Orwell’s “1984″ is a dystopian fiction in which the author described a possible future (the book was written in 1948) characterized by a totalitarian regime. The features of this regime remind some typical of both communism and fascism with particular emphasis put on the complete loss of individual values and relationship. Everything is quite the opposite of what it is said to be and everyone is constantly under the control of Big Brother and Thoughtpolice. Everything is aimed just to mantain the balance of power with no reguard to people or principles. So the main character Winston Smith works for the Record Department of the Ministry of Truth and his works consists in “rectifying” historical records and newspaper articles to make them conform to Big Brother’s most recent pronouncements, thus making everything that the Party says ‘true’.
Big Brother and the society described by Orwell seem quite far from our reality… 1984 passed by and we still live in a situation which tends towards freedom and democracy. Are we really sure about it? Some signals can rapresent a sort of alarm bells especially when they involve both the diffusion of news about the present and the memory of past events not to be forgotten. Some of these signals are easily detected since coming from country quite unanimously considered bad examples of democracy… other pass without gaining any attention. On these pages we would like to find them and discuss about their being just isolated events or clues of a more worrying trend.
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