Today Is...1984 Published

George Orwell got in early on hating the Soviet Union, he was hating on them back when they were ostensibly our allies and wrote 1984 especially to irk them and sales of the dystopian novel soared in America the last few years and it is a great book and i would urge everybody to read it and not only to see what the TV programmes Room 101 and Big Brother are all about and not just because it is a brilliant read but also because although it may seem absurd, some of the concepts in the book such as doublethink and thought police have been acted out in front of us.
The quotes from the Trump administration regarding 'Alternative facts' and 'Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening' are dangerously close to the line from the novel that read: 'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears'.
The lies told over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made people far less willing to believe the media and plays into the often repeated line of 'fake news' to describe any coverage which is not favourable to politicians despite obvious evidence that they are lying, or as Orwell put it: 'political language designed to make lies sound truthful'.
The key message running through Nineteen Eighty-Four is that the purpose of propaganda is to narrow and limit the human range of thinking but where we differ from going full Orwell is that the novel's Big Brother tried to hide what it was doing whereas the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump just lied and didn't bother to try and hide it.
The most damning and overarching line from Orwell is that 'Ignorance is Strength' and it is the ignorance of the politicians supporters, rejecting what they see with their own eyes and ears that allow them to carry on, and get away with, what they do.
It is no surprise that people are reaching for 1984 to gain some understanding of what they are really seeing and hearing.