Fighting Through the Dissonance: How Trump’s Use of Twitter Was Exactly What Orwell Warned Us About

Shortly after Twitter banned the former president’s accounts, conservatives, led by Donald Trump Jr., ubiquitously cited George Orwell’s 1984. Their reasoning: that Twitter removing Trump was similar to “Big Brother,” the totalitarian government in 1984, censoring rebellious ideas. But “Orwellian” has become just a crude adjective for any use of authority, devoid of any nuance. Orwell’s classic allegory bookended Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency with two stints as the top selling novel, and it is perhaps a sign of encouragement that 1984 is popular again; every American must realize how the phenomena that Orwell details apply to this unique moment in history — just not in the ways that Republicans like to pretend they do.

The campaign to turn the United States into an Oceania-like totalitarian wasteland began the moment Donald Trump became president. Just hours after Trump took the Oath of Office, Former Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared that he had the largest inauguration crowd in history, despite pictures showing numerous empty patches interspersed throughout the crowd. Orwell wrote that one day, a totalitarian government would say that “2 plus 2 equals 5, and you’ll believe it.” This idea of “doublethink” was the most challenging for me to conceptualize as a reader. I couldn’t fathom that someone would believe that 2+2=5 when they could just count on their fingers, just like I could not imagine that someone could believe the inauguration lie in the face of visual evidence to the contrary. But they did. The endless stream of gaslighting and misinformation had detached supporters from reality and created an imaginary fantasy in their minds. 

Supporters now believed two opposite things simultaneously: the thing that their eyes told them, and the thing that Donald Trump told them. And suddenly, “doublethink” was not so abstract to me anymore. Through Twitter — through each personal Telescreen — Trump spewed an incessant cascade of propaganda to his followers. He disregarded their observations, their thoughts, their self-worth, until they began to question their own minds — their own idea of truth and untruth.

And it continued. He tweeted that millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton. They couldn’t. He retweeted that “Ilhan Omar partied on 9/11.” She didn’t. He told us that we had defeated the coronavirus. We hadn’t. Each lie groomed his supporters again and again. Each one widened the crevice between them and reality. Each one diminished their own individual consciousnesses and further established Trump as the single possessor of truth. So it was little surprise when Trump stood at a podium, early on Nov. 4, and declared himself the victor of the election, even when he wasn’t. Less surprising was the thousands of people who stormed the Capitol to defend those claims, because for four years, they had been lulled by a pattern of deceit and rendered unable to trust their own ideas about the world.

The most powerful, timeless moment of 1984 is undoubtedly its climax. It sees our hero, Winston — who served as a beacon of free thought and rebellion throughout the novel — eventually succumbing to the ideas of Big Brother. It serves as a reminder that no matter how independent and critical we may believe we are, all of us are still vulnerable to dogmatic propaganda. In many ways, January 6th was a perfect climax to an Orwellian presidency — the completion of the cycle started on its first day. After years of Trump’s mental warfare, his message had finally supplanted the totality of supporters’ previous worldviews. The insurrection was simply Trump leveraging his supporters’ subservience.

So when Twitter banned Trump’s account, stripping his most effective method of indoctrination, it was not Big Brother spurning unacceptable ideas. Rather, it was the pathway of propaganda shielding the public from Big Brother’s influence. Imagine how 1984  would be different if the Telecreens had shut themselves off.

However, it is most important to realize that 1984 was not about some totalitarian government or even unmitigated censorship. It was about us. George Orwell showed us the pliability of our own minds and how easily someone could shape them to serve their political needs. Donald Trump proved him right.