Dystopian novels: Instruction manuals for the ruling classes.

I was sitting in my kitchen the other day drinking my morning coffee contemplating the current state and likely trajectory of the western world and how it resembles an ever more fictional realm. The thought occurred to me, am I living in a science fiction dystopian novel manifested by science fiction buffs or is my imagination having a dominant moment? In the Immediacy of this thought, I wondered how much science fiction novels of the past bore influence on the future. Just taking a cursory look around at our world informs us that indeed science fiction must surely bear some influence, and complimentary predictive power born in the imagination of science fiction authors. When we consider the political trajectory after the Great War, technological advancement, and formula of our present social melee, particularly for those of us that enjoy the genre, then it is confirmed. I laughed to myself, thinking it is merely anecdotal, albeit compelling, until I thought a bit more, and recalled the themes and ideas magically come to life in the many Sci-Fi books I’ve read and set about to find contemporary examples that I wouldn’t have to crowbar into my playful theory. And if this theory has any substance, then those at the top of the food chain in terms of who decides what course society is set and how the socio-political environment unfolds must consist of a mixture of hard-core non-fiction communism consumers mediated by science fiction fans. It seems the fiction of yesteryear often becomes the blueprint for today. Speculative fiction has an uncanny knack of translating human imagination as a social prophecy. Not only do authors predict technological advances but foresee the socio-political and psychological consequences of adopting the technology.

The obvious and most quoted work is Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1948 describing a tightly screwed fear-driven life in the Dystopian world of Oceania, experienced by our protagonist Winston Smith, and controlled by the Party. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four spotlights the consequential threads of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive collectivisation in modifying social behaviours. Oceania’s political system is known as Ingsoc, aka English socialism and was intended by Orwell as a parody of the Fabian Society. While our protagonist feels the walls closing around him, Winston holds an at times fatalistic view of his circumstances yet is contradicted by his primal resistance against the stifling of his autonomy, a secret compulsion he must keep close to his chest in fear his wrong think will be discovered by Big Brother necessitating a visit from the Thought Police. Oceania is a totalitarian world dominated by the themes of language simplicity applied to control thought, reinforced by psychological menacing and accompanied by the threat of physical violence to manipulate behaviour, infused with the Party maintaining a tight grip on knowledge of history, even going so far as revisionism to contain a grip on the present.

The central technology of Nineteen Eighty-Four is the inescapable all-seeing two-way Telescreen of Big brother, the dictatorial leader of Oceania and controller of the “Thought Police.” Winston’s growing sense of fatalism is driven by a pressing paranoia. A state of mind brought about under the strain of Big Brothers control, instinctively knowing when writing, “Down with Big Brother,” in his diary he will be found out. His weakness gnaws at him constantly, a deep-seated resentment of the regime, one where his primal resistance betrays his fear and a crushing sense of quiet inevitability. It is only a matter of time before he is betrayed by O’ Brien, his supervisor in the Ministry of Truth.

I am confident many of us today can relate to Winston’s fear both in the workplace for wrong think and being betrayed by a colleague or writing something down on social media, or even as a Journalists (Tommy Robinson and others) that may have strayed from the party line, we should expect a visit from the Thought Police.” No doubt informed/reported by one of our own to Big Brothers Ministry of Truth or in our paradigm Keir Starmers Prevent Program-National Online Information Team (NSOIT). Complimented by our modern “Telescreen” the Counter Disinformation Data Platforms (CDDP) newly developed thought police AI system. On the other side of the Atlantic we have the NSA Prism program monitoring smart devices and facial recognition software, mirroring Oceania’s telescreen.

Newspeak, in 1984 is self-evident in the contemporary period as the simplification of language or political correctness, as we all know it, narrowing thought and undesirable expressions of freedom and individuality. It is a method of limiting critical thinking bounded by language extracted from ideological frameworks. Think of words like inclusion, diversity, and equity, sacralized words that Ingsoc or modern progressives would have you believe have no positive opposing merit and to think otherwise is wrong think that will be punished by social penalties of cancelling or ostracism. Think gender critical views or topics of ethno-demographic replacement and you get the picture. This is fortified by speech crime legislation as felt by our living protagonists under threat by the omniscient “Thought Police.” Craig Houston, Pete North, Graham Linehan, Katie Hopkins, and George Galloway are recent high-profile real time examples, and many more besides who for lack of exposure fall under the public radar. Memory holing under the radar civil liberty violations has become an art form.

