Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power to directly reach certain goals of interest by, for example, revealing an existing problem, using physical force, highlighting an alternative, or demonstrating a possible solution. Both direct action and actions appealing to others can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the action participants. Nonviolent direct action may include sit-ins, strikes, street blockades, sabotage, and counter-economics. Nonviolent direct action has historically been an assertive regular feature of the tactics employed
… Read more by social movements, including Mahatma Gandhi's Indian Independence Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Anarchists organize almost exclusively through direct action, this manifests as a varied set of actions, non-violent or violent. Direct action is used by anarchists due to a rejection of party politics, and refusal to work within hierarchical bureaucratic institutions.
Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power "for its own sake" over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens (with the exception of the Proles). The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan "Big Brother is watching you": a maxim that is ubiquitously on display. In modern culture, the term "Big Brother" has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to
… Read more civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance.
A police state describes a state where its government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and authoritarian regimes. The best-known literary treatment of the police state is George Orwell's novel 1984, which describes Britain under a totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and feeds) a perpetual war as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance, policing, and modification of language and the way people think in order to make dissent not only swiftly punished, but also grammatically and logically
… Read more impossible to conceive and express. The state destroys not only the literal freedom after action and thought meant by expressions like "freedom of thought", but also literal freedom of thought.