Totalitarian ideology is internally hypocritical because it masquerades as a harbinger of equity when, in actuality, it brings with it a withholding and surprisingly indulgent nature. In Orwell’s 1984, Julia brings Winston clandestine gifts of coffee and tea, varieties of which Winston believed to be unattainable. “‘How did you manage to get a hold of all these things?’” Winston asks Julia. “‘It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing those swimne don’t have, nothing’” (Orwell 144). Although she has revealed herself as a nonbeliever in Party ideology, publicly Julia is considered to be among the most orthodox of followers, simply action without belief. The notion that Julia would know that members of the Inner Party had access to coveted, forbidden items like wines, teas, and real chocolate, suggests that the most adherent Party members and junior members are aware of the hypocrisy within the internal structure of the Party. Stranger still, there are others privy to the same information that Julia, and now Winston, has about the unequal access to goods in this supposedly equitable society and still choose to remain within the Party. Were they to question the Party’s blatant manipulation and restriction of the market, they would likely be vaporized and become an unperson. However, it is clear that Orwell is echoing real events and consequences of totalitarian rule.
In Hannah Ardent’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, Ardent writes, “even before the Nazis’ rise to power, these Twenty-Five Points had been no more than a concession to the party system and to such prospective voters as were old-fashioned enough to ask what was the program of the party they were going to join. (…) and when [Eichmann] told the Jerusalem court that he had not known Hitler’s program he very likely spoke the truth: ‘The Party program did not matter, you knew what you were joining’” (43). The words “the Party program did not matter” are particularly striking in this context because the program in question was mass genocide. One would think that a program like that would garner some objections from Party members. What is more, “the Party program was never taken seriously by Nazi officials; they prided themselves on belonging to a movement, as distinguished from a party, and a movement could not be bound by a program” (Ardent 43). In the Inner Party members, in both 1984 and Nazi Germany, stand to benefit the most from Party teachings and control. To question the logical basis of this total power would be to delegitimize an institution from which one derives benefit. It is a luxury of the Inner Party to view themselves as belonging to a movement as opposed to a party. This is reminiscent of the proles portrayed in Orwell’s novel. Stuck in utter squalor and compelled to perform daily heavy labor, the proles do not have the luxury to participate in political matters. Their existence is about surviving. When one has to worry about thirst, starvation and imminent violence, one does not necessarily have time to lead a revolution against morally corrupt governments. The working class, of any political party, will be the most ideological weight-bearing group. Keep them busy, keep them working, keep them silent.