What Does George Orwell's '1984' Mean in 2024?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-does-george-orwells-1984-mean-in-2024-180984468/

by KnuthIsGod • 9 months ago

72 40 9 months ago

smithsonianmag.com

shmerl2• 9 months ago

It's amazing how keen Orwell was in describing the twisted mind of dictators. All of that applies today as it did then.

scuff3d• 9 months ago

The absolute irony of modern American conservatives using the phrase "Make Orwell Fiction Again" boggles the mind.

cratermoon2• 9 months 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.

rixed• 9 months ago

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.

cratermoon2• 9 months ago

Brave New World has an enemy: nonconformists within the society itself. If you ask me, that's both much more insidious and more relevant to the US in the 21st century.

pndy• 9 months ago

Probably because people tend to think in extremes and "1984" shows the ultimate dystopian world set around totalitarian regime, mass invigilation with no place for individuality. "Brave New World" is indeed much closer to our real world but honestly, I think our reality seems to be heading in a direction where we'll see more of both novels in it.

I recommend reading both and Eugene Zamiatin's "We" novel which most likely inspired both Orwell and Huxley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)?useskin=vector

lynx97• 9 months ago

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.

hagbard_c• 9 months ago

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.

hilbert427• 9 months ago

""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.

rolandog2• 9 months ago

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

hilbert427• 9 months ago

"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?

librasteve• 9 months ago

yeah someone should tell Putin that its not an instruction manual

throwmeaway222• 9 months ago

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.

shmerl2• 9 months ago

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.

terminalshort• 9 months ago

Left and right are just two strategies authoritarians use to get to the same end goal.

scotty792• 9 months ago

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.

cess11• 9 months ago

'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.

simianparrot• 9 months ago

Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” adds the missing pieces of modern dystopia.

BoredPositron• 9 months ago

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.

Lio2• 9 months ago

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...

trhway2• 9 months ago

who is to wear that boot? It is some aliens?

Lio2• 9 months ago

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.

scotty792• 9 months ago

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.

openuntil3am• 9 months ago

Maybe it's pedantic, but Orwell's title is "Nineteen Eighty-Four", not "1984".

marcusverus• 9 months ago

Even the Orwell Foundation uses the two interchangeably.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

WealthVsSurvive• 9 months ago

The same thing it did in 1944 and 1904. Kill fascists before they kill you.

rammer• 9 months ago

Hey, it's all good for lefties to cry about, but wasn't the same platforms enforcing censorship and unannounced shadow bans under the previous administratio

What Does George Orwell's '1984' Mean in 2024?

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