In these duplicitous times it's not surprising to find Nineteen Eighty-Four cited in various contexts and in support of numerous, often opposed positions.
In Airstrip One, where Winston Smith lives and pursues his miserable, haunted existence and which had once, he is fairly sure, been called England or Britain, WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH — a Nineteen Eighty-Four equivalent of a Tweet with plenty of character space left to add insults, boasts or incantation.
In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, all facts are alternative, as in the breaking news, 'Oceania is at War with Eurasia', which becomes within minutes and before your very eyes, 'Oceania has never been at war with Eurasia.' It is not difficult to see how Orwell's gloomy prescience can be a reference for our present-day turmoil and Winston Smith-like bewilderment.
But for events and imbroglios closer to home, what Orwell called a 'Fairy Story' — Animal Farm — is perhaps disturbingly apposite. When the animals rebel, overthrow Mr Jones the farmer and rename Manor Farm 'Animal Farm', they are led by the pigs who 'had taught themselves to read and write from an old spelling book which had belonged to Mr Jones's children'.
The most powerful and influential of the pigs, Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer, propose the principles of Animalism in the form of seven commandments, the first three of which are, 'Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy', 'Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend' and 'No animal shall wear clothes'. The seventh is, 'All animals are equal'.
The replacement of Mr Jones by Napoleon and Squealer (Snowball became persona non grata, although for a while he continued to snipe from the sidelines) was greeted with relief by the animals and had seemed full of promise, yet as time passed the expected improvement did not eventuate.
'Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer — except of course for the pigs and [their supporters] the dogs. Perhaps this was because there were so many pigs and so many dogs.
'It was not that these creatures did not work, after their fashion. There was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organisation of the farm ... the pigs [Squealer said] had to expend enormous labours every day upon mysterious things called 'files', 'reports', 'minutes' and 'memoranda'. These were large sheets