Tragically, in the present political and economic environment it's a lost cause.
Just about everywhere governments are against it with their incessant push towards increasing surveillance and backdooring encryption.
Big Tech—Google, Meta, Microsoft et al including their greedy shareholders—are now financially dependent on income from surveillance and ensuring privacy is nuked. If "Making Orwell fiction again" were to actually happen the economies of these trillion-dollar companies would be in jeopardy.
With such enormous sums at stake and dogged persistence from authoritarian governments it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
> With such enormous sums at stake and dogged persistence from authoritarian governments it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
Not with that attitude! We need to help inform our friends and families about how easily things can be misused against their will; case in point, the recent DEF CON presentation on smart "vape detectors" that have microphones [0].
"We need to help inform our friends and families about how easily things can be misused against their will;"
With the 'convenience' world of the modern internet and millions of users addicted to smartphones and Social Media I defy you to show me that that approach actually works (to date there's little or no evidence that it does).
Telling a heroin addict to give up doesn't work, same goes for 'electronic heroin'. I'd bet you've not given up your smartphone or Social Media. And how about your gmail account?
> Telling a heroin addict to give up doesn't work, same goes for 'electronic heroin'. I'd bet you've not given up your smartphone or Social Media. And how about your gmail account?
It's all about continuous improvements. We shouldn't "No true Scotsman"-fallacy ourselves into inaction.
The thing is, for the surveillance state to be completely obliterated, what the previous commenter said is only a sliver of what has to happen. Yes, consumers would have to put all their devices in the trash, disconnect everything from the Internet and never use it again, etc, but also start tearing out telephone poles, police vehicles, anything with a camera or microphone, etc. That is daunting, so it's understandable why so many either just give up the fight or satisfy themselves with some limp-wristed attempt like just running an ad blocker or VPN or something and calling it good.
The diligence required to stay either low or off (if you are lucky) the radar, as it were, is so exhausting as to be impossible for the common tech consumer. I tried it, for a long time and it came to be known as a War of Attrition in my head because it is one that I no longer believe we can win, having passed the point of no return by trading our privacy for safety and convenience over the course of three decades; a victory by inches for the tech companies, to be sure.
The funny part is, my problem was never with hackers, so the way the rhetoric spewed over the years claimed that this is all for my own safety never clicked with me. "Your data is safe with us!" Okay, who are you, who are you connected to or funded by and what cause do I have to trust you? I learned at a pretty young age that if someone is telling you "this is for your own good" they're the ones exploiting you. So now we have copious amounts of categorized data in the hands of entities that not only make massive profit from it, but will (if they have not already) turn it over to the increasingly conservative world governments who enjoy making lists of people they don't like.
"The diligence required to stay either low or off (if you are lucky) the radar, as it were, is so exhausting as to be impossible for the common tech consumer."
Right, I nevertheless still attempt to keep a low profile by having no Social Media or Google (phone) accounts, no gmail, using rooted phones sans Google apps, blocking both ads and JavaScript, forcing utilities to send me bills by snail mail, etc.; but as you say it's really a lost cause especially if one takes it seriously and really wants to remain anonymous on the net.
I act more out of principal than anything else. Also, I'm quite happy for family and people who know me to just contact me by phone, SMS and or email—or even snail mail (if you read my subsequent reply to the earlier comment it's pretty clear I've no Social Media addiction, not caring a damn about that stuff makes lowering one's profile easier).
I take the view that government already knows full well who I am especially given that it once employed me to do surveillance work. (No, I'm not acting hypocritically here, that work wasn't sussing out citizens but keeping an eye on nuclear materials—stopping it falling into wrong hands.)
What really annoys me is how pernicious and underhanded surveillance capitalism is. For example, despite the steps I've taken above, it only takes one or two people with Google accounts to enter my details into their phone and gmail accounts for Google to figure out who I am. Telling friends and acquaintances not to enter one's details into their phones is a hopeless task.
