[Illustration on page 1 of THE WATCHTOWER March 1, 1981]


[same scene on page 1 of AWAKE March 8, 1982 with male haircuts altered]
Altered Watchtower illustrations are reminiscent of
Stalin & "Big Brother"

In Orwell's novel Big Brother's men altered not only the illustrations in books, magazines, and newspapers, but also the text. Josef Stalin presumably did the same. And the Watchtower Society follows suit.

Compare page 12 of the January 1, 1989, Watchtower with its bound volume reprint. In the original magazine, paragraph 8 ends with the statement that the apostle Paul’s missionary activity laid the foundation for “a work that would be completed in our 20th century.”—a subtle prophecy that ‘the end’ will come by the year 2000 A.D. This sentence is changed in the bound volume reprint to read “a work that would be completed in our day.” Yet there is no footnote or other indication that anything was changed. How similar, again, to "Big Brother"'s world where:

Everything faded into the mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth. …This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs— … without any admission that any alteration had been made.—Nineteen Eighty-Four, G. Orwell (Signet ed.) p. 36-37
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