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    Why Does Everyone Think “1984” Agrees With Them?



    Are you such a dreamer, To put the world to rights? | Watch all my exclusive videos by joining Nebula at https://go.nebula.tv/jacob-geller

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    Sources:
    George Orwell’s writing sourced from The Orwell Foundation: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/
    The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey, 2019
    On 1984: The Story of George Orwell’s Masterpiece by D.J. Taylor, 2019
    Thomas Pynchon foreword to Nineteen Eighty-Four included in the book’s “Centennial Edition,” published in 2003
    On the Contrary by Mary McCarthy, 1961
    Literature in Politics: The Appropriation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in contemporary British parliamentary debate by Imogen Birkett, 2023: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/article/view/1197/1070
    He’s Dead, but He’s Everybody’s Weapon of Choice by Matthew Purdy, The New York Times 2025: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/magazine/trump-george-orwell-1984.html
    Gary Varvel cartoons from his website: https://garyvarvel.com/
    Additional Gary Varvel cartoons from https://www.creators.com/
    Parler Scroll from: https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/ksir70/just_a_lil_scroll_through_parler_to_really_show/

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    47 Comments

    2. @Bloodlyshiva on

      "Why Does Everyone Think "1984" Agrees With Them?"

      Because a lot of the points it hits are strong, recognisable, and universal? I mean, people were nervous going into 1984 because of the book.

    4. @aletta6352 on

      Can we all appreciate the choice to have the quoted text on-screen becoming uncensored as they're spoken? It's such a strong thematic choice with the video's topic and also a subversion of how a lot of creators add a highlighter effect over quoted text

    8. @annathefern9866 on

      there's something gorgeous about an essay so steeped in relativism being so stubbornly investigative in its framing and thesis. like "hey, yknow that book about the potential loss of absolute truth, yknow how everyone frames it to agree with their worldview to the point that most of the original story has been essentially forgotten by the public consciousness? here's what it actually means, here's the true real moral." good shit as always

    10. @ferenccseh4037 on

      I think that if only we could freely live with the people we agree with, and didn't fight over land and resources, we could live happily hating each other. This, if course would also require everyone understanding and being okay with their kid choosing to abandon their parents' ideology, which I just cannot see happening.
      As it is right now, I zhink we'll continue swinging back and forth between right wing and left wing until one side had enough and pushes back hard enough.

    11. @redbloodcell4047 on

      I've always thought that the original Varvel cartoon was satirical; the sheer panic on the man's face, the largely inconsequential "problem", the fact they were hearing about it at all etc. I thought it was lampooning the tidal wave of "literally 1984" commentary. It was only after looking at Varvel's other cartoons that I realised he was being deeply serious.

    12. @PseudoEmpathy on

      Is "Project 2025" in the room with us?
      Also Covid did actually come from a lab in China, it was a positive means testing program being run by the US in China with Chinese levels of quality and safety. This has been proven. You don't have to lie lmao

    15. @robtrue on

      Democratic Socialism ain't Socialism. They're different. The big difference being 'democratic'. Most countries in Europe are Democratic Socialist, including Britain.

    18. @m_a_p on

      IMO 1984 is about the collapse of class conscience: the middle class sees the system is rotten but has lost real empathy and connection with the working class, while the proles still have human warmth but no organized political consciousness. The Party wins by keeping those two forces apart.

    25. @RJS2003 on

      "Why does everyone think "1984" agrees with them?"
      That's the power of a good book with brutally universal themes.
      It doesn't give us all of the answers, but it does make us ask the right questions.

    31. @TetanusSnowfall on

      The line about identifying dystopia, how it can simultaneously arise from changing material conditions an the ability to notice ones that were always there, is really good. Not to be too much on my liberal-hating nonsense but this is one of the things that's commonly identified as a problem with liberal parties, their often insistence that things only got bad recently and the systems they have lived in and support aren't machines of oppression and harm.

    42. @Durunir on

      I didn't have Jacob Geller explaining Orwell to me in a way that makes me go "oh so he was like the OG contrapoints" or even "contrapoints is just a photocopy of a photocopy of Orwell" on my Bingo card for this year

    45. @elbilos1 on

      I haven't read Orwell. I've read Bradbury and Huxley.

      But despite all the complex reasons one could elaborate…

      I think that the US and, to a lesser extent Britain and the other big players of Europe, are a bit naive when it comes to the politics of terror… Is that they haven't experienced them firsthand.
      They have been invaded, and the US shares some history of colonization.
      But unlike Latin America and the other regions of the Global South, they haven't had their own governments (secretly backed by foreigner ones) literally torture and murder civilians sistemtically.

      And as far as I know, in Latin America, only Argentina cared enough to actually put into prison their genocides and make a political movement out of the disgust for them that transcended at least partially the left/right axis of politics.
      We already have had our attempt of 1984 from 1976 to 1983.

    47. @matiaslopez6144 on

      I think the other question any person living in the imperial core should ask is "how my actions and inactions are perpetuating the imperialist war machine".
      With love, from the third world, where our future is perpetually disrupted by imperialist machinations so big and so cruel that puts 1984 to shame

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