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He’s watching you. Sales of George Orwell’s 1984 surge following last week’s inauguration

In the days following Donald Trump’s musically disappointing inauguration, there’s certainly been some Orwellian happenings.

The first official press conference of the Trump presidency was straight out of North Korea (Dear Leader Trump reports that this inauguration had the highest attendance ever!), and presidential advisor/actual maniac Kellyanne Conway was caught using the term ‘alternative facts’ in an interview. Familiar?

inauguration 1984 sales

George Orwell’s 1984 has soared in popularity following a series of concerning happenings in the days following Donald Trump’s inauguration.

As of yesterday 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian drama, was the sixth best-selling book on Amazon despite being published in 1949.

Conway’s ‘alternative facts’ bears eerie resemblance to the novel’s terms ‘newspeak’ and ‘doublethink’, which articulated the fact that two contradictory beliefs can be held in one’s mind at once… and you can accept them both.

So was Donald Trump’s inauguration attended by more Americans than ever before? Yes and no.

In 1984 a government holds unbridled control over a subordinate population, not only dismissing but punishing independent thought with force. We’ve a little way to go before things get that extreme, but hopefully the novel only proves to be partially predictive.

Otherwise I guess Americans are in for a future full of omnipresent surveillance, social manipulation and far-reaching propaganda. Just what they voted in.

Via The Guardian.