Google can further tighen up my address details by 'triangulation'—cross-referencing it using my neighbors' WiFi to get my SSID info, etc. Yes, I could hide that info but it's too much trouble.
In my other reply it's clear that governments dropped the ball early on with respect to user privacy, what I didn't mention was that it didn't take them long to realize that having Big Tech to do the heavy lifting with respect to surveiling citizens was and is a great advantage. Thus, their great reluctance to act.
Dodging both Big Tech and government is essentially fruitless. The best I can do is to render the data collected for advertising purposes worthless. To date, at least to my knowledge, I've been successful as I've never received any targeted advertising.
But then how would I ever know given that I've always been very efficient at blocking ads? :-)
> I take the view that government already knows full well who I am especially given that it once employed me to do surveillance work.
I have to imagine you have some stories or lessons worth sharing, for sure.
There was a point where I said the same thing; I didn't really care if the government knew my activities and whatnot because I was not hiding anything, and well, part of participating as a tax-payer in a functioning society involves records and information. That I get.
However, regardless of where you or anyone reading this stands on the political spectrum, particularly in the US, you'd have to admit that there's some trepidation regarding that massive amount of information about each of us that is out there and how it can be used against you. To use a pointed example, I would rather not be labeled and treated as a dissenter because I played Dungeons & Dragons online with a person who identifies as queer or trans, even if I may or may not have been completely unaware of that fact. That's just one such extreme example, but it does not seem so extreme anymore, and with each passing week, it seems like using information against people in that exact way is getting more and more normalized.
My biggest fear about the US and Big Tech collaboratively heading in that direction is being actively realized, and that is ultimately what had caused me to...not "give up," but more akin to "stop fighting." Don't have the energy anymore, barely enough to sweep up some of my own footprints, let alone those of people I care about that DO have that social media addiction you and I lack.
Appreciate the discussion and your perspective, given that it is a little more "insider" than most. I wish I had more to add, but I can see my cynicism creeping back into my replies.
note: since my example is a hot-button, I want to ensure that I am clear about my own stance, here. I do not care how anyone identifies, that's up to them and not for me to decide for them. All I care about is whether or not they're a good person, treating others with the same kindness, respect and support that they would like to receive. Bottom line.
Until recently the two greatest and most financial monopolies in history were the Dutch and British East India Companies but their power and wealth were amassed over a period of a hundred or more years not in about a generation as has happened here with Big Tech.
Twenty or so years ago after the Dot-com bubble had burst, opportunistic techies and investors caught everyone off guard by finding ways of not only turning the Internet's debris and discarded detritus into the fastest and largest moneymaking concerns in all of human history but they also managed to monopolize the web to the point where they now essentially control and or influence just about every type of online activity. Nowadays, Big Tech effectively owns the internet.
What they did was unprecedented, they hijacked control of the internet by manipulating its users through psychological means that would have even shocked the likes of Edward Bernays and David Ogilvy, those masters of propaganda and advertising would not have thought such a degree of control at all feasible.
We now have well over five billion people on Social Media (>63% of the world's population) and Google dominates search with just on 90% of the market share with some 5 trillion search results per year—all of which they've achieved in just 20 or so years. These are unrivalled and staggering—in fact terrifying—statistics! Not even that evil but brilliant propagandist Goebbels—who is often touted as the greatest manipulator in history—would ever have dreamed such a huge turnaround would have been possible in such a short time. In a speech to the party faithful on 9 January 1928 he discusses the nature of propaganda and how to bring about change in the worldview of a population with carefully crafted ideas so as to manipulate their minds into believing the propagandist's message but he never extended that to the notion of making 'convenience' so indispensable to the point where addiction takes hold and reason is abandoned. Like a ratchet on a cog, once Big Tech entraps users they find escape or turning back impossible. (In the light of events of recent years, it's well worth reading that speech.)
It truly beats me how you can say "it's all about continuous improvements". In my view Big Tech's unregulated manipulation of human minds on such a monumental scale is one of the most disastrous events in human history.
