It's downright Orwellian how the term "orwellian" is being misused of late.
DT Jr. says that “we are living Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what’s left is only there for a chosen few.” Nevermind the fact that he has an entire White House press corp and can go on Foxnews whenever he asks, or put their message out through any number of a wide variety of news sources.
But is a Twitter ban Orwellian? Setting aside the dubious notion that DT Jr. has ever even read 1984, that book is a cautionary tale on totalitarian and dystopian societies, how a government can undermine and surveil free thought, people’s movements and opportunities, create false narratives, and ultimately create an alternate reality for their citizens. A good example of "Orwellian" might be a political party in power starts calling a free and fair election "fake news" and getting millions of people to believe it in the absence of concrete evidence.
And yet a sitting US senator calls it Orwellian when his book deal gets cancelled. No joke, I received a holiday card in the mail this year saying a city-wide mask mandate was "straight out of Orwell's 1984."
Is the term "orwellian" being used in an Orwellian sense, as in, in a way that purposefully distorts reality? Or are people using this term who either haven't read the book or don't understand it?
DT Jr. says that “we are living Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what’s left is only there for a chosen few.” Nevermind the fact that he has an entire White House press corp and can go on Foxnews whenever he asks, or put their message out through any number of a wide variety of news sources.
But is a Twitter ban Orwellian? Setting aside the dubious notion that DT Jr. has ever even read 1984, that book is a cautionary tale on totalitarian and dystopian societies, how a government can undermine and surveil free thought, people’s movements and opportunities, create false narratives, and ultimately create an alternate reality for their citizens. A good example of "Orwellian" might be a political party in power starts calling a free and fair election "fake news" and getting millions of people to believe it in the absence of concrete evidence.
And yet a sitting US senator calls it Orwellian when his book deal gets cancelled. No joke, I received a holiday card in the mail this year saying a city-wide mask mandate was "straight out of Orwell's 1984."
Is the term "orwellian" being used in an Orwellian sense, as in, in a way that purposefully distorts reality? Or are people using this term who either haven't read the book or don't understand it?