The Brotherhood (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

The mysterious Brotherhood is a fictitious organization allied against the party in George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four. Supposedly it was founded by a man named Emmanuel Goldstein, one of the members of the original inner circle of the Party just below Big Brother himself. Goldstein turned on Big Brother but was miraculously somehow able to escape, and founded the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood cannot be said to be an "active" resistance movement, because their main goal is simply increasing their ranks slowly, in the hopes that generations in the future they might be able to do something. In the film of the same name, O'Brien implies that perhaps in "A thousand years" there might be an attack on the party by The Brotherhood. It is possible, given this initiative, that the party could be overthrown by the 31st century. However, in the present day, even if they aren't active enough to actually cause any damage, the Party's propaganda blames pretty much anything that goes wrong on sabotage by Brotherhood spies.

Very little information is given as to whether the Brotherhood actually exists. Winston Smith, the novels protagonist, believes it does, and is contacted discretely by Inner Party Member O'Brien. O'Brien pretends to be a member of the Brotherhood, however, he is really working for the Party, lying to gain Winston's trust and denounce him as a thought criminal. When Winston is captured and tortured inside the Ministry of Love, he asks O'Brien if the Brotherhood does exist. He tells Winston that that is a question he will never get an answer to, so it is unknown as to whether it really exists or is merely an illusion by the party.

Supposedly, Brotherhood members do not even know one another. All Brotherhood members are expected to be captured, and when they are, they will not be rescued, as to protect the secrecy of the mysterious organization. They may be able to smuggle in a razor blade to the cell, and a member would have to be very quick in killing himself before the guards came.

O'Brien heavily implies to Smith that all of the details of the Brotherhood and the very existence of Emmanuel Goldstein are just fabrications that the Party invented in order to lure out thoughtcriminals. O'Brien does analyze that there might, hypothetically, be a "real" resistance movement similar to the fake Brotherhood, but if so, it has hidden itself so well that the Party has never detected it.