The strategies that those behind Big Tech concocted were no doubt truly brilliant—so brilliant that even regulators and governments were blinded to both their negative effects on users and to the inevitable monopolies that would form. Their own addiction parasitized their minds against seeing what were blatantly obvious dangers at the outset. For 20 years they thus took no regulatory action.
Larry Ellison recently said that “Citizens will be on their best behaviour, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on”.
In UK we’ve recently introduced a series of laws that force people to identify themselves online and the introduction of a digital ID scheme.
We’ve recently had some high profile arrests for free speech violations.
We even have TVs and cars that spy on us.
These fuckers are actively trying to build a boot to stand on the face of humanity.
> Larry Ellison recently said that “Citizens will be on their best behaviour, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on”.
John Romero had a speech that I part basically implied that behavioral cheat detection techniques from online games will ultimately seep into detecting crime from real world mass surveillance data.
‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.’
O’Brien says it to Winston after he's through torturing him in Room 101. It represents total surveillance and total control, all of the time, forever.
This is the vision that Ellison, Zuckerberg, CCP, Musk, et al have for us, but not for them. They get the good coffee and they get to turn their "telescreens" off.
The problem with democracy is its noise. With regard to such matters most citizens couldn't give a fuck, and those few who do care will have countermanding views. Thus, opinionated views mostly cancel out and governments (mainly the faceless gnomes within the bureaucracy) are left to legislate whatever they like into law. More often than not, laws end up reflecting things that make their lives easier.
In short, democracy best serves vested interests, much less so ordinary citizens.
I really thought we were more resilient against a post truth world. There were always signs that we are headed into the post truth direction but I was not expecting it to flip like a switch.
With EU Chat Control, we are making yet another big step towards the fears that this article hints at. It could have been the television that watches you, with SmartTVs all around, but no. It is your universal mobile communcation device that watches you, which is even worse. Almost as if your pen would submit your writing to the party.
Since Von der Leyen, I am afraid of what the EU has become and will do to us in the future. It is the perfect mirror of "Big Brother", a system that started out with good intentions, and has clearly become malevolent.
> It is the perfect mirror of "Big Brother", a system that started out with good intentions
That is what those using 1984 - a parable for a socialist Soviet-like state - as a user manual want you to believe, that they have good intentions. Most of them don't, they're just in it to gain and keep power for their own purposes while wearing the cloak of compassionate protectors of the downtrodden. Don't fall for it, don't be a sucker to paraphrase the video which was posted here not long ago.
I find Aldous Huxley's Brave New World much more relatable to 21st century US society. A great deal more from the society of The World State and Fordism maps to current structures.
There is an important element in 1984 that is missing from BNW and very relevant to modern history: the never-ending fictious war between several similar regimes to justify internal control.
In my opinion, the movie "Brazil" (inspired by 1984) made the same argument even more modern by replacing that war on some external "enemy" with a war on internal "terrorists".
Unfortunately, 1984 and BNW are not exclusive, and certainy social psychology can implement elements of both.
'While most contemporary societies are nothing like the book’s dystopia, in the context of today’s proliferating misinformation and disinformation, the Party’s primary propaganda slogans—“War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery” and “Ignorance is strength”—don’t seem all that far-fetched.'
Sure, they're much worse, relying instead on conditioning people to discipline themselves, removing the need for a symbolic Brother, Daddy, Брат (Brat), when subduing the masses.
Orwell was reflecting on the stiff, monotonic and easily identifiable mass communication of Stalin and Goebbels, which fell out of fashion at around the same time as the novel was published. While the Soviet never managed to invent a new totalising regime, it's main opponent did and exported it by hard as well as soft forms of power.
If only our problems was a Big Brother and inscrutable bureaucratic mazes hidden away in concrete buildings, that would seem almost utopian compared to our current predicament.
Fascism and authoritarianism are often mischaracterized as strictly left- or right-wing ideologies, but both extremes can manifest in ways reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. The core of authoritarianism lies in control and conformity, not in a specific political alignment.
