Orwell’s 1984 is All the Rage Again
Big Brother is Back!
George Orwell’s dystopian cautionary tale, 1984, is topping the charts once more.
1984 has spent several days in the top ten on Amazon’s best seller list.
If you’re not familiar with Orwell’s totalitarian tale:
First published in 1949 and imagining a future authoritarian society, “1984” is widely regarded as one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. Its state, Oceania, employs a language called Newspeak (and words like “doubleplusgood”) to limit freedom of thought.
The book focuses in particular on the impact of omnipresent government surveillance and the state’s use of propaganda to enforce orthodoxy to an all-powerful leader, known as “Big Brother.”
The novel’s newfound popularity comes several days after White House press secretary Sean Spicer argued defiantly that Trump’s swearing-in Friday drew the largest-ever audience for an inauguration “period,” despite obvious photo and statistical evidence to the contrary.
Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway later defended that argument by saying Spicer’s false claims were actually “alternative facts.”
That phrasing was reminiscent of Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth,” which, he wrote, concerns itself with “lies.”
But is Trump’s presidency the actual reason 1984 is once again a chart-topper?
Probably not:
1984’s recent spike has been notable, but the novel has perpetually hovered on the bestseller list, featuring in the top 100 of Amazon’s most-ordered books for the last three years (in the last 24 hours, it’s jumped from around #91 to #56 on the list of books purchased on Amazon in 2017). For other works, though, their rise in popularity seems more directly linked to the emergence of Trump as a political leader. Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, a 1935 novel about the rise of an authoritarian fascist leader in the U.S., is currently the 26th most-purchased book on Amazon, and its spike on Google Trends corresponds with the U.S. presidential election on November 8.
If there’s anything I can appreciate about President Trump, it’s how his election has prompted progressives to re-explore classics like 1984 and even founding principles. Except for the second amendment.
[Featured Image: By Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.(Original text: http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/), Public Domain, Link]
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Comments
“Except for the second amendment.”
I’ve read elsewhere that a lot of Leftists are arming up.
All good with me. I actually do believe that an armed society is a polite society.
“…an armed society is a polite society …”
As long as we’re quoting Heinlein here’s one the lefties should consider: “The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom.”
Like you I have no problem with the far left arming, with the caveat that they learn proper gun safety, handling, and usage. Should they just buy a piece and some ammo and figure that’s all they need to do to prevent being “shipped to the camps” [not something Trump every suggested] they’re going to hurt someone, probably a friend and when that happens they’ll blame the gun maker … or us “gun nuts” of the NRA for not telling them guns are dangerous in untrained hands!
The Left IS Oceania.
And they’re too self-unaware to realize it.
Orwell was an optimist.
Comment wins the internet today.
I’ll bet if Trump were to release his taxes we’d find out he owns the company printing 1984 and probably Fahrenheit 451. Make Reading Classics Great Again!!!! MrCGA
😉
Yep a bunch of liberals on ze facebook tried to shout me down today with Orwellian rants. I pointed out to them that the silencing of their voices as evidenced by their numerous freak out posts was deafening!
A topical subject, even if the masses don’t know quite why.
Recall that Eric Blair (i.e., Orwell) died of tuberculosis.
The very same tuberculosis that Obama’s “refugees” have been bringing into the US.
“Fundamental transformation”, indeed.
Simon Schama in his BBC “A History of Britain” has an episode called “The Two Winstons”…one Churchill and the other Smith of 1984…referring to Orwell. Great episode.
(As for Schama… here is a historian that can capture the past but is lost in his Progressive present to the dangers of globalization and uncontrolled immigration.)
The left’s lack of self-awareness is frightening. Trump beats them at their own game and now they are concerned about “the truth.”
one thing that fascinates me, the number of people that read the book and never realize the ending.
For Progressives… it’s a happy ending…. or they think it is.
For the progs, 1984 is a manual.
Confides a Progressive…
You’re a left wing enabling kook, always have been. You side with the progs every time, asshole.
As ironic as it is that leftists are buying 1984 in response to Trump, I find it more hilarious that they are buying the book in troves because it’s the “hip” thing to do. I can’t wait until they all start pretending they actually read it.
Orwell’s book is simply an amazing piece of literature. That being said, people should really be required to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for this is a piece of fiction, written in the 1950’s that contains one event after another that are becoming the reality we see today. While Orwell’s 1984 remains fiction, Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is more and more frequently becoming today’s headlines in the news.
Much of Orwell’s vision came true during the Obama administration.
The liberal press became the propaganda arm of the government.
Speaking the truth became a punishable act (think about climate change).
There are other parallels of course.
It’s hilarious and myopic that the libtards are just glomming onto this now that Trump is in office.
Free speech for me, but not for thee.
It’s not really surprising that 1984 is seeing a resurgence in popularity among Leftists.
The “Progressive” American Socialist (AmSoc) party lost the election. Now they’re re-checking the instruction manual to see where they went wrong.
🙂