The man was lucky that he was born when he was, and that he wrote his book “1984” when he did, a few years after WWII ended, in the early days of the cold war. Because if he had written it today, not only would his books not get read in schools, but he would have been decried as a conspiracy theorist and been banned from the majority of bookstores around the world. There would be multiple articles all over the world mocking and ridiculing George Orwell and calling his work “dangerous”
Can you even imagine a book like 1984 written today?
“My Conspiracy theory predictions for year 2034” 😂 alluding to a tyrranical soviet-like culture taking over the world and society, cameras following you and police brutalizing you and telling you how to speak and what words you can’t use… old women will be whoring themselves on the streets to random men as their only opportunity for enjoyable sex. There is no fucking way this would NOT have been widely censored and labeled as “dangerous”, “cultural racism”, “incel”, or “conspiracy theories” if it was written today.
Most of these dismissive anti-intellectual SLURS (let’s call them what they are) did not even fucking exist back then to gaslight people for having an individual voice and opinion.
Orwell would’ve reveled at this demonstration of newspeak.
Today, 1984 is banned in all of china and about two dozen other countries. This book is considered so impactful, that over 2 billion people have been barred from reading it, under threat of punishment. That is how much certain countries still fear it today.
Most corporations today would never take the risk of publishing a new author like that. They would never risk losing business with what was another superpower economy (soviet russia back then, and the pull and influene they had on many other nations around the world). Whatever publication released his books, the other authors using it would’ve threatened to quit over Orwell’s “Dangerous conspiracy theories”, and he would’ve gotten railroaded. Hell, he even might have been labeled as a “cultural racist” for alluding to soviet culture in a “demeaning way”. Hell, he could’ve even ended up being sued for millions and put out of business and forced him to stop writing and spend the rest of his days stocking shelves at his local grocery.
These corporations would’ve dumped him faster than alex jones talking about gay frogs. Thankfully, publications back then felt responsible for giving people a voice. They felt these “conspiracy theories” were simply individuals sharing their thoughts, and that alone was important enough to be protected, and they cared about free speech. The Nazis and the Communists showed us how CRITICAL free speech is to having a genuine, free, and open society, and the damage and horrors that can result when free speech is trampled down. Free Speech tends to be the FIRST victim of tyranny.
submission statement: We are losing respect and tolerance for free thought and free speech. This is stunting cultural growth and improvement of quality of life around the world. We need to go back to our roots of free speech. This is what made us great. “Be who you are. And let others be who THEY Are.” Corporations around the world ought to stop censoring individual thought.