The far-right, often rooted in ethno-nationalism or white supremacy, mirrors 1984 by enforcing a rigid hierarchy where inclusion depends on immutable traits like race. If you don’t fit the prescribed identity, you’re inherently an “other,” excluded or dehumanized, much like the Party’s rigid caste system in Orwell’s dystopia.
Conversely, the far-left can embody 1984 through ideological conformity, punishing “wrong-think” with social or institutional ostracism. Questioning narratives—whether about COVID-19 origins, vaccine safety, or other politically charged topics—can mark you as an outsider, silenced or vilified for deviating from the approved orthodoxy.
The far-left often stifles open debate, dismissing dissent on contentious issues as misinformation or heresy, creating a culture where only sanctioned ideas prevail. The far-right, while sometimes more permissive of free speech, demands unwavering adherence to traditional values or legalism, where any challenge to authority or “law and order” is met with condemnation.
Both extremes weaponize conformity—whether through identity or ideology—to suppress individuality and enforce control, echoing the totalitarian essence of 1984. True freedom lies in rejecting these rigid dogmas and embracing open, principled discourse.
It's tiring how people from US are always super-concerned if something is right or left. Far or near. While usually completely failing to notice that the system they have is not even a two party system. It's two-halves-party system that's closer to single party system of China than it is to any modern multi-party democracy.
1984 itself summarizes it very succinctly - power itself is the goal. All the "left" or "right" coloring of it becomes noise compared to the primary motivation of all dictatorships - self perpetuating power.
""Make Orwell fiction again,…""
Tragically, in the present political and economic environment it's a lost cause.
Just about everywhere governments are against it with their incessant push towards increasing surveillance and backdooring encryption.
Big Tech—Google, Meta, Microsoft et al including their greedy shareholders—are now financially dependent on income from surveillance and ensuring privacy is nuked. If "Making Orwell fiction again" were to actually happen the economies of these trillion-dollar companies would be in jeopardy.
With such enormous sums at stake and dogged persistence from authoritarian governments it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
> With such enormous sums at stake and dogged persistence from authoritarian governments it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
Not with that attitude! We need to help inform our friends and families about how easily things can be misused against their will; case in point, the recent DEF CON presentation on smart "vape detectors" that have microphones [0].
[0]: https://youtu.be/WCnojaEpF2I
"We need to help inform our friends and families about how easily things can be misused against their will;"
With the 'convenience' world of the modern internet and millions of users addicted to smartphones and Social Media I defy you to show me that that approach actually works (to date there's little or no evidence that it does).
Telling a heroin addict to give up doesn't work, same goes for 'electronic heroin'. I'd bet you've not given up your smartphone or Social Media. And how about your gmail account?
> Telling a heroin addict to give up doesn't work, same goes for 'electronic heroin'. I'd bet you've not given up your smartphone or Social Media. And how about your gmail account?
It's all about continuous improvements. We shouldn't "No true Scotsman"-fallacy ourselves into inaction.
The thing is, for the surveillance state to be completely obliterated, what the previous commenter said is only a sliver of what has to happen. Yes, consumers would have to put all their devices in the trash, disconnect everything from the Internet and never use it again, etc, but also start tearing out telephone poles, police vehicles, anything with a camera or microphone, etc. That is daunting, so it's understandable why so many either just give up the fight or satisfy themselves with some limp-wristed attempt like just running an ad blocker or VPN or something and calling it good.
The diligence required to stay either low or off (if you are lucky) the radar, as it were, is so exhausting as to be impossible for the common tech consumer. I tried it, for a long time and it came to be known as a War of Attrition in my head because it is one that I no longer believe we can win, having passed the point of no return by trading our privacy for safety and convenience over the course of three decades; a victory by inches for the tech companies, to be sure.
