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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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?
It's all about continuous improvements. We shouldn't "No true Scotsman"-fallacy ourselves into inaction.
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.
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.
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...
‘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.
shmerl•3h ago