their parents are celebrated as war heroes; they are zealous in identifying the enemies of the Party, take pride in following suspicious individuals, and grow accustomed to—and even take pleasure in—violent punishments such as public hangings. Denunciation thus becomes a voluntary social participation, through which individuals actively contribute to the internal war and gain recognition for eliminating the state's internal enemies without being on the battlefront. As Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul argue, the Gestapo was far from omniscient; it was not only understaffed but also depended heavily on citizen denunciations. Similarly, in Oceania, the targets of denunciation are internal enemies who threaten the Party by committing thoughtcrimes. However, the regime's reliance on denunciation and harsh punishment reveals the limits of its totalitarian control, as the state must depend on ordinary civilians as agents of repression in order to enforce social cohesion.

The function of war in Oceania demonstrates how illiberal regimes manipulate power to transform fear and hatred into a synchronized ideology that binds a community together. Through the constant threat of external war, the manufacture of internal enemies, and the encouragement of denunciation, the Party legitimizes economic hardship, extreme measures, and political violence, while converting ordinary individuals into loyal troopers of the regime. Furthermore, by redirecting resentment and dissatisfaction toward both the external and internal enemies, the state coerces a community grounded in shared hatred. This shows that the regime's authority does not rely on consent or genuine belief, but on forcing civilian cooperation through ideological synchronization. Although Orwell presents these strategies as components of an irresistible totalitarian nightmare, historical parallels in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union suggest that these mechanisms, while highly effective, were never omnipotent and depended heavily on civilian cooperation.