Post-truth really is stranger than fiction.
Since Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, book sales for George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 have spiked, most likely being bought as a self-help book on how to deal with a government ran by a privileged elite that tries to block independent thinking.
It’s been theorised that this rise in sales (topping Amazon’s bestseller list) has also been aided by one of Trump’s advisers, Kellyanne Conway, using the term “alternative facts” when blasting the media for saying that the newly elected president’s inauguration didn’t draw in as many people as Obama’s, even though there’s photographic evidence that proves otherwise.
Remind you of anything? In 1984 personal thought is is suppressed using the phrase “doublethink”, which the author and likely prophet wrote meant “the power of holding contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them".
In the novel politicians also use a new language called “newspeak”, an ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda, who also make the public endure two-minutes of hate speech everyday.
Remind you of anyone?
And it’s far from the first time Orwell predicted the future of politics with worrying accuracy.
