Title: Why Orwell’s 1984 could be about now - BBC Culture
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Why Orwell’s 1984 could be about now
Audiences around the world are re-reading George Orwell’s 1984, which is ‘a handbook for difficult times’, writes Jean Seaton.
Today it is social media that collects every gesture, purchase, comment we make online
Two plus two equals five

Content: Obliged to watch the violent film, (as everyone is), Winston Smith observes “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in…A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current”. Now political, religious and commercial organisations all trade in whipping up feelings. Orwell uncannily identified the willing collusion in hate that such movements can elicit: and of course Winston observes it in himself. So, by implication might we, in ourselves. Orwell’s iconic dictator Big Brother is absurd and horrifying in equal measure (Credit: Alamy)
Then there is Orwell’s iconic dictator Big Brother: absurd and horrifying in equal measure. Orwell’s writing is rooted in the struggles between the giant ‘-isms’ that disfigured the 20th Century. He fought against Fascism as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War (believing pacifism was a luxury paid for by other people) but realised the hollow promise of Communism, when the anti-Stalinist group he was fighting for was hunted down by the pro-Stalin faction.