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It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicle and grouping them in the centre hall, opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate. (...) The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running out of oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set ones teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of ones neck. The Hate had started.

As usual the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. Goldstein was the renegade who once, long ago, had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counterrevolutionary activities, had been condemned to death and mysteriously escaped and disappeared. He was the primal traitor, commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to overthrow the state. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. Before the Hate proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. In the second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the top of their voices in an effort to drown Goldsteins maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against ones will into a screaming lunatic. The Hate rose to its climax. Then Goldsteins face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of the Big Brother, full of power and mysterious calm. At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow rhythmical chant of B-B! In: Nineteen Eighty-Four , George Orwell (abridged and adapted) A. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Are the following statements True or False? The Hate is a spontaneous social event. It basically consists of expressing ones hatred of the enemies of the state. Goldstein is the leader of a political opposition party. During Hate Big Brother appears on the screen voicing out against his opponents. The feeling of intensity grows progressively throughout the two minutes. People participate on a voluntary basis. It is difficult to resist the psychological group effect of the Hate. The Hate ends with Big Brother protecting the masses from their enemies.

B. Replace the underlined words in the text with possible synonyms. C. Now watch the following video about an existing political regime. 1. Fill in the table: Where? When? What? Why?

2. How do you feel about this situation?

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