By Elin Brimheim Heinesen and Jens Pauli Heinesen
In 1984, my father, the Faroese author Jens Pauli Heinesen, published a book called “Supplement to 1984”. The book was a collection of articles about “The Totalitarian State”.
The year referenced the famous book by George Orwell “1984” from 1949 about a dystopian future where “Big Brother Is Watching You” — a book that, in many ways, predicted the future in an eerily precise way. In his book “Supplement to 1984”, Jens Pauli also writes some sections that are spot-on when it comes to conditions that, at the moment — once again in world history — seem eerily relevant, such as this:
“It is no vice for a politician to be aggressive. His nature is that of a power-seeker, but it all depends on what he is aggressive for. And there are two types of politicians: the positively aggressive and the negatively aggressive.
We need to focus on this latter type. Where do his negative aggressions come from? They come from a miserable psyche, from powerlessness and inferiority complexes, lack of talent, and various kinds of defeats. Such a person almost always tends to believe that others are to blame for his misfortunes. He therefore has an extremely distorted relationship with the outside world and reality. He hates intensely and dreams of revenge and crushing others’ faces, resembling a person fighting blindly. A politician of this aggressive type can very well be quite skilled at building a country, constructing harbors, bridges, roads, and much of that sort. But when it comes to spiritual life, he is stone-cold and contrary. And often, his fate ends with him destroying everything again that he has helped build.
Such politicians often gain incredible support. Hitler was one. But how can that be? It is because of this:
We choose such a politician — not out of love for him, in reality, we have quite some aversion to him. No, as strange as it may sound, we choose him because of his negative aggressions.
The fact is that we too, throughout our lives, have developed a certain amount of negative as well as positive aggressions, and it often happens that the negative ones have so much power over us that they take control. We feel we are being treated far too badly, not only by life but also by our fellow humans. Powerlessness torments and plagues us, and who else is pushing us down but these beasts we are forced to live amongst.
Therefore, we sit in our hiding places and hate and dream of revenge and smashing these beasts’ faces. But it remains just a dream; we dare not do anything about it. But there is one who dares to do it for us: the politician with the negative aggressions. We get him to hate and smash the faces for us. The more uproar he creates, the better we like it. And we think: more of that, old man, give them a real beating, strangle them and give them a good thrashing. Yes, that is why we choose him. Essentially against our will.
The police state, the totalitarian state, is created by politicians with negative aggressions. To fight for peace is therefore not only to fight against armament and war, it is also to fight for the good politician who understands the problems and against the negative one.
This may seem like a hopeless and futile struggle. But it is the only thing that makes sense.”
……….
Thus wrote Jens Pauli Heinesen in 1984. One can only imagine which politicians today fit into this image.
