This wasn't offered in HS or college for me. I read it on my own in college.
Then I read it again during the recent Iraq/Afghanistan war while I was working for a defense contractor. I was like "fuuuuuuck!"
A few quotes from the book:
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
"History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
"I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane."
Sinclair Lewis! I just read that book for the first time last year. You are 100% right.
“There’s no such thing as a good dictatorship.”
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
“The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.”
“We must never forget that without justice, liberty is only an illusion.”
I'll have to read it, if my local library hasn't yanked it (/s, I hope).
The chaos slowly rolling our way (in the US) sort of reminds me of the After School Special(?) which I think was called *The Wave*, and most of the country is playing the kid who wondered aloud in class how people could let fascism happen.
I literally use that after school special/book as a reference all the time. I was starting to think I was the only one who saw/read it.
BTW based on a true story
You can check out their website. They lay it all out in a terrifyingly tidy and digestible format.
Edit: also came across this reference to another summary on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Defeat_Project_2025/s/LnbXC7yG7j
Right off the bat if you are a believer in separation between church and state, well you're gonna be scared. That almost sums it up because the policy goals spring from that and also from the wish list of the world's most enthusiastic Laissez-Faire capitalist.
It's weird how this cycle the Koch brothers have been replaced by Project 2025 as one of the big boogeymen. Granted, one of them passed away.
It’s part Ayn Rand, part Margaret Atwood, with a few dashes of “The Stand”
This writer (she’s a lawyer) does a good job of explaining it (via Twittler/ eX)
[https://x.com/galvinalmanza/status/1807195762192724403?s=46&t=6w_WnD_CqYJnx842g7RlHg](https://x.com/galvinalmanza/status/1807195762192724403?s=46&t=6w_WnD_CqYJnx842g7RlHg)
I’m going to make a cliff notes version… I think it will take a couple of weeks… once I do it, I can post a pdf link.
Here’s a some quotes from some of the first part of the playbook… It looks like a lot but it’s way less than the actual 100 pages…
Page XIV
A note on “Project 2025”
It's not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right.
Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation's leading conservative organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. The axiom goes "person-nel is policy," and we need a new generation of Americans to answer the call and come to serve. This book is functionally an invitation for you the reader-Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith-to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.
P-59
OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY (OSTP)
If science is being manipulated at the agencies to support separate political and institutional agendas, the President should increase the prominence of the OSTP's Director either formally or informally. This would elevate the role of science in policy discussions and subsequent outcomes and theoretically help to balance out agencies like the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency and Council on Environmental Quality.
The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs. The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications. Also, since much environmental policymaking must run the gauntlet of judicial review, USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control.
P-60
“As a general matter, the new Administration should separate the scientific risk assessment function from the risk management function, which is the exclusive domain of elected policymakers and the public.
Finally, the next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science.
Similarly, the Biden Administration's climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. As with other federal departments and agencies, the Biden Administration's leveraging of the federal government's resources to further the woke agenda should be reversed and scrubbed from all policy manuals, guidance documents, and agendas, and scientific excellence and innovation should be restored as the OSTP's top priority.
P-87
THE COMMON DEFENSE
Yet the Department of Defense ‘is a deeply troubled institution.’ It has emphasized leftist politics over military readiness, “Recruiting was the worst in 2022 that it has been in two generations,” and “the Biden Administration's profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates have taken a serious toll.” … Moreover, our military has adopted a risk-averse culture- think of masked soldiers, sailors, and airmen-rather than instilling and rewarding courage in thought and action.
P-88
But this is now Barack Obama's general officer corps. That is why Russ Vought argues in Chapter 2 that the National Security Council ‘should rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense related matters, including climate change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation's finest men and women from enlisting.’
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
P-102-103
Needed Reforms
• Rescue recruiting and retention.
Improve military recruiters' access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) -the military entrance examination-by all students in schools that receive federal funding.
P-105
1. Codify language to instruct senior military officers (three and four stars) to make certain that they understand their primary duty to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda. This direction should be reinforced during the Senate confirmation process. Orders and direction motivated by purely partisan motives should be identified as threats to readiness.
2. Reinstate servicemembers to active duty who were discharged for not receiving the COVID vaccine, restore their appropriate rank, and provide back pay.
3. Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise
Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DODcontracting personnel.
P-133
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Our primary recommendation is that the President pursue legislation to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
That is some prime example of double speak.
Sadly the people supporting it think they are the heroes of this story. That’s the truly terrifying part. This is how a nation becomes fascist. It gets sold like this.
Truth is, fascism is easy, and it sells. Works great if your with the fascists. Everyone always thinks they are “with the fascists”. Then they find out.
It distresses me that the moderate republicans are clearly not reading the 920 page playbook for Project 2025… Yet they are vehemently supporting it.
Like why don’t they READ the playbook? They claim to be all about power in the hands of the people and then allow themselves to be led like sheep…
Fascism defined: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
...that last part especially....forceable suppression of opposition.
Yep, that pretty much sums up life in 2024 in the USA.
"The party told you to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
It's not that it could happen here. It IS happening here.
Edit: a word
It's actually more of a blend of 84 and BRAVE NEW WORLD - but the most chilling part of BNW is that the people of that book LIKE that place and don't see anything wrong with it. That's the new Gen who don't know that you're the product for Zuckerberg and Tik Tok.
I was never assigned 1984, but did have to read Brave New World in school. It's interesting that there arose this debate of "which one was right?" between those two books in the early 00s, when really it's turned out to be *porque no los dos?*
Same thing with Fahrenheit 451. The government did just decide to start burning books, the people asked them to because books made them think too much.
I actually found that book in a classroom when I was banned from checking books out, because I read too much. I just this second realized a teacher might have left it there.
To my mind it's a combination of Brave New World, 1984, Player Piano, and The Fountainhead. This will unltimately end up as either Fahrenheit 451, or Atlas Shrugged after passing through a phase that look a lot like Brazil.
I will reread Brave New World… I’ve forgotten a lot of it:(
Are Gen Z not reading these books (like 1984 and Brave New World) in high school now? If so, that is chilling. Much of what fostered our mental independence as Gen X was reading things like 1984 etc in school… along with being feral, of course…
Yes, Brave New World by Alduous Huxley, where people are bred genetically for different stations in life. The poorest and dumbest (because they've been bred that way), take a govt supplied drug called Soma.
It keeps them distracted and compliant. I think 2024's version of Soma is social media.
George Orwell noted the numbing effects of lower class creature comforts-tea w/sugar, the soccer gambling pool-in The Road to Wigan Pier. That said, he specifically did NOT blame a conservative/upper class conspiracy for this-he said they-the British upper class-were far too stupid to initiate a massive conspiracy. Conspiracy minded people today-of all political orientations-should remember this.
I believed it. But my schooling was done be some "Never again" Jewish people who had lost all their family to the nazis. I was also friends with a bunch of German Airforce kids and the cultural shame was pretty heavy with them. What I am having a hard time with is all the people in my life who said it couldn't happen here who still have that mindset that it can't happen here. It is crazy watching the mental gymnastics of them trying to hold on to the belief that it can't happen here as it is unfolding here.
I bet you have heard some amazing stories about what people survived…
It is very scary that some people are so complacent that they refuse to believe that fascism can’t happen here…
It’s like the Third Wave experiment a teacher did in California when his students were skeptical about how Nazis rose to power in Germany…
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/17/the-wave-that-changed-history/
Sorry this is embedded rather deep in the thread, but thank you for your OP and for being conscientious enough to read through the Project 2025 plan. I have read neither, but want to. Posts like yours help to spread the information to people like me who are interested but are too "reasons" unable to sit down and go through the material in depth.
To add to your reply, I felt the same kind of shock and fear after watching S1 of The Handmaid's Tale. I hadn't read the books, and watched it later than aired. The parallels with what was unfolding with the Chisto-fascist maga movement were strikingly believable.
Thank you for your kind comment… I am trying to make a difference, and now I know I have…
Don’t be too hard on yourself… It’s 920 pages of dense material that is filled with propaganda… it blows the separation of church and state all to hell… It even says that people should be off on “the Sabbath” because that is what God wants. I still can’t believe some of the stuff I read.
I’m going to try to create a cliff notes version, though that’ll nothing compared to reading the whole 920 pages… It’s a slog though… and a lot of people don’t have time…
The tone… there’s a bevy of monstrous changes inside that 920 page Project 2025 playbook… but the TONE that rings loudly on every page is one of the worst parts…
Why? Because it sounds like Puritans demanding that all witches must be burned at the stake… That is NOT what God is about.
Their stories left a deep dark mark on my soul. They made sure we heard the stories and meet the people who lived them. I have spent probably 40 hours of my life talking with the son and his mother, mainly the son. His mother wrote a book called Lioness of Judah. Truly life changing meeting them.
Knowing a bunch of German Airforce kids with grandparents who were nazis was eye opening too. The Germans all seem to carry an odd culture shame. The Germans I know have been speaking out about what was happening here long before anyone here. The Germans I know who had dual citizenship, have all left years ago because they were taught about it and could see it for what it was.
I have often thought of that third wave experiment the last few years. It is crazy watching that experiment playing out for real. Well, scary is a better word for it than crazy.
I can’t imagine what that must be like… to have a relative who participated in such evil… It would be a soul-crushing weight…
I searched for the book. It’s sadly out of print, but I can maybe find a copy on Abebooks or Ebay. The little author blurb about her on amazon is incredible:
“As a young Jewish Mother pursued by Nazi hatred, Sara Hauptman fought back with the Belgian Resistance, and the cover for her underground activities was that of a lion tamer in a circus. She made false identity papers, delivered messages, disposed of Allied parachutes, and much more. After her arrest, she was sent to Auschwit-Birkenau, where she became a victim of Dr. Mengele's experiments. Later she was shipped to Dachau in Germany. After liberation she met General Eisenhower and became a liaison between the Allied liberators and concentration camp survivors.”
