When candidates can get elected to Congress based on a mountain of lies they’ve told, is it time to reconsider whether such lies are protected by the First Amendment?
Russian President Vladimir Putin uses words to mean the opposite of what they really mean.
Sergei Guneyev/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
Putin often uses words to mean exactly the opposite of what they normally do – a practice diagnosed by political author George Orwell as ‘doublespeak,’ or the language of totalitarians.
George Orwell’s writings have left a lasting imprint on American thought and culture.
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George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was an instant success when it was first published. His writings on totalitarianism and socialism continue to be relevant today.
State police officers during a “Reopen Virginia” rally around Capitol Square in Richmond on April 22, 2020.
Getty/Ryan M. Kelly / AFP
‘Dystopia’ is a term that’s gained popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s not a synonym for ‘a bad time,’ and a government’s poor handling of a crisis does not constitute dystopia.
The dominant reading of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984” has been that it was a dire prediction of what could be.
Denis Hamel Côté
In the year 1984, there was self-congratulatory coverage that the dystopia of the novel had not been realized. However, an expert argues that the technologies described in the novel are here and watching us.
Written as the Cold War became entrenched, 1984 was meant as a warning on the nature of state power. Understanding this power is even more important today.
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George Orwell’s dystopian classic can tell us a lot about contemporary politics and power, from Donald Trump to Facebook.
College yearbook editors in the 1960s juxtaposed pictures of traditional campus activities, such as Greek Life, alongside images of protests and marches.
The Kentuckian, 1968
Recent blackface scandals that involve college yearbooks have overshadowed how yearbooks also chronicled important turning points in the history of US higher education, a historian argues.
A day after Donald Trump met with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, he told lawmakers the U.S. should have more immigrants from places like Norway and not “shithole” countries like Haiti.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Donald Trump’s language has disturbing similarities to the words and verbal tactics used by fascists, including his cries of “fake news” and his obsessive exaggerations about his achievements.
The best selling book on Amazon is ‘1984’ – which was originally published in 1949. A historian from Case Western Reserve University considers how the novel helps us think about our present moment.
1984’s politics, while tuned for the threat of a different villain at a different time, ring eerily true today.
Manuel Harlan/Melbourne Festival
Orwell’s 1984 is a heavily laden text, which turned the author’s name into a byword for authoritarian nightmare. So what can we take from the 2015 stage version at the Melbourne Festival?
Every year thousands of students read George Orwell’s 1984 and are doubtless convinced that its perspective on language and power is “definitive”. Except that it’s not; and hasn’t been since at least the 1970s.
Manuel Harlan/Melbourne Festival
Many still regard George Orwell’s 1984 and its message about the nature of language and power “definitive”. But globalisation has revolutionised how we communicate; 1984 tells us nothing about our future.
The climate change “debate” bears the stains of Orwellian interference.
Truthout.org
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts” – Senator Daniel Moynihan Science is a systematic, evidence-based, testable and self-correcting way of investigating the world. This…