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Orwell's writing almost mirrors what our society is like today, through things that we see in our everyday lives.

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A CNN Article

This article from CNN explains how the book 1984 can "decode Trump's first 100 days in office". The article was written by Alexander J. Urbelis and posted on Jan 1st, 2017.

In the book, Winston's job is to rewrite history so that it falls under the doing of "Big Brother". Once history is rewritten, there is no telling of whats real and whats fake anymore.

In todays political society, there is all this noise about Trump's connections with Russia and what is real and whats not. But if there is no proof, than nobody can dictate real from fake, which seems to be just how these big time politicians like it.

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Indeed, dozens of news stories this week have alerted us to surging sales of George Orwell's "1984" since the inauguration and even more so in the wake of Kellyanne Conway's now-infamous "alternative facts" gambit. Most media outlets have reported glibly on the figures, with some going so far as to compare the Amazon best-seller list (where purchases of "1984" have gone up nearly 10,000%) to a " political barometer" before making the obvious parallel between the Orwellian concepts of newspeak and doublethink and the words of Conway and actions of White House communications director Sean Spicer.

Yet surprisingly, very few have neither unpacked the full measure of the parallels between Orwell's dystopia and the Trump administration, nor the import of the Trump administration's practices (so far) if left unchecked. As the protagonist of "1984," Winston Smith, was warned:

"Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

If the sales figures tell us anything, it's that we are right to want a fuller account of the comparisons between literature's most infamous cautionary dystopia and a new American presidential administration.

I believe we are treading into territories more treacherous than even Orwell himself contemplated. We now have a President and an administration in power that expects its own versions of reality and events to be created for it, à la carte, after the fact.

This is not the first time in recent memory that sales of "1984" have spiked. In June 2013, Edward Snowden let the world know the machinations of the US surveillance apparatus were turned not only outward but inward on a massive scale. But this new surge in popularity has a far more pernicious cause: the linguistic assault on, and blatant disregard for, the truth and rational thought by senior Trump administration officials and the President himself.

We are now fighting a battle over who controls the very notion of what is real and fake, true and false. We cannot afford to mince words: President Trump and his staff have used and will use lies and deceit to create a false perception of reality that suits their political agenda.

They have espoused as truth unsupportable and untenable falsehoods on a daily basis, and it has become the near-full time responsibility of the media to call out the fictions of the administration. If we do not continue the struggle for basic honesty, we are warned by Orwell that uncorrected lies will be "passed into history and [become] truth."

What "1984" tells us about ourselves

"1984" is a menacing tale about the fictional state of Oceania. It exists in a state of continuous and seemingly never-ending war, its institutions are notoriously revisionist and manipulative of public perception with no regard for historical facts or truth. Overseeing law and order and guarding against even minor rebellion is overt and omnipresent government surveillance; and in the seat of power directing all functions of state is Big Brother, a cult of personality demanding of the most intense personal and political loyalty.

For me, however, "1984" has been more than a cautionary tale of dystopia: The concepts, characters, and lessons have in a real sense guided me both personally and professionally. My teenage years were spent as a hacker, frequently sneaking into Manhattan from Long Island to attend the infamous 2600 Meetings, an underground monthly gathering of New York's hackers in the lobby of the Citigroup building.

At the center of these meetings was the editor-in-chief of 2600, The Hacker Quarterly, "Emmanuel Goldstein," whose nom de guerre was taken directly from the principal (and likely fictitious) enemy of the state in "1984." Emmanuel and I have a friendship spanning nearly 25 years, and I still regularly contribute to his hacker-focused radio show and podcast, " Off the Hook," airing weekly on WBAI in New York. As a teenager, I saw several friends from the circle of 2600 hauled off to prison; their experiences cemented my desire to become a lawyer.