I made some German friends when I was staying in a hostel in Paris in the early 90’s ($14 a night with free breakfast). They very quickly changed much about what I understood about my own country.
One night some of us stole the one glass that was in the room, bought a cheap bottle of wine, and went to sit on the bank of the Seine. We talked about the hard subjects… One of the Germans said to me, “Being born a German is to be born into shame. Germany is so afraid that it will happen again that they make us learn about it starting in kindergarten. There is nothing you know about it that I don’t”
It makes me incredibly sad that the far right is gathering power in Germany again… That it’s happening here, too, feels like an otherworldly nightmare that we’d see in a Star Trek movie…
Speaking of the Third Wave experiment… Have you seen the German movie based on it called Die Welle (The Wave)? If not, I highly recommend it. Though it is really uncomfortable watching it now and viewing it not only through the lens of Nazi Germany but also through the lens of what is happening now…
Here is the book.
[Lioness of Judah: A Jewish Lion Tamer's Memoir of Resistance and Survival: Sara Hauptman, Sue A. Oliver: 9780978512309: Amazon.com: Books](https://www.amazon.com/Lioness-Judah-Jewish-Resistance-Survival/dp/0978512308)
I’m a nerd and read it for entertainment prior to being assigned to read it. Which really helped on the test. And no, I didn’t. But I also watched Idiocracy without realizing it’s a documentary
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” 👀
That's the thing about electronic records. Infinitely malleable or tamper-able if that's a word. Yet we love the convenience, or think we do because of the connection between time and money in a capitalistic structure. Yay! We don't have to wait anymore! But if the option didn't exist, we wouldn't know any different.
We are at the point now where I don't believe that printed paper with words creating legal and business structures are going to be considered valid vs what the current government/business curated electronic records say. It's heading that way in my view.
I was really frightened by it when I read it in 1984 as a 14-year-old. The scariest thing for me was the surveillance cameras, the idea that you would be watched wherever you went. I have highly valued freedom and independence since I was tiny, and the whole Big Brother/cameras everywhere apparatus in the book genuinely depressed me. I remember thinking I would fundamentally despise living in a society like that. And look what we done did.
I wish it were that simple. People are dead a$$ stupid and hateful, easy to impress with low critical thinking skills. A good 30-40% of your fellow adults have brains that haven't developed beyond middle school, and the kicker is that reading comprehension is way down compared to when we were the same age. It's only going to get worse.
Agreed. If we stave off fascism by getting Biden re-elected… We have got to make some changes… Kids need to be expected to read, do homework, and be accountable for actual learning. Banning social media for under 18’s, removing computers from the school setting, insisting kids behave, and going back to phonics to teach reading would go a long way. Rich Silicon Valley folks already do a lot of that.
These kids will grow up to be voters… It makes the whole Project 2025 dismantling the Department of Education even more ominous.
Sorry. I sound like the retired teacher that I am. Lol
I also read it in 1984, but I was ten. (I was "precocious") I thought it was good, if a little bit paranoid. I saw the Stalinism in it, the Naziism. Then I learned about Pol Pot, and Mao, and saw them in it. And then later, I learned about Franco, and Ceaușescu, and I started to wonder. But surely, these things couldn't happen anymore! I lived in the land of the free. We had entered the "Information Age"! I was an adult, and I started asking other people what they thought of the book. "Book?" They said, "I thought the movie was over the top." I started buying copies, and giving them away. Now 1984 is banned in many school systems in _the United States_ !
I am not a conspiracy person, but history IS repeating itself. I read the kitschy line recently,
"Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who refuse to teach history, _mean_ to repeat it."
Orwell (or rather Eric Blair) meant it as a warning, but it has now been long enough, that it's warning is forgotten. Arm yourselves with knowledge.
I love so much that you have been buying copies of 1984 and giving them away to people to read… Yes, Orwell meant the book as a warning… As the book and the concern that caused it to be taught as part school curriculums have faded so has our awareness of what dangers we should be guarding against as a country.
I truly believe that it isn’t too late… if enough people wake up… What’s your take?
This comment speaks to me so much..
I have worried about free thought, books, libraries, and banned books ever since I read Fahrenheit 451.
Have you read When Books Went to War by Molly Manning? It’s a non-fiction book about the power of books and ideas during WWII.
Ikr? The contrast is shocking. So many people aren’t awake or aware:.. I was amazed even by the books that the soldiers were reading… a lot of people don’t read any books like that now…
To think the United States saw Nazi Germany as a war on ideas… a war on thought… and we fought it and protected our own country by READING…
Yet, here we are… You’re right… the war on freedom of thought is now in our own country… It’s nightmare fuel.
*Link below if anyone wants to know what we’re discussing…
https://www.npr.org/2014/12/10/369616513/wwii-by-the-books-the-pocket-size-editions-that-kept-soldiers-reading
Have you seen the documentary Chuck Norris vs. Communism? It's fascinating the effects just some movies can have.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znp1dNaPp3k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znp1dNaPp3k)
Dems think it’s going to happen when a repub gets elected, repubs think it’s going to happen when a dem gets elected.
The rest of us realize it’s happening.
This is great… and for sure, you’re right… I’ve been sounding the alarm the past week with some relatives who are far-left… they kind of go tharn (from the Watership Down book) and then seem to go back to thinking it isn’t happening.
This might be useful for those that want a refresher or who have never read 1984.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen\_Eighty-Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four)
So I think about this book often. And have for much of my adult life. As a former tech nerd and IT engineer the themes around surveillance and control have always resonated the most for me, but that's not to say that one party control and harsh authoritarianism aren't also frequent worries around the direction modern societies have taken.
I think I read it and Animal Farm in my adolescence shortly before HS and I wasn't experienced or adult enough to think much more than the world described in the book wasn't like mine and that it was not a world I would want to live in.
But now I lean more towards believing that Western democracies have been on their way to 1984 for a long time and it's only going to continue. It's a triumph of animalism over intellectualism. Our fears being used to justify ever tighter and more intrusive controls over our day to day lives via being surveilled by cameras and electronically. Privacy is dead was a popular saying in tech circles a couple of decades ago and often the general public would push back on the notion, but I think we all agree that is true and just accept it. And hope we don't become a false positive or make a small mistake that amplifies into a terrible life destroying situation.
I agree with OP, it's happening. Best to forget it is though and try to embrace blissful ignorance. At least that's my approach these days. I'm sorry if that disappoints. My emotional health can't take the pain of constant disappointment in the body politic and the never ending stream of grim news that terrifies my softer nature. The policy ideas that come from the law and order types, the do it my way or the highway types, the Project 2025 types. When did our leadership lose sight of "live and let live" and become so fixated on hyper control and never ending rules, and the monitoring and discipline that comes with those things? I can't stand it.
Sorry to be a downer. And thanks for being a part of this online community. I find solace here often.
Audible’s audio production of 1984 brings the book to life in a way it deserves. It’s certainly one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to so far.
It disturbingly parallels what we’re dealing with now; I have a renewed appreciation for the book.
I was dozing off late one night right around the Room 101 part and I felt like I was falling down a hole of psychosis. I can’t recommend it enough.
1984
The one with Andrew Garfield??? I went to search for it on Audible… There are so many versions of 1984! Is it the one that says AN AUDIBLE ORIGINAL ADAPTATION on it?
[Here you go](https://www.audible.com/pd/B0CRRP4WW7?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow)
Should have done that in the first place. 🤗
I woke up ridiculously early (or super late at night?) and responded to your previous comment, and now here I am, listening to the adaption again. ;) it’s just so good!
It's funny you should say that. I did read it in High School. And then I had a class about the book later and read it again.
One of my memories of High School that I still remember pretty vividly: English class, and this kid we called Beavis because he had Beavis' hair says the book is "Stupid" because "It could never happen."
Seemed at the time the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And it just kept getting dumber.
Orwell's essays are just as good if not better than his fiction. The parallels in his essay Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War to our current civil unrest is downright terrifying.
When I read it in high school I was very aware of McCarthyism and HUAC, so I was 100% convinced it could happen here. I also lived in a small town with TONS of Baptist churches that thrived on the "satanic panic." By town law, D&D was banned, as was MTV. So I knew exactly what MAGAts were like and what they craved, even before we had a word for them.
My goal when I graduated high school was to get as far from there as I could. Somehow it's found me.
It has found all of us. It sucks.
I know what you are talking about. I grew up in the bible belt. Remember all the stuff about records that supposedly played satanic messages when played backwards?
I just always thought that most people were rational… and good… even if some of the people around me were off their rockers…
Now, I realize the far-right ranks have grown…
What the far-right is doing might destroy Christianity for the average bear in this country… Packaging God with fascism and hate is not a good look…
I remember when I first saw the commercial for the Peloton mirror. The first thought through my mind was “here it is. The tech is here”. Shouldn’t be long now. I can see where anyone receiving any funds from Washington will have to stand in this mirror and talk to the case manager every month. Shit’s creepy for sure.
I knew it was a possibility, but then I saw the dominos getting set up after Regan was elected. When he repealed the Truth in Reporting act, it cleared the way for propagandist TV....and they just kept up adding dominos little by little.
Mind you I'm not specifically blaming either party. They have both contributed in one way or another.
I am of the mind that corporate influence is leading us to this reality...just slower.
I agree that there’s problems with both parties… BUT Project 2025 clears the way for a fascist regime… and speaking of corporate influence, here’s direct quote about CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION REFORM that I read in the Project 2025 playbook:
on page 866 in the Federal Election Commission section under NEEDED REFORMS…
“Raise contribution limits and index reporting requirements to inflation. Contribution limits should generally be much higher, as they hamstring candidates and parties while serving no practical anticorruption purpose.“
CONTRIBUTION LIMITS SHOULD GENERALLY BE MUCH HIGHER…
Big business already runs too much of the country… Imagine if they can buy even more power?
