George Orwell 1984

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Sign on the family home in Station Road, Southwold, Suffolk,  of George Orwell 1903-1950

Who was George Orwell?

George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair) was born in India in on 25 June 1903>  He was a writer and argueably most famous for his dystopian novel (relating to an oppressive unpleasant human society)  called  "1984".  Also his fable (moral story) called "Animal Farm".  He died on 21 Jan 1950.

Animal Farm :   A story of revolution then corruption power and and tyranny.  As he dies, a pig on a farm tells the animals about his dream of living free from human tyranny.  Later on, farmer Jones forgets to feed the animals and so they revolt and chase him away , and then the pigs take charge.  They draw up 7 new commandments including "All animals are equal".  However , as time goes on the leaders become greedy, corrupt and oppressive .  In the end the animals realise that they cannot tell the pigs from the humans. 


1984 is a fictional story about an oppressive, authoritarian surveillance society.  Oceania is a country comprising USA, UK and allies. In that country, the Party has a surveillance system called Big Brother which Captures everyone's behaviour on a telescreen (monitor).  There is also "Newspeak" which is language permitted (trusted) by the book's authoritarian leaders to discourage free thinking. There are 2 other blocks in the world :  Eastasia (China & allies) , and Eurasia (Soviet empire).

The main character is Winston Smith . He works for the Ministry of truth but secretly hates the ruling party.  He keeps an illegal diary and starts a forbidden relationship with Julia .  He joins a resistance movement but is caught by the thought police.  He is handed to the Ministry of Love who psycologically torture him until he loves Big Brother. 

Ministry of Truth :   There is a real  "Ministry of Truth" (trusted news network) which tries to clean up (fact check or remove)  anything that goes against it's narrative.  There is also a unit of the British Army called 77 Brigade  which deals with information manipulation to change human behaviour .  This tries to get the UK Government message across and discourage dissent.  They are quite open about what they do and you can apply to join them as a reservist if you wish. 

Powerful people would prefer to return to a time when they owned the facts.  You only had the information that they served up to you in the newspaper  or on the BBC.  At the moment they have lost control as we can all scan the internet for information.