1984 in the news How much has come true?

1984 in the news In 1949, when George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was first published, the New York Times book reviewer wrote that, though it was “not impressive as a novel about particular human beings” as a “prophecy and a warning” it was “superb.”

1984 in the news How much of that prophecy came to pass? How many of the book’s warnings are relevant today?

1984 in the news Search the Web for contemporary uses of Newspeak, the thought police or double-think — the expressions, that is: a glance at the political pages or op-ed columns provides plenty of examples of what the following phrases describe.

1984 in the news On the next slide are some famous lines from “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” “Animal Farm,” “Politics and the English Language,” and other works by Orwell. Your challenge is to find an article where the term or terms apply. Copy the article into a word document, in another document, write an explanation of why you chose that article and save it in the Group work folder labeled 1984 in the news (in the StuCommon-Kammann-Group work folder)

1984 in the news Big Brother is watching you. Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Double-think means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.