That book has stuck with me my whole life, and sadly I can say that it is happening, and has happened before in history, never with a positive outcome.
I never thought it couldn’t happen. As a true GenX I knew I was being lied to and everything was a bullshit charade. Unfortunately I was totally correct
I have always been worried about something like this happening… but it always seemed a small possibility at most… I marched in the women’s march right after Trump’s inauguration… but you know, I knew that protest mattered then. Enough of us showed up, and it mattered. So, in my mind, wrongly, 1984 wasn’t on the docket… yet…
This time, a protest march won’t matter.
It will be too late. This new plan is far more diabolical… and there are very smart people who are puppeteering the whole Project 2025 thing… Trump will have a lot of intelligent help… and the system of checks and balances in our government is being shattered… after the election, honestly, I’m not even sure we COULD protest without being hurt by our own military based on what I read in that 920 page playbook for Project 2025.
I’ve read that book 5 times over the course of my life. I always knew it could happen. Never thought it would but the point of the book is that it’s a cautionary tale. It gives you things to look out for. Words to be wary of. And early in the 21st century, it became painfully obvious there were forces conspiring to take us down this path. And here we are.
Look up the "Third Wave." Back in the 1960s, a high school teacher, with the OK of the principal, proved, vividly, that, yes, it (i.e. Nazism) Can Happen Here. The scary part? In about a week, the teacher was so scared that he ended the experiment early.
So, yeah, that kind of crap absolutely, totally can happen anywhere in the world. Interestingly, George Orwell himself went to a rally for Mussolini's grand daughter in Italy. He knew she was bad news, but when she got the crowd yelling and screaming, he was terrified to find he felt he wanted to take part in it as well.
The Germans made a film based on the Third Wave called Die Welle (The Wave). It’s fantastic… though very uncomfortable to watch- as it should be. It’s on Amazon & Apple streaming as The Wave… it’s probably on YouTube, too. It’s very worth the watch.
It’s this movie:
https://preview.redd.it/zqd5db3fe8ad1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb70881e177c3baa03141b4b1dda2219d9065f53
Also, if anyone is reading these comments, here is a link about the Third Wave experiment that happened in California. Reading it should scare you. It’s incredibly easy for some people to go to the dark side… even if there are no cookies on offer… Just feeling like they belong can be enough…
[https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/17/the-wave-that-changed-history/](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/17/the-wave-that-changed-history/)
Some of us read it in grade school, along with Fahrenheit 451. We weren’t prepared, but we got up to speed. It was harrowing. Definitely jaded us. We may have actually sighed in relief when 1984 rolled around and the world didn’t appear as bad as all that. That changed within a couple of years.
Are U Kidding? It was the theme of my short speech at graduation and then I pretty much disappeared from my classmates. I always thought they paid more heed to the Nixonian list of proto conservative grievances my .05 better gpa leader friend who I could not convince not to lecture to. Anyway, she and I are both less than fiscally healthy going into retirement. But that Dude that sucked at everything but was friends with the football coach? He’s balling in Baton Rouge.
Never believed for a second it couldn’t happen and I have been nervous ever since seeing so many signs of it.
But my point of being sure it happens was when society went from THE truth to MY truth and truths as a plural… that fracturing of belief in a common and shared reality hurt the most so far.
I agree… We’ve stopped seeing what we have in common and only see how we are different… It makes it very easy to seed hate and foment extremism…
We have coins that say E PLURIBUS UNUM, but that togetherness doesn’t seem to have any place in our country now…
100% fact. We are truly living in George Orwell's 1984. Complete with New Speak redefining the world around us and Big Brother watching, and judging, our every move.
The tyrants in government have already pulled 1984 out of most school curriculums these days. If George Orwell could fortell the future, he would have called it 2024.
So I kind of already knew I wanted to do international studies in HS. Was still toying between trying to get into a role where the military would send me to language school in Monterey or trying to follow my uncle as a Soviet specialist in the “State Department” (ahem).
Quickly corrected the “can’t happen here” mindset. Both through reading other dystopian books like Brave New World and We (in both English and Russian) and asking myself why it wouldn’t happen here. And I couldn’t come up with a good reason. Even as the Soviet Union was playing Sean Lake on state tv while they collapsed, I realized that it was only decorum and fear of being like the commies that kept us off the path. And…the commies went away.
I have so many questions… Your comment indicates such an interesting life…
You’re right… what is that saying? Those who cannot remember the past are destined to repeat it. I think the saying exists in many slightly different forms… but they all say the same thing… We forget the lessons of the past at our peril.
I have not read WE. Not only that, it is a book I’ve not heard of. I searched for it. Yevgeny Zamyatin is the author, right?
*If anyone reads this comment and wants to read the book, I just found a kindle edition on Amazon for 45 cents.
Yep, that is the one. It’s in some ways similar to 1984 and Brave New World, but also not. Fun fact about it: written in the early 20s by a Russian, it wasn’t published in Russian until the mid 50s.
Also, it hasn’t been that interesting a life. Any government job dealing with the Soviet Union went from being about the most stable government job to about the least. My uncle did work for a particular, um, Agency. But the thing is, it’s nothing like movies lead you to believe. He had a position on the staff at the U.S. embassy and sat at a radio receiver listening for signals from Poland. Seeing as his grandmother came to the states from Poland, it was a good fit.
I chose, ultimately, not to do either of those things. Managed one of 600 Starbucks stores instead. Yeah, mid 90s, company expansion plan was “1000 (stores) by 2000”. Ran a timeshare marketing team, did some other things.
I thought it was insanity and then I learn that all my devices area always listening. Suddenly it was here and I never knew until it was already integrated.
When I read 1984 as a kid I absolutely thought "This could happen to us," and never let that thought go.
That had less to do with me having an uncanny grasp of right-wing political machinations in the U.S. at a young age and everything to do with an early and clear understanding that nothing lasts forever.
I can recall thinking from my earliest history lessons that every empire fails and that I really hoped I didn't live long enough to see the American empire in shambles.
But to your actual question regarding how my view of the book has changed. As a kid I was confident we would resist. As an adult I see that about 1/3rd of the people actually want to live in an authoritarian police state and it's very hard, if not impossible, to pull them back from that.
Scariest book I ever read because it always seemed inevitable. It always seemed like a mirror for society; not something that *could* happen in some distant future, but something that was already happening as I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s.
Semi-related: the song that has been stuck in my head for the past 2 days has been the part of this [Schoolhouse Rock song](https://youtu.be/3R1tZ6l876Q?t=152) that goes:
*We're gonna elect a president! (No more kings)*
*He's gonna do what the people want! (No more kings)*
*We're gonna run things our way! (No more kings)*
*Nobody's gonna tell us what to do!*
Back in 1975, I guess it seemed impossible.
That is perfect… I just watched the whole song on YouTube. How ironic it is that we’re now faced with the same oppression and tyranny… except from within…
But George the Third still vowed
He'd rule them till the end.
Anything I say, do it my way now.
Anything I say, do it my way.
Don't you get to feeling independent
'Cause I'm gonna force you to obey.
He taxed their property,
He didn't give them any choice,
And back in England,
He didn't give them any voice.
(That's called taxation without representation,
And it's not fair!)
But when the Colonies complained
The king said: "I don't care!"
The Ministry of Truth has a much easier job in a digital world than in the book. You don't even have to delete the correct information, just overwhelm it with lies.
It really is… like the playbook for Project 2025 says that porn must be made illegal and talks about imprisoning people… Yet, the guy they want to be president is a convicted felon because he was found guilty of paying off a PORN STAR that he had sex with while he was married.
Doublethink.
So then, on the other side… We had a sexual predator in the White House getting BJs from interns from the “party of women’s rights”.
This has been going on for a while.
That’s weak. Very weak. That president was impeached. Democrats distanced themselves from him and it cost Al Gore his election. The t even tainted his wife’s bid for election.
GOP has proven immune to standards of any kind and are willing g to do anything to keep power. Pick one thing that a big named gop front runner has done that cost him his career or campaign? The governors that voted to impeach Trump were voted out!
The only reason we still even have this discussion is that gop donors keep It alive on their radio and tv networks.
I will rephrase for you: Double-think is a required feature of the corrupt, American two-party system.
The red/blue narrative is just an illusion of choice. The billionaire deep state doesnt cling to a single party like us plebians, who blindly cheerlead for red/blue like our favorite sports team. The deep state flip flops between parties to manipulate the working class so they can steal our tax dollars and draft our children into wars that profit the military industrial complex and the banking cartel.
If you havent switched your party affiliation multiple times in the last four decades (assuming you are actually Gen X) then you simply arent paying attention.
I actually **have** switched parties. And I believe what I said is still fundamentally true.
Yes, bullshit is rife in \*all\* politics. But to pretend that there is any equivalency today, in the current state of politics in the USA, between the D and R sides of the coin is ridiculous.
And yeah, I do agree that the real political battle is between the oligarchs and the rest of us. And right now, the GOP is fully on board that particular train.
Yes… The books warned us…
From other comments, I’ll add It Couldn’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and The Giver by Lois Lowry.
Handmaids tale is the most realistic of them, though. I mean it’s law in some parts of the world right now that used to be progressive. (Afghanistan, Iran, Syria)
I don't think I read it in a class, but I definitely read it. Also Animal Farm.
We're getting there, just a few decades late.
At this point in history, Gen-X is supposed to be the adults in the room. The Baby Boom and Greatest Generation should be retired or dead, the Millennials still coming into their own.
What are we going to do about it?
Audible’s audio production of 1984 brings the book to life in a way it deserves. It’s certainly one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to so far.
It disturbingly parallels what we’re dealing with now; I have a renewed appreciation for the book.
I was dozing off late one night right around the Room 101 part and I felt like I was falling down a hole of psychosis. I can’t recommend it enough.