In the midst of my first read of "1984," my mother surprised my sister and me with a puppy, a beautiful little black mutt abandoned at a groomer's office. This puppy was willful, forceful and seemed always to be plotting against all attempts to exercise authority or dominion over him. He was the embodiment of Orwell's concept of thoughtcrime, the criminal act of opposing the ruling party, so we named him Winston after Winston Smith in "1984."

Winston remained steadfastly contrarian and by my side for 16 years, seeing me through high school, college, law school and then real life. When Winston died in 2011, I began volunteering with a local NYC dog rescue, Mighty Mutts, and during one shift I will never forget, the most perfect beagle up for adoption jumped into my lap and refused to leave, as if pronouncing to the world that I was now hers.

When I asked for her name, I could not believe my ears when I was told "Julia," the very name of Winston's counterpart in "1984", his kindred spirit, and fellow outlaw. We adopted Julia immediately, and until she joined Winston over the rainbow bridge earlier this year, she took over his role as a daily reminder of the wisdom of "1984" and the very special place that novel holds in my heart.

Orwell's lessons, cautions and predictions have in my life never been more real and more serious than they are now. Those lessons and parallels merit serious consideration.

Much has been written about newspeak, the fictional language of Oceania, with its deliberately limited and constantly diminishing vocabulary, and how its assaults on truth and reason parallel Trump administration practices. The idea behind newspeak is that by reducing vocabulary it is also possible to constrict personal thought and the freedom of expression.

In Orwell's world, there is no such thing as the word "bad," it is instead "ungood." But could this very surface-level comparison between newspeak and Conway's characterization of Spicer's blatant lies as "alternative facts" really be spurring such a resurgence in interest in the "1984"? Of course not. There is more.

Donald Trump and doublethink

In everything from his Cabinet appointments to the rationale for destabilizing executive orders, President Trump appears to have taken a cue directly from "1984's" fictional ministries, whose purposes are diametrically opposed to their names. Orwell's Ministry of Truth ("Minitrue" in newspeak), for example, had nothing to do with truth but was responsible for the fabrication of historical facts.

In that vein, President Trump has provided us, in the name of security, with a travel ban on immigrants and refugees from countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of no Americans, while leaving out countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of thousands of Americans.

He has provided us with Betsy DeVos, a secretary of education nominee who is widely believed to oppose public education, and who promotes the truly Orwellian-sounding concept of " school choice," a plan that seems well-intentioned but which critics complain actually siphons much-needed funds from public to private education institutions.

Andy Pudzer -- named to head the Labor Department, which is charged with promoting and protecting the welfare of wage earners -- has a checkered past with workers' rights and has actually praised the efficiency of robots over humans on account of automatons' inability to take vacation and file discrimination complaints.

And we cannot fail to mention that Scott Pruitt -- nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency, which has responsibility to protect health and the environment -- as Oklahoma attorney general devoted his office to battling the EPA, actively sought deregulation of air pollution requirements, and spearheaded the attack on Obama's efforts to reduce global warming, the Clean Power Plan.

What is truly terrifying is that President Trump and his people refuse to recognize the contradictory nature of their positions, which is the condition perfectly described in "1984" as doublethink. "[T]o hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing both of them," is doublethink. And most germane: "To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed," is doublethink.

Going hand-in-hand with the concept of doublethink was the notion of blackwhite: "a loyal willingness to say that black is white when party discipline demands." Blackwhite, however, is more sinister, in that it "means also the ability to believe that black is white ... to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed to the contrary."

We saw this firsthand when President Trump addressed staff members at the CIA. As he recalled his mental impressions of the inauguration crowd, he said, "I looked out, the field was -- it looked like a million, million and a half people." And I do not think he was lying. I believe that President Trump believed this because he had to believe it: The revision of events one day prior to his speech was necessary because it was the only way he could assert legitimacy to control the present moment. The worst, however, is not that Conway and Spicer so easily and willingly followed suit with their own acts of blackwhite, but that they really believed that we -- the media and the people -- would in turn do the same.

