A potential autocratic authorities that uses mass surveillance to reinvent truth and tyrannize citizens is the cautionary tale of author George Orwell’s 1984. It was once a work of fiction, but it now reads like a dangerously accurate representation of the current. From the media’s rejection of achievement principles to the media’s adjustment of vocabulary, 2024 is looking exceedingly like 1984. Below are 15 instances of how quotations from Orwell’s nightmare futuristic masterpiece have evolved into descriptors of reality.
1. Do n’t Believe Your Own Eyes
” The Party instructed you to accept the testimony presented by your ears and eyes.” It was their last, most important order”.
2. Endless War
They “add nothing to the world’s success because whatever they produce is used for war,” and the goal of a battle is always to be in a better position to start a new one.
3. Separating Infants From Mothers At Birth
” Currently, we are breaking down the pre-Revolution mental models that have been around since before the Revolution: children may be taken from their parents at beginning, just like one takes eggs from a hen.”
4. Hatred Of Purity And Goodness
” I hate beauty, I hate god! I do n’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be” crooked to the core.”
5. The News Lies
” … one knows the news is all lies anyway”.
6. Destruction Of The Family
The Party had turned the sexual impulse into evidence, and it was harmful to the Party. They had used the impulse of marriage in a similar way. The kids, on the other hand, were
consistently abused their families and taught to monitor their behavior and report any deviations. The family had evolved into a” Thought Police” extension.
7. Social Validity
Do you not realize that Newspeak’s main goal is to narrow the field of idea? In the end, we will make writing thought-crime absolutely meaningless because there will be no words to express it.
8. Persecution Of Political Competitors
” Power is not a means, it is an end … The subject of persecution is harassment”.
9. The Stupid Are Suffering
” How does one person proclaim his authority over another, Winston”? Winston thought.
” By making him experience”, he said.
” Exactly. By making him experience. Compliance is not enough. How can you be certain that he is doing your would rather than his own if he is suffering?
10. Truth Is Redefined
The freedom to say that two plus two equals four is what it means.
11. Hypocrisy From Government Agencies
The Ministry of Peace deals with conflict, the Ministry of Truth with rests, the Ministry of Love with abuse, and the Ministry of Plenty with hunger. These contradictions are no sudden, nor do they end from from normal dishonesty: they are purposeful exercises in doublethink.”
12. Contradicting Beliefs
” Foreshadowing means the power of holding two conflicting views in one’s mind instantly, and accepting both of them.”
13. Dates Altered
” Every document has been destroyed or falsified, every publication altered, every photo has been repainted, every monument and road building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”
14. No Trust
” We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one would ever dare to put their trust in a wife, a child, or a friend. However, there wo n’t be any wives or friends in the future.
15. Statistics Are Lies
” The amazing statistics kept pouring out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking- pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity.”
Monroe Harless is a summer intern at The Federalist. She recently earned degrees in political science and journalism from the University of Georgia.