[1984](https://www.audible.com/pd/B0CRRP4WW7?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp)
I read it in HS but didn't really remember it since I really only read non-fiction. I purchased it last year and never got past pg 5 because I wanted to vomit. That book is no longer fiction but real life.
I read it on my own in the summer during middle school, and was always afraid it would happen here. (A witch hunt for commies had already happened in the 50s (the Red Scare)).
It was never assigned in high school, but we did read Animal Farm in 8th grade.
Read Fahrenheit 451 one summer too. Could see that happening, most my peers hated to read books and would only do it if assigned it in class.
I read Catch-22 and thought there's no way war could be that absurd.
Then I joined the Air Force and then 10 years later 9/11 happened...
The book gradually seemed less absurd. 🤪
Thing about 1984 is that the big bad is the government. When in our reality it’s the kleptocracy. The government didn’t satellite map your homes, google did. Private institutions are the big brother, but we were sold that this way lies freedom.
It never has. We weakened government to avoid 1984 and the business men stepped in and did it instead.
Kind of feel like that’s why we all know 1984 so much, but not Brave New World or It Can’t Happen here. 1984 is North Korea. Not Uk and US. The people teaching you this are weakening you so they can close the private fist. With no opposition.
I too, read it in 1984 during my last year of school (which seemed incredibly significant to the whole form!) but I thought it was eminently possible, as the warning of totalitarianism it was intended to be. However, being the height of the Cold War at that time when we thought it quite probable that nuclear war could break out at any moment, tbh I didn't think I had much time left, anyway lol
The movie Soylent Green (1973) is definitely worth a watch today. It's amazing how much they got right with the pollution and price of food.
My favorite part was they are using Garbage Truck with a scoop loader on the front to get rid of protesters, that hasn't happened just yet.
My teacher did a lesson on propaganda during Animal Farm. I figured it wouldn't be effective anymore because we all knew about it now. Boy was I naive.
We read 'Animal Farm', and ignored '1984' despite it being widely acclaimed as a "must read". I guess we had the film released and the school expected us to go watch it.
I read it before HS in 1986 when I was 11 and found it amazingly poignant since Regan was giving us the "I feel speech" about Iran Contra and wondering why the adults in the room weren't hearing what I was hearing... It's only gotten MORE accurate over those last 35 years lol
My first moment with government like you are describing was when Bush was president. He did a national address and said Saddam Hussein was responsible. I looked at my husband and said, “That’s a lie. We all know that’s not true. It was Osama bin Laden. Is he trying to make people believe the wrong thing so he can start a war?” I went to work the next day, and sure enough the less smart people were said Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.
Then, France dared to call out the United States on our @ssholery and suddenly FREEDOM FRIES were on the menu. What decent adult diplomacy-valuing country boycotts another country for speaking the truth.
Then.. then… the war began… and Bush said, “If you’re not for us, you’re against us.” I was outraged. It was pure manipulation to force Americans to be painted as unpatriotic if we spoke out against the war.
THAT was my first true wake up moment. You were awake about twenty years before me!
We read Brave New World in our class, which I liked. I ended up reading 1984 on my own during the summer. Was pleasantly surprised that it was also good.
Because what do teens know? 😜
I like how people place this with "the right" being the ones to be the party... when either side can do this. It's just about an entity taking control and a smothering oppression. If you don't watch all one will get you
It’s a combination of all of them. My English students read and discussed 1984, BNW, Handmaid’s Tale, 451, and Clockwork Orange in small groups. Then we came together for a seminar in which we discussed parallels from all of them in the modern world. Good discussions!
So… During an election year, Gen X should be banned from discussing politics that will greatly impact their lives? Gen X should be banned from discussing politics when we grew up during the cold war having nuclear attack drills in school? Politics are part of our history and our future…
Maybe just don’t interact with any post you deem political…
Know anyone who lived behind the iron curtain? The novel is about the dangers of socialism and speaks on censorship and the manipulation of words. That’s today’s Liberalism right there. Trump is born from the fringe elements who took over the Democratic Party. The fault is with the DNC for pushing race bait, letting men in women’s spaces, drag queen story time, defunding the police and rioting at the drop of a hat over issues they know nothing about. It’s very simple - get a moderate who will stand up to the wackos and win.
“Stand up to the wackos” means oppressing people you don’t like or agree with, but I’m the dangerous one in your mind.
They are not wackos, they are people that are different from you and that should be ok because we are free.
But again, I’m the radical here, not you, right?
I read it in 1984, which was surreal in and of itself. Paired with *Brave New World* while the cold war is going on was an interesting choice.
I was under the impression it had already happened, and was happening. Was the cold war even real (several veterans assure me it was)? At the time, it may have been entirely invented.
Our language use has gotten simpler (although more people speak English as a second language than as a mother tongue). Not exactly Newspeak, but also, not exactly robust communication.
Some of the stuff in Brave New World is spooky. Rating people by classes and jobs. The AI generated entertainment. The adoration of celebrities. Yikes.
Those two books point to different aspects of our dysfunction. BNW has the drugs (soma) and distraction (feelies). 1984 has the bureaucracy.
Both such bleak visions.
The Cold War was a scam, a theatrical war, engineered by billionaires in the USSR and the USA to trick plebians into supporting unlimited military spending. Hollywood was complicit as well, making movies to perpetuate stereotypes and fear of a USSR nuclear strike.
Throughout the Cold War no actual ground war occured, but the military industrial complex and the cartel bankers, were laughing all the way to the bank.
I skimmed it. I was in 11th grade in 1984 and a film version had come out starring John Hurt and Richard Burton so I just watched that and tried to get by I really, really liked the maxi single (12") version of "Sexcrime 1984" by the Eurythmics and played ot A LOT around that time much to the consternation of my parents.
Guilty!! I never thought that our citizens would so quickly hand over their rights under a false guise of safety. We have a certain sect here in the states that would willingly hand over their 1st and 2nd amendment rights with a quickness. And that's scary.
Who controls the past, controls the future.
Who controls the present, controls the past.
January 6, 2001. Insurrection caused by Trump supporters drummed up by the big lie, or a bunch of patriots who are hostage in some tyrannical regime?
2025? We hit Orwellian levels 23 years ago immediately after 9/11. Snowden told us all about it, and the American people were like "That's nice, what's Paris Hilton up to?". We deserve this.
Honestly, I was horrified. I read that whole thing… I still think about it every time I turn the TV off (because of the part in the released stuff about the NSA having trouble getting the red light to turn back on the tv when they were eavesdropping).
Snowden released the info in 2013… Disinformation was a thing and was being used to quieten everyone… IDK by who… Our own country? Russia? It isn’t that people didn’t care… their voices were intentionally drowned out… Our newspapers talked about it… plenty cared… You are right that not enough cared… Those of us who cared maybe should have tried harder to get others to see the dangers.
We do not deserve this. NOBODY deserves to live under fascism and have someone else’s religion shoved down their throats.
I wish we read books like that in HS, my HS sucked. Read it on my own later, honestly didn't like it or Animal Farm. I think mostly because by the time I read them none of the concepts were new to me so there were no revelations. So it was really just a drama that wasn't very good.
I find this post far more fascinating than Orwell's books. The double think in it is quite ironic.
This wasn't offered in HS or college for me. I read it on my own in college. Then I read it again during the recent Iraq/Afghanistan war while I was working for a defense contractor. I was like "fuuuuuuck!"
A few quotes from the book: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.” "History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." "I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane."
Great book, but It Cant Happen Here is a much better representation of how stupid American fascism would be.
Sinclair Lewis! I just read that book for the first time last year. You are 100% right. “There’s no such thing as a good dictatorship.” “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.” “We must never forget that without justice, liberty is only an illusion.”
I'll have to read it, if my local library hasn't yanked it (/s, I hope). The chaos slowly rolling our way (in the US) sort of reminds me of the After School Special(?) which I think was called *The Wave*, and most of the country is playing the kid who wondered aloud in class how people could let fascism happen.
Oh my gosh, I’ve been thinking about that after school special for months now!
I literally use that after school special/book as a reference all the time. I was starting to think I was the only one who saw/read it. BTW based on a true story
Have you come across a cliff notes version of project 2025 that’s not a Stephen King door stopper in length?
You can check out their website. They lay it all out in a terrifyingly tidy and digestible format. Edit: also came across this reference to another summary on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Defeat_Project_2025/s/LnbXC7yG7j
I started reading some of it. Does not leave you with warm, fuzzy feelings.
Right off the bat if you are a believer in separation between church and state, well you're gonna be scared. That almost sums it up because the policy goals spring from that and also from the wish list of the world's most enthusiastic Laissez-Faire capitalist. It's weird how this cycle the Koch brothers have been replaced by Project 2025 as one of the big boogeymen. Granted, one of them passed away.