The funny part is, my problem was never with hackers, so the way the rhetoric spewed over the years claimed that this is all for my own safety never clicked with me. "Your data is safe with us!" Okay, who are you, who are you connected to or funded by and what cause do I have to trust you? I learned at a pretty young age that if someone is telling you "this is for your own good" they're the ones exploiting you. So now we have copious amounts of categorized data in the hands of entities that not only make massive profit from it, but will (if they have not already) turn it over to the increasingly conservative world governments who enjoy making lists of people they don't like.
And we all know where that leads.
"The diligence required to stay either low or off (if you are lucky) the radar, as it were, is so exhausting as to be impossible for the common tech consumer."
Right, I nevertheless still attempt to keep a low profile by having no Social Media or Google (phone) accounts, no gmail, using rooted phones sans Google apps, blocking both ads and JavaScript, forcing utilities to send me bills by snail mail, etc.; but as you say it's really a lost cause especially if one takes it seriously and really wants to remain anonymous on the net.
I act more out of principal than anything else. Also, I'm quite happy for family and people who know me to just contact me by phone, SMS and or email—or even snail mail (if you read my subsequent reply to the earlier comment it's pretty clear I've no Social Media addiction, not caring a damn about that stuff makes lowering one's profile easier).
I take the view that government already knows full well who I am especially given that it once employed me to do surveillance work. (No, I'm not acting hypocritically here, that work wasn't sussing out citizens but keeping an eye on nuclear materials—stopping it falling into wrong hands.)
What really annoys me is how pernicious and underhanded surveillance capitalism is. For example, despite the steps I've taken above, it only takes one or two people with Google accounts to enter my details into their phone and gmail accounts for Google to figure out who I am. Telling friends and acquaintances not to enter one's details into their phones is a hopeless task.
Google can further tighen up my address details by 'triangulation'—cross-referencing it using my neighbors' WiFi to get my SSID info, etc. Yes, I could hide that info but it's too much trouble.
In my other reply it's clear that governments dropped the ball early on with respect to user privacy, what I didn't mention was that it didn't take them long to realize that having Big Tech to do the heavy lifting with respect to surveiling citizens was and is a great advantage. Thus, their great reluctance to act.
Dodging both Big Tech and government is essentially fruitless. The best I can do is to render the data collected for advertising purposes worthless. To date, at least to my knowledge, I've been successful as I've never received any targeted advertising.
But then how would I ever know given that I've always been very efficient at blocking ads? :-)
> I take the view that government already knows full well who I am especially given that it once employed me to do surveillance work.
I have to imagine you have some stories or lessons worth sharing, for sure.
There was a point where I said the same thing; I didn't really care if the government knew my activities and whatnot because I was not hiding anything, and well, part of participating as a tax-payer in a functioning society involves records and information. That I get.
However, regardless of where you or anyone reading this stands on the political spectrum, particularly in the US, you'd have to admit that there's some trepidation regarding that massive amount of information about each of us that is out there and how it can be used against you. To use a pointed example, I would rather not be labeled and treated as a dissenter because I played Dungeons & Dragons online with a person who identifies as queer or trans, even if I may or may not have been completely unaware of that fact. That's just one such extreme example, but it does not seem so extreme anymore, and with each passing week, it seems like using information against people in that exact way is getting more and more normalized.
My biggest fear about the US and Big Tech collaboratively heading in that direction is being actively realized, and that is ultimately what had caused me to...not "give up," but more akin to "stop fighting." Don't have the energy anymore, barely enough to sweep up some of my own footprints, let alone those of people I care about that DO have that social media addiction you and I lack.
Appreciate the discussion and your perspective, given that it is a little more "insider" than most. I wish I had more to add, but I can see my cynicism creeping back into my replies.
note: since my example is a hot-button, I want to ensure that I am clear about my own stance, here. I do not care how anyone identifies, that's up to them and not for me to decide for them. All I care about is whether or not they're a good person, treating others with the same kindness, respect and support that they would like to receive. Bottom line.
"It's all about continuous improvements."