In a famous passage of "1984," large crowds gather to denounce Oceania's longstanding rival, Eurasia. Mid-speech, a slip of paper is passed to the speaker, and midsentence, without batting an eyelid, the speaker changes the name of the enemy to Oceania's long-time ally, Eastasia. With a simple act of blackwhite, foe was changed to friend, and friend to foe.

Why we all need to read - and reread - '1984'

We are living in this state of flux in real life. Russia was and likely is our nation's fiercest rival, yet as a candidate, President Trump famously stated, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing." He praises Putin but states that perhaps he may not actually like him when they meet. WikiLeaks published DNC data alleged to have been obtained by Russian operatives, but the election was not "rigged." A recount would be "ridiculous," yet voter fraud was rampant. Trusted sources of information are "fake news," and somehow Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks' most notable whistleblower, is now an "ungrateful traitor."

Flying in the face of bipartisan condemnation of his delusional theory of voter fraud, President Trump has now vowed to launch a "major investigation" into the fictional fraudsters that "cost him" the popular vote. With such an Orwellian twist, perhaps we will soon learn that the millions of elusive mystery voters all registered under the name "Emmanuel Goldstein."

One week into Trump's presidency, the parallels with "1984" are more than surface-level, and this portends an ominous future for the United States, regardless of your political persuasion. We among all the species are gifted with language, with thought, with the ability to freely express every singular emotion we experience with sincerity and honesty. We have today what Winston and Julia of Orwell's dystopia lost, fought so hard to reclaim, and failed to achieve: free speech.

At once cautionary and foreboding, certain passages of "1984" eloquently remind us to hold onto the ideals of truth and equality, because simple truths that bind us are stronger than complex lies that divide us:

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same -- everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same -- a people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."

Before Winston, my dog, passed away, I promised him that my firstborn son would carry his name. Loving that dog as much as I did, my kind wife allowed me to make good on that promise. Our son's middle name is Winston, and like the Winston and Julia who came before him, for me his name is symbolic of the constant struggle against tyranny and for truth.

I sincerely hope that every newly bought copy of "1984" is read through and through, and, as my mother admonished, read again and again, because that novel shows us that what is at stake right now is nothing short of the legitimacy, confidence and honesty of our republic.

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how '1984' can decode trump's first 100 days (opinion)  - cnn.com

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How '1984' can decode Trump's first 100 days

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Indeed, dozens of news stories this week have alerted us to surging sales of George Orwell's "1984" since the inauguration and even more so in the wake of Kellyanne Conway's now-infamous "alternative facts" gambit.

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A book called "Mean Business on North Ganson Street"

The book is a crime fiction story, written by S. Craig Zahler. The book was published on September 30, 2014. In the story, the main character has to be relocated because of an incident at his precinct. He is moved to a small fictional town right outside on Missouri, called Victory. It is a very low rent, run down place that is very similar to the proles in 1984 .

This book shows a more modern rendition of the proles which to us, is much more realistic. But it is all the same. Missouri thrives, while victory is left in shambles with no real protection. Just violent cops, similar to the rockets that are dropped from time to time.

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The Television

In my opinion, this is the most obvious and clear example of how 1984 is a clear and present factor of todays society. Similar to the Telescreen, it is in almost every house. And although it can not see your every move and can't tell you what to do, it is still part of our everyday life.

We build our schedules around it, making sure we get home in time to catch out favorite shows. We make sure that our friends have watched certain things, and we usually watch it in the mornings while we eat breakfast or right when we come home. Whenever there is a screen in the room, its the center of attention. Always. So in a way, it really does take control of us and our lives.

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Harrison Bergeron

Harrison Bergeron is a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. It is in a dystopian setting, similar to that of 1984. In it, everyone is literally equal. Nobody in any way different at all. If one is to say something smart, a loud ringing noise will ring in their ear so they will forget what they are going to say. It is a twisted way of having everyone equal, similar to 1984.