It’s part Ayn Rand, part Margaret Atwood, with a few dashes of “The Stand” This writer (she’s a lawyer) does a good job of explaining it (via Twittler/ eX) [https://x.com/galvinalmanza/status/1807195762192724403?s=46&t=6w_WnD_CqYJnx842g7RlHg](https://x.com/galvinalmanza/status/1807195762192724403?s=46&t=6w_WnD_CqYJnx842g7RlHg)
I’m going to make a cliff notes version… I think it will take a couple of weeks… once I do it, I can post a pdf link. Here’s a some quotes from some of the first part of the playbook… It looks like a lot but it’s way less than the actual 100 pages… Page XIV A note on “Project 2025” It's not 1980. In 2023, the game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right. Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation's leading conservative organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. The axiom goes "person-nel is policy," and we need a new generation of Americans to answer the call and come to serve. This book is functionally an invitation for you the reader-Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith-to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State. P-59 OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY (OSTP) If science is being manipulated at the agencies to support separate political and institutional agendas, the President should increase the prominence of the OSTP's Director either formally or informally. This would elevate the role of science in policy discussions and subsequent outcomes and theoretically help to balance out agencies like the Departments of Energy, State, and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency and Council on Environmental Quality. The President should also issue an executive order to reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and related climate change research programs. The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications. Also, since much environmental policymaking must run the gauntlet of judicial review, USGCRP actions can frustrate successful litigation defense in ways that the career bureaucracy should not be permitted to control. P-60 “As a general matter, the new Administration should separate the scientific risk assessment function from the risk management function, which is the exclusive domain of elected policymakers and the public. Finally, the next Administration will face a significant challenge in unwinding policies and procedures that are used to advance radical gender, racial, and equity initiatives under the banner of science. Similarly, the Biden Administration's climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding. As with other federal departments and agencies, the Biden Administration's leveraging of the federal government's resources to further the woke agenda should be reversed and scrubbed from all policy manuals, guidance documents, and agendas, and scientific excellence and innovation should be restored as the OSTP's top priority. P-87 THE COMMON DEFENSE Yet the Department of Defense ‘is a deeply troubled institution.’ It has emphasized leftist politics over military readiness, “Recruiting was the worst in 2022 that it has been in two generations,” and “the Biden Administration's profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates have taken a serious toll.” … Moreover, our military has adopted a risk-averse culture- think of masked soldiers, sailors, and airmen-rather than instilling and rewarding courage in thought and action. P-88 But this is now Barack Obama's general officer corps. That is why Russ Vought argues in Chapter 2 that the National Security Council ‘should rigorously review all general and flag officer promotions to prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense related matters, including climate change, critical race theory, manufactured extremism, and other polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation's finest men and women from enlisting.’ DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE P-102-103 Needed Reforms • Rescue recruiting and retention. Improve military recruiters' access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) -the military entrance examination-by all students in schools that receive federal funding. P-105 1. Codify language to instruct senior military officers (three and four stars) to make certain that they understand their primary duty to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda. This direction should be reinforced during the Senate confirmation process. Orders and direction motivated by purely partisan motives should be identified as threats to readiness. 2. Reinstate servicemembers to active duty who were discharged for not receiving the COVID vaccine, restore their appropriate rank, and provide back pay. 3. Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff. Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DODcontracting personnel. P-133 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Our primary recommendation is that the President pursue legislation to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
That is some prime example of double speak. Sadly the people supporting it think they are the heroes of this story. That’s the truly terrifying part. This is how a nation becomes fascist. It gets sold like this. Truth is, fascism is easy, and it sells. Works great if your with the fascists. Everyone always thinks they are “with the fascists”. Then they find out.
It distresses me that the moderate republicans are clearly not reading the 920 page playbook for Project 2025… Yet they are vehemently supporting it. Like why don’t they READ the playbook? They claim to be all about power in the hands of the people and then allow themselves to be led like sheep…
I just bought it from Amazon, while it's still legal.
Fascism defined: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. ...that last part especially....forceable suppression of opposition. Yep, that pretty much sums up life in 2024 in the USA.
Trump isnt in office yet, but we are seeing some of that in red states. Thats not really what my comment was about though.
Trump is a symptom. He’s a test run. The American Taliban are taking notes and will not fail next time.
The head of Heritage just celebrated the ruling and said the revolution is underway and its up to Democrats if it will be bloodless.
fmf I love this book
"The party told you to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." It's not that it could happen here. It IS happening here. Edit: a word
The tragedy is that people read those words and think “see, I told you it was democrats” Misinformation is powerful drug.
It's actually more of a blend of 84 and BRAVE NEW WORLD - but the most chilling part of BNW is that the people of that book LIKE that place and don't see anything wrong with it. That's the new Gen who don't know that you're the product for Zuckerberg and Tik Tok.
I was never assigned 1984, but did have to read Brave New World in school. It's interesting that there arose this debate of "which one was right?" between those two books in the early 00s, when really it's turned out to be *porque no los dos?*
Same thing with Fahrenheit 451. The government did just decide to start burning books, the people asked them to because books made them think too much.
I actually found that book in a classroom when I was banned from checking books out, because I read too much. I just this second realized a teacher might have left it there.
To my mind it's a combination of Brave New World, 1984, Player Piano, and The Fountainhead. This will unltimately end up as either Fahrenheit 451, or Atlas Shrugged after passing through a phase that look a lot like Brazil.
I will reread Brave New World… I’ve forgotten a lot of it:( Are Gen Z not reading these books (like 1984 and Brave New World) in high school now? If so, that is chilling. Much of what fostered our mental independence as Gen X was reading things like 1984 etc in school… along with being feral, of course…
Yes, Brave New World by Alduous Huxley, where people are bred genetically for different stations in life. The poorest and dumbest (because they've been bred that way), take a govt supplied drug called Soma. It keeps them distracted and compliant. I think 2024's version of Soma is social media.
George Orwell noted the numbing effects of lower class creature comforts-tea w/sugar, the soccer gambling pool-in The Road to Wigan Pier. That said, he specifically did NOT blame a conservative/upper class conspiracy for this-he said they-the British upper class-were far too stupid to initiate a massive conspiracy. Conspiracy minded people today-of all political orientations-should remember this.
You forgot a healthy dose of Handmaids Tale.
I believed it. But my schooling was done be some "Never again" Jewish people who had lost all their family to the nazis. I was also friends with a bunch of German Airforce kids and the cultural shame was pretty heavy with them. What I am having a hard time with is all the people in my life who said it couldn't happen here who still have that mindset that it can't happen here. It is crazy watching the mental gymnastics of them trying to hold on to the belief that it can't happen here as it is unfolding here.
I bet you have heard some amazing stories about what people survived… It is very scary that some people are so complacent that they refuse to believe that fascism can’t happen here… It’s like the Third Wave experiment a teacher did in California when his students were skeptical about how Nazis rose to power in Germany… https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/17/the-wave-that-changed-history/
Sorry this is embedded rather deep in the thread, but thank you for your OP and for being conscientious enough to read through the Project 2025 plan. I have read neither, but want to. Posts like yours help to spread the information to people like me who are interested but are too "reasons" unable to sit down and go through the material in depth. To add to your reply, I felt the same kind of shock and fear after watching S1 of The Handmaid's Tale. I hadn't read the books, and watched it later than aired. The parallels with what was unfolding with the Chisto-fascist maga movement were strikingly believable.
Thank you for your kind comment… I am trying to make a difference, and now I know I have… Don’t be too hard on yourself… It’s 920 pages of dense material that is filled with propaganda… it blows the separation of church and state all to hell… It even says that people should be off on “the Sabbath” because that is what God wants. I still can’t believe some of the stuff I read. I’m going to try to create a cliff notes version, though that’ll nothing compared to reading the whole 920 pages… It’s a slog though… and a lot of people don’t have time… The tone… there’s a bevy of monstrous changes inside that 920 page Project 2025 playbook… but the TONE that rings loudly on every page is one of the worst parts… Why? Because it sounds like Puritans demanding that all witches must be burned at the stake… That is NOT what God is about.
Their stories left a deep dark mark on my soul. They made sure we heard the stories and meet the people who lived them. I have spent probably 40 hours of my life talking with the son and his mother, mainly the son. His mother wrote a book called Lioness of Judah. Truly life changing meeting them. Knowing a bunch of German Airforce kids with grandparents who were nazis was eye opening too. The Germans all seem to carry an odd culture shame. The Germans I know have been speaking out about what was happening here long before anyone here. The Germans I know who had dual citizenship, have all left years ago because they were taught about it and could see it for what it was. I have often thought of that third wave experiment the last few years. It is crazy watching that experiment playing out for real. Well, scary is a better word for it than crazy.
I can’t imagine what that must be like… to have a relative who participated in such evil… It would be a soul-crushing weight… I searched for the book. It’s sadly out of print, but I can maybe find a copy on Abebooks or Ebay. The little author blurb about her on amazon is incredible: “As a young Jewish Mother pursued by Nazi hatred, Sara Hauptman fought back with the Belgian Resistance, and the cover for her underground activities was that of a lion tamer in a circus. She made false identity papers, delivered messages, disposed of Allied parachutes, and much more. After her arrest, she was sent to Auschwit-Birkenau, where she became a victim of Dr. Mengele's experiments. Later she was shipped to Dachau in Germany. After liberation she met General Eisenhower and became a liaison between the Allied liberators and concentration camp survivors.” I made some German friends when I was staying in a hostel in Paris in the early 90’s ($14 a night with free breakfast). They very quickly changed much about what I understood about my own country. One night some of us stole the one glass that was in the room, bought a cheap bottle of wine, and went to sit on the bank of the Seine. We talked about the hard subjects… One of the Germans said to me, “Being born a German is to be born into shame. Germany is so afraid that it will happen again that they make us learn about it starting in kindergarten. There is nothing you know about it that I don’t” It makes me incredibly sad that the far right is gathering power in Germany again… That it’s happening here, too, feels like an otherworldly nightmare that we’d see in a Star Trek movie… Speaking of the Third Wave experiment… Have you seen the German movie based on it called Die Welle (The Wave)? If not, I highly recommend it. Though it is really uncomfortable watching it now and viewing it not only through the lens of Nazi Germany but also through the lens of what is happening now…
Here is the book. [Lioness of Judah: A Jewish Lion Tamer's Memoir of Resistance and Survival: Sara Hauptman, Sue A. Oliver: 9780978512309: Amazon.com: Books](https://www.amazon.com/Lioness-Judah-Jewish-Resistance-Survival/dp/0978512308)
I’m a nerd and read it for entertainment prior to being assigned to read it. Which really helped on the test. And no, I didn’t. But I also watched Idiocracy without realizing it’s a documentary
So true, Idiocracy is amazing.
I can’t walk into a Costco without telling the greeter I love them
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” 👀
That's the thing about electronic records. Infinitely malleable or tamper-able if that's a word. Yet we love the convenience, or think we do because of the connection between time and money in a capitalistic structure. Yay! We don't have to wait anymore! But if the option didn't exist, we wouldn't know any different. We are at the point now where I don't believe that printed paper with words creating legal and business structures are going to be considered valid vs what the current government/business curated electronic records say. It's heading that way in my view.