Until recently the two greatest and most financial monopolies in history were the Dutch and British East India Companies but their power and wealth were amassed over a period of a hundred or more years not in about a generation as has happened here with Big Tech.
Twenty or so years ago after the Dot-com bubble had burst, opportunistic techies and investors caught everyone off guard by finding ways of not only turning the Internet's debris and discarded detritus into the fastest and largest moneymaking concerns in all of human history but they also managed to monopolize the web to the point where they now essentially control and or influence just about every type of online activity. Nowadays, Big Tech effectively owns the internet.
What they did was unprecedented, they hijacked control of the internet by manipulating its users through psychological means that would have even shocked the likes of Edward Bernays and David Ogilvy, those masters of propaganda and advertising would not have thought such a degree of control at all feasible.
We now have well over five billion people on Social Media (>63% of the world's population) and Google dominates search with just on 90% of the market share with some 5 trillion search results per year—all of which they've achieved in just 20 or so years. These are unrivalled and staggering—in fact terrifying—statistics! Not even that evil but brilliant propagandist Goebbels—who is often touted as the greatest manipulator in history—would ever have dreamed such a huge turnaround would have been possible in such a short time. In a speech to the party faithful on 9 January 1928 he discusses the nature of propaganda and how to bring about change in the worldview of a population with carefully crafted ideas so as to manipulate their minds into believing the propagandist's message but he never extended that to the notion of making 'convenience' so indispensable to the point where addiction takes hold and reason is abandoned. Like a ratchet on a cog, once Big Tech entraps users they find escape or turning back impossible. (In the light of events of recent years, it's well worth reading that speech.)
It truly beats me how you can say "it's all about continuous improvements". In my view Big Tech's unregulated manipulation of human minds on such a monumental scale is one of the most disastrous events in human history.
The strategies that those behind Big Tech concocted were no doubt truly brilliant—so brilliant that even regulators and governments were blinded to both their negative effects on users and to the inevitable monopolies that would form. Their own addiction parasitized their minds against seeing what were blatantly obvious dangers at the outset. For 20 years they thus took no regulatory action.
Reversing the problem is now nigh on impossible.
Maybe it's pedantic, but Orwell's title is "Nineteen Eighty-Four", not "1984".
Larry Ellison recently said that “Citizens will be on their best behaviour, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on”.
In UK we’ve recently introduced a series of laws that force people to identify themselves online and the introduction of a digital ID scheme.
We’ve recently had some high profile arrests for free speech violations.
We even have TVs and cars that spy on us.
These fuckers are actively trying to build a boot to stand on the face of humanity.
https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveill...
> Larry Ellison recently said that “Citizens will be on their best behaviour, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on”.
John Romero had a speech that I part basically implied that behavioral cheat detection techniques from online games will ultimately seep into detecting crime from real world mass surveillance data.
who is to wear that boot? It is some aliens?
The boot is a metaphore for the state in 1984.
‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.’
O’Brien says it to Winston after he's through torturing him in Room 101. It represents total surveillance and total control, all of the time, forever.
This is the vision that Ellison, Zuckerberg, CCP, Musk, et al have for us, but not for them. They get the good coffee and they get to turn their "telescreens" off.
>They get the good coffee and they get to turn their "telescreens" off.
are they really? And if they are, why we let them?
"…why we let them?"
The problem with democracy is its noise. With regard to such matters most citizens couldn't give a fuck, and those few who do care will have countermanding views. Thus, opinionated views mostly cancel out and governments (mainly the faceless gnomes within the bureaucracy) are left to legislate whatever they like into law. More often than not, laws end up reflecting things that make their lives easier.
In short, democracy best serves vested interests, much less so ordinary citizens.
I really thought we were more resilient against a post truth world. There were always signs that we are headed into the post truth direction but I was not expecting it to flip like a switch.
With EU Chat Control, we are making yet another big step towards the fears that this article hints at. It could have been the television that watches you, with SmartTVs all around, but no. It is your universal mobile communcation device that watches you, which is even worse. Almost as if your pen would submit your writing to the party.
