George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, first published in 1949, is gaining renewed attention as a work still relevant for America in 2022. Curious readers, even those familiar with the book, might take into account the circumstances of its creation.
Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura in the Hebrides, one of the most remote outposts in the entire British Isles, the rough equivalent of Attu or Adak in the Aleutian chain. The author’s Barnhill residence was miles from stores and neighbors, not the sort of place any professional typist wanted to go.
Orwell typed the whole book himself, working long through the night, to the point that family members would wake up when he stopped typing. According to his publisher Fredric Warburg, the Nineteen Eighty-Four manuscript “came in virtually perfect, with hardly a comma wrong.” That betokens deep inspiration, which comes through from friends in Orwell Remembered.
“There was something loveable and sweet about him,” wrote Malcolm Muggeridge, “and without any question, an element of authentic prophecy in his terrible vision of the future.”
“His kind has walked this way before,” wrote the poet Paul Potts, who stayed with Orwell on Jura. “You will find them in the Bible. Amos might have been his cousin once removed.”
Orwell believed that ordinary Americans enjoyed the most freedom of any people on earth. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell quotes the American Declaration of Independence, which in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, would be pure thoughtcrime. Consider other key parallels with the United States today.
“Centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of value,” Winston Smith discovers. “One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Streets, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets—anything that might throw light on the past had been systematically altered.” In other words, “history has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
For Joe Biden’s handlers, America is nothing more than a bastion of racist oppression, founded to preserve and expand slavery. Like the party’s take on capitalism, America had never produced anything of value. So down come the statues, inscriptions, and anything that might throw light on the past.
Biden’s Department of the Interior has announced replacements for more than 600 names the Board on Geographic Names deems “racist and derogatory.” According to Biden Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, it’s all in the quest for an “inclusive America.”
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Big Brother supposedly watches over all, but goods are in short supply and the people must queue up for everything. As Winston Smith understands, “statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.” Under English Socialism—“Ingsoc” in Newspeak—things were as good as they could be, and since the Party controlled the present, it also controlled the past.
In 2022, under American Socialism (Amsoc), inflation rages and conditions worsen by the day. Like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, Biden tells the people they live in the best of all possible worlds, if only they could see it.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the poet Ampleforth is imprisoned and tortured for letting the word “God” remain at the end of a line. In 2022 under the Biden junta, traditional religion cannot be allowed to retain influence. The junta targets those who uphold the right to life and oppose prenatal infanticide.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Inner Party” members such as O’Brien enjoy special privileges and wield special powers. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” O’Brien tells Winston Smith. “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”
In 2022, the Democrats rule with support of the American “Inner Party,” the unelected ranks of the deep state. Witness the deployment of the FBI, Justice Department, and intelligence community against Donald Trump before, during, and after his presidency. Former Attorney General William Barr, who joined the CIA way back in law school, and defended FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi in 1992, is all-in with the FBI raid on Trump’s residence last month. The deep state also targets the people who support Trump, and anyone less than worshipful of Biden is a domestic terrorist.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four the Party stages the “Two Minutes Hate,” “Hate Week” and such. In 2022, Joe Biden has made it a full Two Years’ Hate. Should that be doubted, check out Biden’s September 1 speech, delivered in front of a blood-red background, his eyes a pair of slits and face the color of artificial limbs. That’s the true face of the Biden junta. Way up on Jura, in the final months of his short life, George Orwell understood the dynamics.
In his apartment, Winston Smith finds an alcove where the telescreen can’t see him. There he writes down his thoughts such as “freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”
Smith recalls a time “when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”
In America in 2022, there are still minds the thought police can’t reach. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith found refuge in an old pasture that recalls the “golden country” of his dreams. Likewise, in America there are still states, counties, and cities that respect freedom, choice, and reality more than others.
Winston Smith finds he is not alone and flees to the golden country with Julia, a kindred spirit. In America in 2022, millions remain devoted to the Constitution, individual rights, and the rule of law. They recall an earlier time of privacy, love, friendship, and family. They still find merit in their history and their faith, and value in their own efforts and experience.
Countless millions of people are never going to love Big Brother Joe Biden, or accept the Biden junta’s steady demolition of the United States of America. As the crucial midterms approach, these millions can find inspiration in George Orwell, who passed away on January 21, 1950.
“His life was a duel fought against lies, the weapon he chose, the English language,” wrote Paul Potts. “He carried no shield, used for a weapon plain facts loaded into simple English prose.”
“He looked to a future in which he hoped men might outlive the night of tyranny and falsehood, of ignorance and mediocrity, into which we often seem to be passing,” wrote Canadian writer George Woodcock, who met Orwell at the BBC during World War II. “None, indeed, knew better than he how heavy the odds were against such a hope, but he still thought it was worth fighting for with all the indignation and humanity of his nature.”