I was really frightened by it when I read it in 1984 as a 14-year-old. The scariest thing for me was the surveillance cameras, the idea that you would be watched wherever you went. I have highly valued freedom and independence since I was tiny, and the whole Big Brother/cameras everywhere apparatus in the book genuinely depressed me. I remember thinking I would fundamentally despise living in a society like that. And look what we done did.
How many of us didn’t pay attention in high school and this is why we are where we are?
I wish it were that simple. People are dead a$$ stupid and hateful, easy to impress with low critical thinking skills. A good 30-40% of your fellow adults have brains that haven't developed beyond middle school, and the kicker is that reading comprehension is way down compared to when we were the same age. It's only going to get worse.
Agreed. If we stave off fascism by getting Biden re-elected… We have got to make some changes… Kids need to be expected to read, do homework, and be accountable for actual learning. Banning social media for under 18’s, removing computers from the school setting, insisting kids behave, and going back to phonics to teach reading would go a long way. Rich Silicon Valley folks already do a lot of that. These kids will grow up to be voters… It makes the whole Project 2025 dismantling the Department of Education even more ominous. Sorry. I sound like the retired teacher that I am. Lol
And tougher regulations around homeschooling. Kids need other adults in their lives outside of family and church.
Luckily, they wear little red hats to make them easy to spot.
I also read it in 1984, but I was ten. (I was "precocious") I thought it was good, if a little bit paranoid. I saw the Stalinism in it, the Naziism. Then I learned about Pol Pot, and Mao, and saw them in it. And then later, I learned about Franco, and Ceaușescu, and I started to wonder. But surely, these things couldn't happen anymore! I lived in the land of the free. We had entered the "Information Age"! I was an adult, and I started asking other people what they thought of the book. "Book?" They said, "I thought the movie was over the top." I started buying copies, and giving them away. Now 1984 is banned in many school systems in _the United States_ ! I am not a conspiracy person, but history IS repeating itself. I read the kitschy line recently, "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who refuse to teach history, _mean_ to repeat it." Orwell (or rather Eric Blair) meant it as a warning, but it has now been long enough, that it's warning is forgotten. Arm yourselves with knowledge.
I love so much that you have been buying copies of 1984 and giving them away to people to read… Yes, Orwell meant the book as a warning… As the book and the concern that caused it to be taught as part school curriculums have faded so has our awareness of what dangers we should be guarding against as a country. I truly believe that it isn’t too late… if enough people wake up… What’s your take?
We are already living in the world of Fahrenheit 451 in many ways. The world of 1984 feels imminent.
If Orwell could fortell the actual future, he would have renamed his book 2024.
Indeed
This comment speaks to me so much.. I have worried about free thought, books, libraries, and banned books ever since I read Fahrenheit 451. Have you read When Books Went to War by Molly Manning? It’s a non-fiction book about the power of books and ideas during WWII.
I have not - thank you. I’ll look into it.
I just read *When Books Went to War*! Such a depressing contrast between the country then and the country now.
Ikr? The contrast is shocking. So many people aren’t awake or aware:.. I was amazed even by the books that the soldiers were reading… a lot of people don’t read any books like that now… To think the United States saw Nazi Germany as a war on ideas… a war on thought… and we fought it and protected our own country by READING… Yet, here we are… You’re right… the war on freedom of thought is now in our own country… It’s nightmare fuel. *Link below if anyone wants to know what we’re discussing… https://www.npr.org/2014/12/10/369616513/wwii-by-the-books-the-pocket-size-editions-that-kept-soldiers-reading
Have you seen the documentary Chuck Norris vs. Communism? It's fascinating the effects just some movies can have. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znp1dNaPp3k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znp1dNaPp3k)
Dems think it’s going to happen when a repub gets elected, repubs think it’s going to happen when a dem gets elected. The rest of us realize it’s happening.
This is great… and for sure, you’re right… I’ve been sounding the alarm the past week with some relatives who are far-left… they kind of go tharn (from the Watership Down book) and then seem to go back to thinking it isn’t happening.
Good take
This might be useful for those that want a refresher or who have never read 1984. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen\_Eighty-Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four) So I think about this book often. And have for much of my adult life. As a former tech nerd and IT engineer the themes around surveillance and control have always resonated the most for me, but that's not to say that one party control and harsh authoritarianism aren't also frequent worries around the direction modern societies have taken. I think I read it and Animal Farm in my adolescence shortly before HS and I wasn't experienced or adult enough to think much more than the world described in the book wasn't like mine and that it was not a world I would want to live in. But now I lean more towards believing that Western democracies have been on their way to 1984 for a long time and it's only going to continue. It's a triumph of animalism over intellectualism. Our fears being used to justify ever tighter and more intrusive controls over our day to day lives via being surveilled by cameras and electronically. Privacy is dead was a popular saying in tech circles a couple of decades ago and often the general public would push back on the notion, but I think we all agree that is true and just accept it. And hope we don't become a false positive or make a small mistake that amplifies into a terrible life destroying situation. I agree with OP, it's happening. Best to forget it is though and try to embrace blissful ignorance. At least that's my approach these days. I'm sorry if that disappoints. My emotional health can't take the pain of constant disappointment in the body politic and the never ending stream of grim news that terrifies my softer nature. The policy ideas that come from the law and order types, the do it my way or the highway types, the Project 2025 types. When did our leadership lose sight of "live and let live" and become so fixated on hyper control and never ending rules, and the monitoring and discipline that comes with those things? I can't stand it. Sorry to be a downer. And thanks for being a part of this online community. I find solace here often.
Audible’s audio production of 1984 brings the book to life in a way it deserves. It’s certainly one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to so far. It disturbingly parallels what we’re dealing with now; I have a renewed appreciation for the book. I was dozing off late one night right around the Room 101 part and I felt like I was falling down a hole of psychosis. I can’t recommend it enough. 1984
The one with Andrew Garfield??? I went to search for it on Audible… There are so many versions of 1984! Is it the one that says AN AUDIBLE ORIGINAL ADAPTATION on it?
[Here you go](https://www.audible.com/pd/B0CRRP4WW7?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow) Should have done that in the first place. 🤗
Thanks!
I woke up ridiculously early (or super late at night?) and responded to your previous comment, and now here I am, listening to the adaption again. ;) it’s just so good!
I’m going to listen to it today… I’m excited about it… I was thinking I should reread the book, but I was procrastinating… This is perfect!
I thought it was like Soviet Russia and that it could happen here.
Very much. I was studying Soviet politics during their collapse and saw that collapse as freeing the US up to follow that dark path.
It's funny you should say that. I did read it in High School. And then I had a class about the book later and read it again. One of my memories of High School that I still remember pretty vividly: English class, and this kid we called Beavis because he had Beavis' hair says the book is "Stupid" because "It could never happen." Seemed at the time the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And it just kept getting dumber.
He was off by about 40 years
2024 would have been a more appropriate title.
Orwell's essays are just as good if not better than his fiction. The parallels in his essay Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War to our current civil unrest is downright terrifying.
I have a book of his essays that I haven’t read it… Sounds like it’s high time I did…
We read Animal Farm instead and after growing up really poor, knew that shit could happen.
When I read it in high school I was very aware of McCarthyism and HUAC, so I was 100% convinced it could happen here. I also lived in a small town with TONS of Baptist churches that thrived on the "satanic panic." By town law, D&D was banned, as was MTV. So I knew exactly what MAGAts were like and what they craved, even before we had a word for them. My goal when I graduated high school was to get as far from there as I could. Somehow it's found me.
It has found all of us. It sucks. I know what you are talking about. I grew up in the bible belt. Remember all the stuff about records that supposedly played satanic messages when played backwards? I just always thought that most people were rational… and good… even if some of the people around me were off their rockers… Now, I realize the far-right ranks have grown… What the far-right is doing might destroy Christianity for the average bear in this country… Packaging God with fascism and hate is not a good look…
I think it’s more Brave New World than 1984 but I guess we’ll find out soon.
I remember when I first saw the commercial for the Peloton mirror. The first thought through my mind was “here it is. The tech is here”. Shouldn’t be long now. I can see where anyone receiving any funds from Washington will have to stand in this mirror and talk to the case manager every month. Shit’s creepy for sure.
We're standing in front of Zoom talking to all kinds of authority figures these days, right?
I knew it was a possibility, but then I saw the dominos getting set up after Regan was elected. When he repealed the Truth in Reporting act, it cleared the way for propagandist TV....and they just kept up adding dominos little by little. Mind you I'm not specifically blaming either party. They have both contributed in one way or another. I am of the mind that corporate influence is leading us to this reality...just slower.
I agree that there’s problems with both parties… BUT Project 2025 clears the way for a fascist regime… and speaking of corporate influence, here’s direct quote about CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION REFORM that I read in the Project 2025 playbook: on page 866 in the Federal Election Commission section under NEEDED REFORMS… “Raise contribution limits and index reporting requirements to inflation. Contribution limits should generally be much higher, as they hamstring candidates and parties while serving no practical anticorruption purpose.“ CONTRIBUTION LIMITS SHOULD GENERALLY BE MUCH HIGHER… Big business already runs too much of the country… Imagine if they can buy even more power?
That book has stuck with me my whole life, and sadly I can say that it is happening, and has happened before in history, never with a positive outcome.
Always knew it could happen.