Since Von der Leyen, I am afraid of what the EU has become and will do to us in the future. It is the perfect mirror of "Big Brother", a system that started out with good intentions, and has clearly become malevolent.
> It is the perfect mirror of "Big Brother", a system that started out with good intentions
That is what those using 1984 - a parable for a socialist Soviet-like state - as a user manual want you to believe, that they have good intentions. Most of them don't, they're just in it to gain and keep power for their own purposes while wearing the cloak of compassionate protectors of the downtrodden. Don't fall for it, don't be a sucker to paraphrase the video which was posted here not long ago.
I find Aldous Huxley's Brave New World much more relatable to 21st century US society. A great deal more from the society of The World State and Fordism maps to current structures.
There is an important element in 1984 that is missing from BNW and very relevant to modern history: the never-ending fictious war between several similar regimes to justify internal control.
In my opinion, the movie "Brazil" (inspired by 1984) made the same argument even more modern by replacing that war on some external "enemy" with a war on internal "terrorists".
Unfortunately, 1984 and BNW are not exclusive, and certainy social psychology can implement elements of both.
It's amazing how keen Orwell was in describing the twisted mind of dictators. All of that applies today as it did then.
'While most contemporary societies are nothing like the book’s dystopia, in the context of today’s proliferating misinformation and disinformation, the Party’s primary propaganda slogans—“War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery” and “Ignorance is strength”—don’t seem all that far-fetched.'
Sure, they're much worse, relying instead on conditioning people to discipline themselves, removing the need for a symbolic Brother, Daddy, Брат (Brat), when subduing the masses.
Orwell was reflecting on the stiff, monotonic and easily identifiable mass communication of Stalin and Goebbels, which fell out of fashion at around the same time as the novel was published. While the Soviet never managed to invent a new totalising regime, it's main opponent did and exported it by hard as well as soft forms of power.
If only our problems was a Big Brother and inscrutable bureaucratic mazes hidden away in concrete buildings, that would seem almost utopian compared to our current predicament.
Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” adds the missing pieces of modern dystopia.
Fascism and authoritarianism are often mischaracterized as strictly left- or right-wing ideologies, but both extremes can manifest in ways reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. The core of authoritarianism lies in control and conformity, not in a specific political alignment.
The far-right, often rooted in ethno-nationalism or white supremacy, mirrors 1984 by enforcing a rigid hierarchy where inclusion depends on immutable traits like race. If you don’t fit the prescribed identity, you’re inherently an “other,” excluded or dehumanized, much like the Party’s rigid caste system in Orwell’s dystopia.
Conversely, the far-left can embody 1984 through ideological conformity, punishing “wrong-think” with social or institutional ostracism. Questioning narratives—whether about COVID-19 origins, vaccine safety, or other politically charged topics—can mark you as an outsider, silenced or vilified for deviating from the approved orthodoxy.
The far-left often stifles open debate, dismissing dissent on contentious issues as misinformation or heresy, creating a culture where only sanctioned ideas prevail. The far-right, while sometimes more permissive of free speech, demands unwavering adherence to traditional values or legalism, where any challenge to authority or “law and order” is met with condemnation.
Both extremes weaponize conformity—whether through identity or ideology—to suppress individuality and enforce control, echoing the totalitarian essence of 1984. True freedom lies in rejecting these rigid dogmas and embracing open, principled discourse.
It's tiring how people from US are always super-concerned if something is right or left. Far or near. While usually completely failing to notice that the system they have is not even a two party system. It's two-halves-party system that's closer to single party system of China than it is to any modern multi-party democracy.
Left and right are just two strategies authoritarians use to get to the same end goal.
1984 itself summarizes it very succinctly - power itself is the goal. All the "left" or "right" coloring of it becomes noise compared to the primary motivation of all dictatorships - self perpetuating power.
The absolute irony of modern American conservatives using the phrase "Make Orwell Fiction Again" boggles the mind.