The Alterable Timeline

“Who controls the present controls the past” page 248. For The Party to keep their control over the miserable masses they have taken control over everything, even history itself. They have eliminated or altered historic documents, important events, and The Party this has forever changed history. For all the people of Oceania know The Party created airplanes and your common variety atomic bomb (which is what The Party actually told its citizens). The Party does not allow anyone to keep personal photographs or documents so no one can have a reliable memory and history itself becomes very distorted. By doing so, The Party can feed these lies to the public and everyone is willing to swallow them. Just as they control the present, The Party controls all sources of information and changes history drastically to justify their actions. According to The Party, Capitalists put The Party to shame when it came to oppression as Winston says in page 90 “These Capitalists - they and a few lawyers and priests and so forth who lived on them – were the lords of the Earth. Everything existed to their benefit. You – the ordinary people, the workers – were their slaves. They could ship you off to Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if they chose. They could order you to be flogged with something called a cat -o'-nine-tails. You had to take your cap off when you passed them. Every Capitalist went about with a gang of lackeys.” Of course, this is completely incorrect but The Party has to set a standard for the people of Oceania to compare their lives to. That's why The Party made it seem that before The Party came it was horrible for the common man, just so the people will be content with their already horrible lives.