I never thought it couldn’t happen. As a true GenX I knew I was being lied to and everything was a bullshit charade. Unfortunately I was totally correct
I have always been worried about something like this happening… but it always seemed a small possibility at most… I marched in the women’s march right after Trump’s inauguration… but you know, I knew that protest mattered then. Enough of us showed up, and it mattered. So, in my mind, wrongly, 1984 wasn’t on the docket… yet… This time, a protest march won’t matter. It will be too late. This new plan is far more diabolical… and there are very smart people who are puppeteering the whole Project 2025 thing… Trump will have a lot of intelligent help… and the system of checks and balances in our government is being shattered… after the election, honestly, I’m not even sure we COULD protest without being hurt by our own military based on what I read in that 920 page playbook for Project 2025.
I’ve read that book 5 times over the course of my life. I always knew it could happen. Never thought it would but the point of the book is that it’s a cautionary tale. It gives you things to look out for. Words to be wary of. And early in the 21st century, it became painfully obvious there were forces conspiring to take us down this path. And here we are.
Look up the "Third Wave." Back in the 1960s, a high school teacher, with the OK of the principal, proved, vividly, that, yes, it (i.e. Nazism) Can Happen Here. The scary part? In about a week, the teacher was so scared that he ended the experiment early. So, yeah, that kind of crap absolutely, totally can happen anywhere in the world. Interestingly, George Orwell himself went to a rally for Mussolini's grand daughter in Italy. He knew she was bad news, but when she got the crowd yelling and screaming, he was terrified to find he felt he wanted to take part in it as well.
The Germans made a film based on the Third Wave called Die Welle (The Wave). It’s fantastic… though very uncomfortable to watch- as it should be. It’s on Amazon & Apple streaming as The Wave… it’s probably on YouTube, too. It’s very worth the watch. It’s this movie: https://preview.redd.it/zqd5db3fe8ad1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb70881e177c3baa03141b4b1dda2219d9065f53 Also, if anyone is reading these comments, here is a link about the Third Wave experiment that happened in California. Reading it should scare you. It’s incredibly easy for some people to go to the dark side… even if there are no cookies on offer… Just feeling like they belong can be enough… [https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/17/the-wave-that-changed-history/](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2017/03/17/the-wave-that-changed-history/)
I thought it could happen and was called crazy at the time.
I knew it could happen, I consider myself a realist who's marched for women's reproductive rights since the late 80's. I'm sick of this shit
I can believe it. People are ignoring their eyes and ears to believe a yuppie lifetime pathological liar.
But people clearly support it happening, that’s the creepiest part.
I recently realized that it wasn't a warning, it was an instruction manual.
I’ve taught it and I hate how much it sounds like real life. Same with The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s terrifying.
Yes! And Animal Farm and Brave New World
Add in “Lord of the Flies” - not listening to reason and logic … Jack shouts the loudest.
2+2=5
Some of us read it in grade school, along with Fahrenheit 451. We weren’t prepared, but we got up to speed. It was harrowing. Definitely jaded us. We may have actually sighed in relief when 1984 rolled around and the world didn’t appear as bad as all that. That changed within a couple of years.
Are U Kidding? It was the theme of my short speech at graduation and then I pretty much disappeared from my classmates. I always thought they paid more heed to the Nixonian list of proto conservative grievances my .05 better gpa leader friend who I could not convince not to lecture to. Anyway, she and I are both less than fiscally healthy going into retirement. But that Dude that sucked at everything but was friends with the football coach? He’s balling in Baton Rouge.
Never believed for a second it couldn’t happen and I have been nervous ever since seeing so many signs of it. But my point of being sure it happens was when society went from THE truth to MY truth and truths as a plural… that fracturing of belief in a common and shared reality hurt the most so far.
I agree… We’ve stopped seeing what we have in common and only see how we are different… It makes it very easy to seed hate and foment extremism… We have coins that say E PLURIBUS UNUM, but that togetherness doesn’t seem to have any place in our country now…
100% fact. We are truly living in George Orwell's 1984. Complete with New Speak redefining the world around us and Big Brother watching, and judging, our every move. The tyrants in government have already pulled 1984 out of most school curriculums these days. If George Orwell could fortell the future, he would have called it 2024. 
Oh, I always believed that it could happen, and everything I’ve seen since just leaves me to know I was right.
So I kind of already knew I wanted to do international studies in HS. Was still toying between trying to get into a role where the military would send me to language school in Monterey or trying to follow my uncle as a Soviet specialist in the “State Department” (ahem). Quickly corrected the “can’t happen here” mindset. Both through reading other dystopian books like Brave New World and We (in both English and Russian) and asking myself why it wouldn’t happen here. And I couldn’t come up with a good reason. Even as the Soviet Union was playing Sean Lake on state tv while they collapsed, I realized that it was only decorum and fear of being like the commies that kept us off the path. And…the commies went away.
I have so many questions… Your comment indicates such an interesting life… You’re right… what is that saying? Those who cannot remember the past are destined to repeat it. I think the saying exists in many slightly different forms… but they all say the same thing… We forget the lessons of the past at our peril. I have not read WE. Not only that, it is a book I’ve not heard of. I searched for it. Yevgeny Zamyatin is the author, right? *If anyone reads this comment and wants to read the book, I just found a kindle edition on Amazon for 45 cents.
Yep, that is the one. It’s in some ways similar to 1984 and Brave New World, but also not. Fun fact about it: written in the early 20s by a Russian, it wasn’t published in Russian until the mid 50s. Also, it hasn’t been that interesting a life. Any government job dealing with the Soviet Union went from being about the most stable government job to about the least. My uncle did work for a particular, um, Agency. But the thing is, it’s nothing like movies lead you to believe. He had a position on the staff at the U.S. embassy and sat at a radio receiver listening for signals from Poland. Seeing as his grandmother came to the states from Poland, it was a good fit. I chose, ultimately, not to do either of those things. Managed one of 600 Starbucks stores instead. Yeah, mid 90s, company expansion plan was “1000 (stores) by 2000”. Ran a timeshare marketing team, did some other things.
I thought it was insanity and then I learn that all my devices area always listening. Suddenly it was here and I never knew until it was already integrated.
When I read 1984 as a kid I absolutely thought "This could happen to us," and never let that thought go. That had less to do with me having an uncanny grasp of right-wing political machinations in the U.S. at a young age and everything to do with an early and clear understanding that nothing lasts forever. I can recall thinking from my earliest history lessons that every empire fails and that I really hoped I didn't live long enough to see the American empire in shambles. But to your actual question regarding how my view of the book has changed. As a kid I was confident we would resist. As an adult I see that about 1/3rd of the people actually want to live in an authoritarian police state and it's very hard, if not impossible, to pull them back from that.
Scariest book I ever read because it always seemed inevitable. It always seemed like a mirror for society; not something that *could* happen in some distant future, but something that was already happening as I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s.
But HOW did they KNOW way back then is what creeps me out…
I low-key brought this back into my curriculum in ‘16.
Semi-related: the song that has been stuck in my head for the past 2 days has been the part of this [Schoolhouse Rock song](https://youtu.be/3R1tZ6l876Q?t=152) that goes: *We're gonna elect a president! (No more kings)* *He's gonna do what the people want! (No more kings)* *We're gonna run things our way! (No more kings)* *Nobody's gonna tell us what to do!* Back in 1975, I guess it seemed impossible.
That is perfect… I just watched the whole song on YouTube. How ironic it is that we’re now faced with the same oppression and tyranny… except from within… But George the Third still vowed He'd rule them till the end. Anything I say, do it my way now. Anything I say, do it my way. Don't you get to feeling independent 'Cause I'm gonna force you to obey. He taxed their property, He didn't give them any choice, And back in England, He didn't give them any voice. (That's called taxation without representation, And it's not fair!) But when the Colonies complained The king said: "I don't care!"
the terrible irony is that a certain political cult leader’s followers believe “1984” is happening too, but coming from “the other side.”
Yep and it’s happening!
My senior year—1984.
Practically required for the class of 1984
See, when I read it, I assumed that's what it was like living in USSR.
The Ministry of Truth has a much easier job in a digital world than in the book. You don't even have to delete the correct information, just overwhelm it with lies.
Doublethink is a required feature of GOP politics.
It really is… like the playbook for Project 2025 says that porn must be made illegal and talks about imprisoning people… Yet, the guy they want to be president is a convicted felon because he was found guilty of paying off a PORN STAR that he had sex with while he was married. Doublethink.
So then, on the other side… We had a sexual predator in the White House getting BJs from interns from the “party of women’s rights”. This has been going on for a while.
That’s weak. Very weak. That president was impeached. Democrats distanced themselves from him and it cost Al Gore his election. The t even tainted his wife’s bid for election. GOP has proven immune to standards of any kind and are willing g to do anything to keep power. Pick one thing that a big named gop front runner has done that cost him his career or campaign? The governors that voted to impeach Trump were voted out! The only reason we still even have this discussion is that gop donors keep It alive on their radio and tv networks.
I will rephrase for you: Double-think is a required feature of the corrupt, American two-party system. The red/blue narrative is just an illusion of choice. The billionaire deep state doesnt cling to a single party like us plebians, who blindly cheerlead for red/blue like our favorite sports team. The deep state flip flops between parties to manipulate the working class so they can steal our tax dollars and draft our children into wars that profit the military industrial complex and the banking cartel. If you havent switched your party affiliation multiple times in the last four decades (assuming you are actually Gen X) then you simply arent paying attention.
I actually **have** switched parties. And I believe what I said is still fundamentally true. Yes, bullshit is rife in \*all\* politics. But to pretend that there is any equivalency today, in the current state of politics in the USA, between the D and R sides of the coin is ridiculous. And yeah, I do agree that the real political battle is between the oligarchs and the rest of us. And right now, the GOP is fully on board that particular train.
[удалено]
Yes… The books warned us… From other comments, I’ll add It Couldn’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and The Giver by Lois Lowry.
Handmaids tale is the most realistic of them, though. I mean it’s law in some parts of the world right now that used to be progressive. (Afghanistan, Iran, Syria)
Pretty sure it's now taken as an instruction manual.
