Thought Police

The Thought Police (thinkpol in Newspeak) are the secret police of the fictional superstate, Oceania, in George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Orwell's Thought Police are charged with uncovering and punishing "thoughtcrime" and thought-criminals. They use psychological methods and omnipresent surveillance (such as telescreens) to search, find, monitor, and arrest members of society who could potentially challenge authority and the status quo—even if only by thought—hence the name Thought Police. They use terror and torture to achieve their ends.

Orwell's concept of "thought policing" derived from and had much to do with his own "power of facing unpleasant facts", as he referred to it, and his willingness to criticize society's prevailing ideas—which often brought him into conflict with others and what he called their "smelly little orthodoxies".

The "Thought Police" in Orwell's Novel

In Orwell's novel, the government (which is dominated entirely by the Inner Party) attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labeling "unapproved thoughts" with the term thoughtcrime, or crimethink in Newspeak. For such infractions, the Thought Police arrest two characters in the book, Winston and Julia.