Since 1984 was written after the second world war and the author was inspired by the rise of dictatorship in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, a lot of events of the book reminded me of that era. In the book, people are unable to express themselves freely and are raised to not express any desire or thought, so much so that even the slightest hint of freedom of thought could get them “unpersoned” (disappeared without a trace left behind). Their government even made a new language called Newspeak which has far fewer words than Oldspeak (or normal English) in order to limit the citizens range of thought and prevent them from even thinking about rebellion, as Syme tells Winston, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” (Orwell 55) This is much similar to the type of censorship that some governments around the world enforce as a means to incriminate any voice of criticism. Some of this censorship in countries such as Turkmenistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. include imprisoned and tortured journalists for voicing their opinions and blocking social media websites or internet access in order to limit people’s reach to one another. Additionally, the government in 1984 uses propaganda in order to easily influence the public. As it is contradictory, confusing and provides misleading information in order to shape the mass’ opinion in a way beneficial to the government, even the Ministry of Truth’s slogan is propaganda; “WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” (Orwell 6) Further example of propaganda and brainwashing in the book is the daily Two Minute Hate periods that are used to psychologically enforce the idea that the Big Brother government should be praised and loved, while Goldstein’s Brotherhood is the enemy. A real life example of this is North Korea’s use of propaganda in order to promote the regime as the hero through art, films and music and foreigners, especially South Korea and the U.S. as dangerous, evil and hostile whose leaders are cruel dictators. Similar to Two Minutes Hate, starting June 25 is North Korea’s "Struggle Against US Imperialism Month.” (New York Post)

Translation: "Let’s crush the US nuclear war scheme with our whole nation’s unified power."