This connection is a bit of a stretch, but this is related to Donald trumps muslim immigration ban. It seems that everyone is standing up and fighting against this, wanting equality for all. But what if this story becomes a reality and this is the turnout. What if everyone is finally equal, but absolutely miserable.

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by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
French Translation from Avice Robitaille.
Hindi Translation by Ashwin.
Urdu Translation by RealMS
Russian translation

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," said George.

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up."

"Um," said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion."

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."

"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better than I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while."

George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me."

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."

"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just sit around."

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," said Hazel.

"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"

If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.

"What would?" said George blankly.

"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?

"Who knows?" said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen."

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

"If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not - try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have - for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood - in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.

And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel.

"Yup," she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head.

"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.

"You can say that again," said George.

"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."
"Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1961.

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French Translation from Avice Robitaille. Hindi Translation by Ashwin. Urdu Translation by RealMS Russian translation THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else.

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Another Article

This article is yet another explanation of how the current political status relates heavily to the book 1984. The article was written by Luis Gomez on Jan 28, 2017. As President Trump is in office and all of the current conflicts between other parts are taking place, the book is making a "uuuuuuge" comeback.

This article proves that Orwell was warning us. In part of the book, we read the words of Goldstein, the one who "betrayed" everyone. He describes the current political situation to a tee. The fact that our society is even remotely close to the world of Orwell's 1984, is a warning in itself.

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You saw it here first: Donald Trump has made America read again.

Sales of George Orwell's book "1984" peaked this month in what appears to be a sudden fascination with the fictional novel about a dystopian world ruled by a totalitarian regime that heavily uses surveillance, distorts facts, spreads propaganda and revises history.

Foes of Trump will say that sounds familiar, but it's not the first time the book's lines have been directed disdainfully at American presidents.

Since his election, America's attention has been fixed on Trump and the way his administration has begun to run the executive branch. References to Orwell's book emerged last weekend after White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly criticzed the media for underreporting the size of the crowd at Trump's inauguration.

"That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period," Spicer said.

The incident stunned journalists around the country and led to this exchange on NBC's "Meet The Press" show in which White House adviser Kellyanne Conway argued that Spicer was merely presenting "alternative facts."

https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/823309349393203201

CNN's Brian Stelter compared Conway's coin phrase to the term " doublethink" which describes two opposite concepts offered in the same sentence as referenced in the book: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/823581121535418372

To quote Orwell's "1984" has become somewhat of an internet meme. People have been sharing quotes from the book more and more in recent days.

One reads: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. IT was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy."

Another reads: "To give a single example, the word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as 'The dog is free from lice' or 'This field is free from weeds.' It could not be used in its old sense of 'politically free' or 'intellectually free,' since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispenses with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum."

And then, the Twitter account called @OurRevolution tweeted this quote:

https://twitter.com/OurRevolution/status/823233705456136193

These Twitter users are not alone in this. You can search for Orwell's quotes all over the internet and find many people have been talking about them for some time.

During the presidential campaign last year, Bill Weld, the former running mate of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, quoted Orwell's book on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to draw a comparison to Trump's rallies.

https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/793425194022899712

"'Before the hate had proceeded for 30 seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. In its second minute the hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the top of their voices. The horrible thing about the two minutes hate' - that's the name of the exercise," Weld explains in the clip. "... 'was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.'"

Over the years, the book has been a go-to source of inspiration to drive political critiques about past White House administrations - people quoted the book during the 1970s to criticize the Richard Nixon administration and its handling of the Vietnam War and Watergate.

And, yes, quoting from the book was also a popular pastime when Barack Obama was president.

Here's a link to a free version of the book posted online.
Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @RunGomez

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The real reason George Orwell's '1984' is having a 2017 revival

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You saw it here first: Donald Trump has made America read again. Sales of George Orwell's book "1984" peaked this month in what appears to be a sudden fascination with the fictional novel about a dystopian world ruled by a totalitarian regime that heavily uses surveillance, distorts facts, spreads propaganda and revises history.