so long as he resists us we never
destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We
burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side,
not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of
ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous
thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it
may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the
old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his
heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry
rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for
the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The
command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the
totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou art". No one whom we
bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean.
Even those three miserable traitors in whose innocence you once believed --
Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford -- in the end we broke them down. I took
part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradually worn down,
whimpering, grovelling, weeping -- and in the end it was not with pain or
fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with them they were
only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for
what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how
they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they