“Napoleon is always right. If he said it, then it must be true.” That was Boxer, ever loyal, spurting his unwavering refrain. Fear and ignorance had rendered the whole lot weak, making resistance impossible. They swallow the official narrative fed them by Squealer, the regime’s chief propagandist. Even when the slogan changes from “Four legs good, two legs bad” to “Four legs good, two legs better,” the sheep mindlessly continue to bleat, unquestioningly.
The beautiful revolutionary anthem, “Beast of England, beast of Ireland” was changed by fiat, and no Animal flinched. Dictatorship by man was removed and replaced with dictatorship by pigs.
Napoleon’s attack dogs, the ruthless enforcers of power growled menacingly in their silencing of opposition and, striking terror in those who dare to question authority.
Clover and Benjamin, the few who dare to think, rush to the dilapidated wall where the original Seven Commandments of the revolution had once been inscribed. To their horror, they find them erased, replaced by a single chilling decree: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Bewildered, they watch as the ruling pigs—who had once decried human oppression—take up the forbidden things – walk on two legs, dress in fine clothes, and wield the whips of Mr. Jones, the very oppressor they had overthrown.
This scene is all too familiar. In Africa, we have chased out military juntas, only to find ourselves wondering whether the civilian governments that follow are truly different. Like the sheep on Manor Farm, we are told to bleat: “The worst civilian government is better than the best military rule.”
In Orwell’s conclusion, the pigs, once revolutionaries, now sit at a grand banquet with the humans they had vowed to resist. A quarrel erupts between them, and as the other animals look on, they are struck by a terrifying realization: as they glance from pig to man and man to pig again and again. To their bewilderment it is impossible to tell which is which.
The recent sentencing of French opposition politician Marine Le Pen—her imprisonment and ban from running for office—brings into sharp focus the state of democracies across the world. Watching the trajectory of democracy in Nigeria, I found myself dusting off my copy of Animal Farm and rereading it. Decades after its publication, Orw’ell’s allegory remains as relevant as ever.
The sacred ideals on which democracies are built have been turned on their heads. From America to France, Russia to North Korea, Nigeria to Gabon, the story is the same. The United States has just emerged from its own democratic spectacle—Trump’s elections maelstrom. And yet, unlike Le Pen, Trump weathered the storm. Now in power, he himself resembles a bull which has broken free from the barn, and today we wonder: Is what we see in America still democracy?
France, too, has joined the parade. Marine Le Pen, the country’s most prominent opposition figure, led her party from obscurity to become the leading party in France. And yet, the ruling elite have now decided to give her the “Snowball treatment.” A nation that once prided itself on its Mission Civilisatrice—a mission to civilize the world—now mirrors Orwell’s Animal Farm.
The illusion of difference between Western democracies and the developing world is crumbling. In Africa, we look from military rule to civilian rule and find ourselves confused—we can no longer tell one from the other. And in Europe, the masses look at their so-called democrats, then at the regimes in Russia and North Korea, and no doubt, they too are confused.
In the end, we are all of the same character mold as the animals in Mr Jone’s Manor Farm under the jambok of the ruling class. Absorbing all the indignities from the pigs, they sat on their hands and began to consider the story of Moses the raven about a certain Sugarcandy mountain and a sweet by and by.
