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Inquisitor
who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were the
totalitarians, as they were called. There were the German Nazis and the
Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the
Inquisition had done. And they imagined that they had learned from the
mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one must not make
martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to public trial, they
deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity. They wore them down
by torture and solitude until they were despicable, cringing wretches,
confessing whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves with
abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy.
And yet after only a few years the same thing had happened over again. The
dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once
again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they
had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of
that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them
true. And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You
must stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity
will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of
history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere.
Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in a
living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future.
You will never have existed.'
Then why bother to to