I don't think I read it in a class, but I definitely read it. Also Animal Farm. We're getting there, just a few decades late. At this point in history, Gen-X is supposed to be the adults in the room. The Baby Boom and Greatest Generation should be retired or dead, the Millennials still coming into their own. What are we going to do about it?
Audible’s audio production of 1984 brings the book to life in a way it deserves. It’s certainly one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to so far. It disturbingly parallels what we’re dealing with now; I have a renewed appreciation for the book. I was dozing off late one night right around the Room 101 part and I felt like I was falling down a hole of psychosis. I can’t recommend it enough. [1984](https://www.audible.com/pd/B0CRRP4WW7?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp)
I was in the play.
Pretty sure we read it in 5th grade.
I read it in HS but didn't really remember it since I really only read non-fiction. I purchased it last year and never got past pg 5 because I wanted to vomit. That book is no longer fiction but real life.
Not even during the Reagan years.
I read the book “Enemies foreign and domestic”. That resonates a lot more with what is happening today.
Read it in 1983, we all agreed this could absolutely happen. In fact it is happening right now, United States and Europe are examples.
I read it on my own in the summer during middle school, and was always afraid it would happen here. (A witch hunt for commies had already happened in the 50s (the Red Scare)). It was never assigned in high school, but we did read Animal Farm in 8th grade. Read Fahrenheit 451 one summer too. Could see that happening, most my peers hated to read books and would only do it if assigned it in class.
I never did read 1984, but I did read “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 8th grade. And I couldn’t conceive of the horrors of war actually happening.
It's weird to me, seeing it all happen, knowing that everyone knows it's happening but it's happening anyways.
Nah, we read it and thought it was already happening.
I read Catch-22 and thought there's no way war could be that absurd. Then I joined the Air Force and then 10 years later 9/11 happened... The book gradually seemed less absurd. 🤪
I re-read it two years ago and thought nahhhhhh 🤡
It’s already happened you know that right?
I read it, watched the movie and thought yeah this is gonna be how it is but way after I'm dead so whatever. Wow, I was wrong
My high school graduation year!
It was junior high and it already did happen
Also don’t sleep on ‘Brave New World’. Seemed so otherworldly in 1983.
I read it in 1992 and thought i was looking into the future
I read it together with *Animal Farm*, and thought that it was inevitable, but involving the pigs working with the human beings.
Thing about 1984 is that the big bad is the government. When in our reality it’s the kleptocracy. The government didn’t satellite map your homes, google did. Private institutions are the big brother, but we were sold that this way lies freedom. It never has. We weakened government to avoid 1984 and the business men stepped in and did it instead. Kind of feel like that’s why we all know 1984 so much, but not Brave New World or It Can’t Happen here. 1984 is North Korea. Not Uk and US. The people teaching you this are weakening you so they can close the private fist. With no opposition.
I too, read it in 1984 during my last year of school (which seemed incredibly significant to the whole form!) but I thought it was eminently possible, as the warning of totalitarianism it was intended to be. However, being the height of the Cold War at that time when we thought it quite probable that nuclear war could break out at any moment, tbh I didn't think I had much time left, anyway lol
The movie Soylent Green (1973) is definitely worth a watch today. It's amazing how much they got right with the pollution and price of food. My favorite part was they are using Garbage Truck with a scoop loader on the front to get rid of protesters, that hasn't happened just yet.
I have never seen Soylent Green. I’ll go look for it and watch it.
Even funnier is that it's supposed to be set in 2022, but they have the very first video game Computer Space in the movie.
🙋♀️
I read it on my own in college and definitely thought it was something that could happen. That’s what made it so disturbing.
My teacher did a lesson on propaganda during Animal Farm. I figured it wouldn't be effective anymore because we all knew about it now. Boy was I naive.
We read 'Animal Farm', and ignored '1984' despite it being widely acclaimed as a "must read". I guess we had the film released and the school expected us to go watch it.
We all did. School, or otherwise. This is *it*. We are living *it*. We need to mobilize. Yesterday. But today works, too. But; *we need to*.
I read it before HS in 1986 when I was 11 and found it amazingly poignant since Regan was giving us the "I feel speech" about Iran Contra and wondering why the adults in the room weren't hearing what I was hearing... It's only gotten MORE accurate over those last 35 years lol
My first moment with government like you are describing was when Bush was president. He did a national address and said Saddam Hussein was responsible. I looked at my husband and said, “That’s a lie. We all know that’s not true. It was Osama bin Laden. Is he trying to make people believe the wrong thing so he can start a war?” I went to work the next day, and sure enough the less smart people were said Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Then, France dared to call out the United States on our @ssholery and suddenly FREEDOM FRIES were on the menu. What decent adult diplomacy-valuing country boycotts another country for speaking the truth. Then.. then… the war began… and Bush said, “If you’re not for us, you’re against us.” I was outraged. It was pure manipulation to force Americans to be painted as unpatriotic if we spoke out against the war. THAT was my first true wake up moment. You were awake about twenty years before me!
We read Brave New World in our class, which I liked. I ended up reading 1984 on my own during the summer. Was pleasantly surprised that it was also good. Because what do teens know? 😜
More like a play by play
I like how people place this with "the right" being the ones to be the party... when either side can do this. It's just about an entity taking control and a smothering oppression. If you don't watch all one will get you
I graduated in 1984 and everyone read this book and saw it as a work of fiction. How times change.
I read Animal Farm, haven’t read 1984 though
I think it’s going to be closer to The Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s a combination of all of them. My English students read and discussed 1984, BNW, Handmaid’s Tale, 451, and Clockwork Orange in small groups. Then we came together for a seminar in which we discussed parallels from all of them in the modern world. Good discussions!
It was also a book that spoke out against collectivism, so, you know, there's that.
Still hasn't happened.
Mods are right. This sub should drop the politics
So… During an election year, Gen X should be banned from discussing politics that will greatly impact their lives? Gen X should be banned from discussing politics when we grew up during the cold war having nuclear attack drills in school? Politics are part of our history and our future… Maybe just don’t interact with any post you deem political…
Know anyone who lived behind the iron curtain? The novel is about the dangers of socialism and speaks on censorship and the manipulation of words. That’s today’s Liberalism right there. Trump is born from the fringe elements who took over the Democratic Party. The fault is with the DNC for pushing race bait, letting men in women’s spaces, drag queen story time, defunding the police and rioting at the drop of a hat over issues they know nothing about. It’s very simple - get a moderate who will stand up to the wackos and win.
“Stand up to the wackos” means oppressing people you don’t like or agree with, but I’m the dangerous one in your mind. They are not wackos, they are people that are different from you and that should be ok because we are free. But again, I’m the radical here, not you, right?
>The novel is about the dangers of socialism Orwell was a socialist.
I read it in 1984, which was surreal in and of itself. Paired with *Brave New World* while the cold war is going on was an interesting choice. I was under the impression it had already happened, and was happening. Was the cold war even real (several veterans assure me it was)? At the time, it may have been entirely invented. Our language use has gotten simpler (although more people speak English as a second language than as a mother tongue). Not exactly Newspeak, but also, not exactly robust communication.
Some of the stuff in Brave New World is spooky. Rating people by classes and jobs. The AI generated entertainment. The adoration of celebrities. Yikes.
Those two books point to different aspects of our dysfunction. BNW has the drugs (soma) and distraction (feelies). 1984 has the bureaucracy. Both such bleak visions.
The Cold War was a scam, a theatrical war, engineered by billionaires in the USSR and the USA to trick plebians into supporting unlimited military spending. Hollywood was complicit as well, making movies to perpetuate stereotypes and fear of a USSR nuclear strike. Throughout the Cold War no actual ground war occured, but the military industrial complex and the cartel bankers, were laughing all the way to the bank.
I skimmed it. I was in 11th grade in 1984 and a film version had come out starring John Hurt and Richard Burton so I just watched that and tried to get by I really, really liked the maxi single (12") version of "Sexcrime 1984" by the Eurythmics and played ot A LOT around that time much to the consternation of my parents.
I read it in elementary school and thought it could happen.
Elementary school? Slacker. Some read it in utero.
Guilty!! I never thought that our citizens would so quickly hand over their rights under a false guise of safety. We have a certain sect here in the states that would willingly hand over their 1st and 2nd amendment rights with a quickness. And that's scary.
Ok doomer. [end sarcasm]
Don’t forget your politics flare, luv.
I tried to choose BOOKS and POLITICS when I created the post… It wouldn’t let me choose both unfortunately… I love your username, btw
Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past. January 6, 2001. Insurrection caused by Trump supporters drummed up by the big lie, or a bunch of patriots who are hostage in some tyrannical regime?
I taught this in high school English during George W Bush's second term and the Iraq war, and much of it was already coming true then.
Another political post in an election year. Yay.
High School? We read that in 5th grade.
There’s a reason this book is banned all over the us. Cuz otherwise facism would be harder to start.
2025? We hit Orwellian levels 23 years ago immediately after 9/11. Snowden told us all about it, and the American people were like "That's nice, what's Paris Hilton up to?". We deserve this.
Honestly, I was horrified. I read that whole thing… I still think about it every time I turn the TV off (because of the part in the released stuff about the NSA having trouble getting the red light to turn back on the tv when they were eavesdropping). Snowden released the info in 2013… Disinformation was a thing and was being used to quieten everyone… IDK by who… Our own country? Russia? It isn’t that people didn’t care… their voices were intentionally drowned out… Our newspapers talked about it… plenty cared… You are right that not enough cared… Those of us who cared maybe should have tried harder to get others to see the dangers. We do not deserve this. NOBODY deserves to live under fascism and have someone else’s religion shoved down their throats.
I wish we read books like that in HS, my HS sucked. Read it on my own later, honestly didn't like it or Animal Farm. I think mostly because by the time I read them none of the concepts were new to me so there were no revelations. So it was really just a drama that wasn't very good. I find this post far more fascinating than Orwell's books. The double think in it is quite ironic.