It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump sitting down with Orwell’s most famous book, but Stephen Miller might have. Russ Vought almost certainly has. The lines everyone remembers - “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” - are only the surface. The real machinery of the novel is elsewhere.
Think about where Winston Smith worked: the Ministry of Truth, where his job was to rewrite yesterday’s facts to match today’s party line. Inconvenient articles, photographs, and records went straight into the “memory hole,” never to be seen again.
The dynamic should feel familiar. “January 6 was a love‑in, not an insurrection.” “Lying Ted.” “Crooked Hillary.” Claims that Biden leads a crime family while the Trump family somehow does not. The labels flip, the accusations invert, and the narrative is endlessly re‑edited to suit the needs of the moment.
Winston fed documents into an incinerator. Trump’s allies erase references to slavery, downplay the insurrection, and scrub anything that contradicts the theology of MAGA. The goal is the same: control the story by controlling what people are allowed to remember.
And then there’s the final flourish of irony: naming a propaganda platform “Truth Social.”
If it’s been a while, pick up 1984 again. It reads less like a warning and more like a playbook for modern authoritarians.
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Thank you Hawkeye
We know Trump hasn't read 1984 but his quislings are all in. Thank you Hawkeye