Title: Why Orwell’s 1984 could be about now - BBC Culture
Headings: 
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: Modelled on consumer choices, where the user is the commodity that is being marketed, the harvesting of those preferences for political campaigns is now distorting democracy. In 1984 it is a TV screen that watches you – today social media is an omniscient presence (Credit: Alamy)
Orwell understood that oppressive regimes always need enemies. In 1984 he showed how these can be created arbitrarily by whipping up popular feeling through propaganda. But in his description of the ‘Two Minutes Hate’ he also foresaw the way in which online mobs work. 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.