The memory hole is another interesting concept coined by Orwell, easily conscripted to our current era, meaning inconvenient facts not aligning with government propaganda are destroyed by the ironically named Ministry of Truth. We know that big tech has a penchant for washing away inconvenient details of political or corporate actors. Memory holing is a daily occurrence, historical monuments are torn down, there is a concerted effort to rewrite history for a dumbed down population who take ethnically corrupted period dramas as credible historical accounts, books are rewritten playing to so-called progressive sensibilities in terms of race and gender and statements by public figures are scrubbed from the internet.

At the opposite end but complimenting memory holing, Oceania residents are required to indulge in a daily, ”Two Minutes of Hate.” A film is shown presenting the “Partys,” antagonist Emanual Goldstein and his followers as the enemy of the state. Ironically, our protagonist Winston discovers Emanual Goldsteins Brotherhood manifesto was written by party members, hinting at the rule of divide and conquer by creating an existential enemy. Oceania’s people are expected to vent their loathing for this perceived enemy and hail their allegiance to the party. Where have we seen this before? Let us begin with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) where the Party machinery of the Democrats decried Trump as an existential threat to the country, stigmatising his supporters as deplorables, and racists, while casting numerous other dehumanizing and delegitimizing word spells. We watched, as in the year running up to the election of 2016 a massive campaign of two-minute hate that went on all day, every day, until Trump was elected and then continued unabated for a further four years. In the UK we witness a similar effort by the UK Uniparty holding daily, “two-minute hate” festivals for mindless morons to vent their hate against Nigel Farage. Indeed the recent Labour Party Conference was a full three days of two-minute hate against Reform UK. With David Lammy Stooping so low as to associate Farage with the Hitler youth movement. We see it in Europe employed against Marine le Penn, Alice Wedel, and Geert Wilders. Perhaps the vilest manifestation of two-minute hate was served on Charlie kirk, then perceived as an existential threat and murdered by a mindless automaton of the Party faithful (Democrats). Conversely in the UK we see two-minute hate against non-politicians like Tommy Robinson, labelling them as existential threats. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say Tommy Robinson has had more two-minute hate pushed his way than any other activist in the last twenty years. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon could just as easily and been warranted to have adopted the name of our protagonist, Winston Smith. The scope for comparison of Orwell’s work to the contemporary period is as broad as it is long. It is a testament to his foresight and imagination informed by his era’s understanding of political and social organization and psychological methods of manipulation, showing that really, some things only change superficially, even with technological advancement, a central mass that has been there since prehistory reaches out to entangle society to a particular way of forming our world.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four serves as a hauntingly prescient reflection of our contemporary world, where the dystopian themes of totalitarianism, surveillance, and psychological manipulation resonate with disturbing clarity. From the all-seeing telescreens foreshadowing modern surveillance systems like the NSA’s Prism program and the UK’s AI Counter Disinformation Data Platform, to the speech chilling parallels of Newspeak in today’s politically correct language that stifles dissent, Orwell’s vision captures the mechanisms of control that persist in new guises. The memory hole, erasing inconvenient truths, finds its facsimile in the rewriting of history and the digital scrubbing of dissenting voices, while the daily Two Minutes Hate lives on in the orchestrated vilification of figures like Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump, rallying collective outrage to reinforce ideological conformity. These parallels suggest that science fiction, far from being mere fantasy, acts as a prophetic lens, illuminating the socio-political and psychological consequences of unchecked power and technological advancement. Orwell’s work sends a signal from the past as a reminder, that the forces shaping our world, whether driven by ideology, technology, or combining both, require vigilance and scrutiny, lest we find ourselves, like Winston Smith, trapped in a reality where autonomy is sacrificed, and truth becomes a casualty of control.

References

Shadow dragon (2025) Social Media Monitoring for Government: Tools, Best Practices, Use Cases - ShadowDragon.io