Why does George Orwell's 1984 novel seem to represent today's world?

Even today, if you read the famous novel "1984" by British author George Orwell on the topic of how dictatorship involves human thought, a wave of fear runs through your body.

The first thing that makes this novel terrifying is that Orwell's map of authoritarian rule seems real in today's world.

For example, Double Think, the Thought Police or the Ministry of Love (or the Ministry of Love, which is meant to hurt people) and the Ministry of Peace. Or the Ministry of Peace (which actually pays for wars), and then a novel-to-novel writing agency that publishes pornographic content in homes instead of writing about topics to win people's sympathy and divert attention from the public. people.

As the authoritarian government uses all these elements to protect the minds of the people, our eyes were quite wide after reading all this in George Orwell's novel.

But today we can read "1984" with a new look, but even after reading it with a new look, there is a tingling sensation in our body. Is the road the world travels today the same road Orwell calls the "road to hell"?

We don't know the inspiring prediction of O'Rourke's mapping, but it wouldn't be wrong to say that you are embarrassed by the circumstances Orwell mentioned in his novel, but that can't be denied. Can this mapping help us?

Published on June 8, 1949, the book was written in the context of the devastation of World War II when Europe was completely destroyed. The British nation was starving and helpless, and the future looked bleak. But the novel appears to have been written about Orwell's current state and beauty, as it teaches how to deal with the situation presented in the novel.

What will be the characteristics of the dictatorship and oppression today, we can guess from the first sentence of the novel that it drives you crazy. "It was a cold and bright April day, with the bells ringing at 1 o'clock," Orwell wrote.

The main character of the novel, Winston Smith, is in charge of censoring content in the Ministry of Truth, and he presents the story at the same time in a way that you do not feel bad about the current situation and you understand that everything is going normally.

Winston Smith and his colleagues are always under the control of "Big Brother" or "Brother" and these people are in Big Brother's grip as they don't just watch you with the help of moving television screens. 

Everyone is spying on each other.

Today, they have been replaced by social media, which collects every move, purchase, and opinion we express online. In this way, social media predicts all online actions and priorities in the near future. In this social media transaction, consumers are no longer seen as consumers but as products themselves.

Using consumer choice data on the Internet, new movements can be measured fostering the political movements of their choice in society, which are distorting the form of democracy.

Orwell knew that oppressive governments always needed an enemy. In his novel, he shows how the public spirit can be used to create new enemies by will through propaganda.

However, Orwell's 1984 rendition of "two minutes of hate" also predicted how different groups would work online.

Each character in the novel has a responsibility to watch violent movies. So Winston Smith says with reference to "two minutes of hate" that "the bad thing about two minutes of hate was not that you had to play a role in them, but that the worst was that you had to play a role." impossible to get rid of. In this way, fear and an abusive spirit of revenge on the other side runs like an electric current through the body of each member of the group and you are ready to kill your opponent, torture him and break his mouth.

Today, political, religious and business organizations, groups of all kinds are exchanging these feelings by stimulating your feelings and emotions. Orwell was also in awe of the trend of how people willingly entered such hateful movements. Winston Smith also feels this change within himself.

Eldest brother

Let's talk about "1984" and not mentioning the dictator whom Orwell called Big Brother or "Bhai Sahib". Yeah Al who hears a lot of nonsense from me BT is not like for me either. It should be noted that the background to this Orwell novel is the battle between the world's great systems or 'Izms' that distorted the shape of the 20th century.

George Orwell himself volunteered alongside anti-dictatorial forces to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War, but when he joined and fought the anti-Stalin faction, he fought the pro-Stalin faction. Then Orwell felt that the slogans of communism were also hollow.

Orwell saw with his own eyes the self-deception of those who believed in a new system.

Today we are faced with new types of systems or "isms", such as nationalism or nationalism and republicanism. Today, the promotion of these systems is causing very dangerous emotions in people.

Wherever you look today, the tide of defender sentiment flows. One thing all of these powerful people have in common is that they promote their own bar by largely suppressing the voices raised against them. I mean, Big Brother is no longer a joke, but a trend that is becoming the norm in the world.

Two plus two equals five

The most dangerous thing Orwell portrays in his novel is extracting his meaning from language or words.

The goal of the celebrities in the novel is to destroy the true meaning of words, thoughts and feelings, and thus reality is the true enemy of these people.

The system of oppression seeks to make it impossible for people to know the real world and instead promotes fear and lies.

Winston Smith takes the first step against this system when he begins to write a diary, defending himself from the looks of cameras everywhere, in which he talks about his inner life.

Smith knows that if the authorities learn of his actions, he will be executed.

And then when he's forced to tell the truth after a heavy hit, he says yes, "it's two plus two." Yes.

The violence he saw in 1984 destroys his own identity or spirit, as well as his ability to recognize the real world.

In Orwell's novel, you see how difficult it is to get things back. This story tells us that when words are taken from you, people are speechless and come up with ideas that have no head or foot in their place.

This novel by George Orwell is banned in all countries where a dictatorship reigns, but even the book of these worlds reaches the world through secret channels.

Not only that, but now even the strongest democracies in the world are increasing the sales of this novel. People in India, Britain, China, and Poland are referring to 1984 again. Even in the United States, people are reading this novel to understand the reality of the Trump administration, and sales there have increased as well.

Of course, George Orwell cannot be separated from the novel from him. Now more and more people are beginning to think of Orwell as a saint and an old man, but he must have laughed when he saw that the statues of him were still standing.

Feminist activists disagreed, for example, with anti-meat groups, never with Orwell's views. But it wouldn't be wrong to say, regardless of what Orwell thought, that he followed these principles in his life.

As time went by he got really poor, he fought for what he thought was right, he never found fault with the work of other writers and was always kind to them. Despite all this, he did not see the world as he was, but as a world that he liked.

Orwell's ideas have not only changed our minds to understand the oppression of the age in which we live today, but today 1984 is a booklet or guide that he can use in difficult times.

Knowledge is really a form of power and it is a test of our power today.

Jane Seton is affiliated with the University of Westminster in London, where she is a professor of media history. She is also a director of the George Orwell Foundation.