Donald Trump and George Orwell
On the conjuncture of the dystopian novel 1984 with the election campaign and the presidency of Donald Trump

By Patricia Hammer and Magdalena Kanther.

[This article posted in April 2018 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.portalideengeschichte.de.]

Preliminary remarks: The text documents the results of the module “Research Project: Analysis and Comparison in and of World Regions” in the Master’s degree course in Political Science at Philipps-Universität Marburg in the winter semester 2017/18.

Make Oceania great again!?

There is hardly any other topic currently dominating the world’s newspapers than Donald Trump and his policies. There are constantly new
headlines, new excitement and lots of criticism. So it is hardly surprising that numerous other topics that can be linked to Trump also end up on the media agenda.  This case is no exception: shortly after the inauguration of Trump as President of the United States of America, an almost 70-year-old book, George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, conquered the Amazon bestseller list. But what does this book have to do with Trump? Why are people reading Orwell’s novel and what do they hope to gain from it? These are the questions will be explored in the following.

In order to understand the context, we first need to explain the background for the renewed popularity of “1984”.  The newly sworn-in
President had only been in office for a few days when his press spokesman Sean Spicer said it was “the largest audience” that had ever attended the inauguration of an American president.  Aerial photos of the ceremony prove this to be false, yet Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway defended this statement on live television on the grounds that Spicer had “alternative facts”. The result was a huge media response. In this context, CNN was one of the first broadcasters to make the connection between Trump and Orwell.

Orwell’s novel 1984 is usually associated with a totalitarian surveillance state, the “Big Brother”, with a state that controls its citizens in their thinking and influences them to such an extent that they even believe 2+2 equals 5.5. However, this does not apply to Trump, who, on the contrary, had an ambivalent relationship with the surveillance authorities right from the start of his candidacy. In fact, it is other motives that are taken up by the media and used as a comparison. The number of newspaper articles that can be found on this topic is very large and ranges from brief information to extensive analyses. As it is not possible to present all articles here, only a specific selection will be examined in detail. The focus here is on German- and English-language publications as it is mainly in these that the sharp rise in sales figures and a similar trend in the Amazon bestseller lists could be observed in these countries.

It is interesting to note that the media focused intensively on the comparison between 1984 and Trump’s election campaign and policies, only in connection with Trump’s inauguration. (see Bos, Christian: George Orwell’s “1984” back on the bestseller list, in bestseller list, in: Berliner Zeitung, January 26, 2017; Wheeler, Brian: The Trump era’s top-selling dystopian novels, in: BBC News, January 29, 2017) Few academic works follow on from this. However, this may also be due to the fact that Trump has not held the office of American president for long and a scientific analysis can only lead to reliable results after his time in the White House.

John Rodden’s commentary Donald and Winston at the Ministry of Alternative Facts summarizes some key aspects, but does not go into detail on numerous other motives. He sees the connection above all in the upcoming Broadway production of 1984, Trump and Conway as “darlings of the publishing industry ” and Orwell’s development into an icon.

Henry A. Giroux’s article Trump’s America. Rethinking 1984 and Brave New World compares the two works of Orwell and Huxley in relation to the concept of democracy.  Further academic literature deals either only with Orwell and his work or only with Trump. The present work will therefore concentrate on these aspects.

It is also interesting to note that the newspaper reports gave Orwell’s novel 1984 a “subliminal bestseller potential”  . Not only since the inauguration of Trump’s inauguration, the dystopian novel has experienced an upswing in the USA. It is a recurring renaissance, for example in the years 1983/1984, in which state control through the use of televisions was discussed, but also in 2003, when George W. Bush was accused of using the war on terror to assert his authority.  Last but not least, interest in Orwell increased in the context of the Snowden affair, so that Obama was also confronted with the accusation of realizing 1984.

“For instance, 1984 provided a stunningly prophetic image of the totalitarian machinery of the surveillance state that was brought to life in 2013 through Edward Snowden’s exposure of the mass spying conducted by the United States National Security Agency. “

Orwell’s works have long been part of the school curriculum in many countries and are considered classics. However, since Trump’s presidential candidacy, sales have  have risen steadily, so that in 2017 the publishing group Penguin Books, which publishes Orwell’s work in the USA, ordered an additional 75,000 copies. In addition, it is not only Orwell’s novel 1984 that is being read, but also books such as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Sinclair Lewis’ This Is Not Possible in Our Country. It seems that people are looking for answers to a situation they have not yet experienced.

The novel describes the life of the main character, Winston Smith, and his resistance to the totalitarian regime of Oceania. This dominates every aspect of the population’s lives and is run by the inner party, while it is represented to the outside world by Big Brother, who never appears in person, but whose image is omnipresent (“Big Brother is watching you.”). The central measures for maintaining the regime are the constant updating of old newspaper articles so that they fit the facts determined by the party, the development of a new language (Newspeak) and its own concept of logic (doublethink), surveillance and the use of thought police and telescreens which have both surveillance capabilities and the functions of a television.

In his novel, Orwell paints a picture of a bleak future in which everyone monitors surveillance and the state is above everyone.  This brief outline of the content already addresses some aspects that can also be found in the newspaper reports. In 2013,  the comparison with Trump is primarily due to his handling of truth, which can be found in Orwellian Newspeak and doublethink.

Newspeak

“Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and was not just a means of expression for the worldview of the followers of Engsoz [English worldview and mindset appropriate to the followers of Engsoz [English socialism] but also to make all other ways of thinking impossible.” This definition is often referred to in newspaper reports to explain why Trump is associated with Newspeak. It comes from Orwell himself and can be found in the appendix of his book in explaining the basics of this language to the reader. 

Newspeak is a term created by the Ministry of Truth (Miniwahr for short) and demonstrates the power that is granted to language. Through the creation of Newspeak, Orwell thus described “the basic function of power, the tendency of leaders and governments to cement their  authority by controlling our language and by extension our thought and behavior.” According to this interpretation, language no longer allows for facts or critical thinking so the state can determine what is truth and what is not. This is achieved  above all “through the invention of new words and by the elimination of undesirable words”.  This is how the concept of “alternative facts” can be categorized under the aspect of creating new words. Yet apart from this term – where is the concrete connection between the Newspeak from Orwell’s dystopia 1984 and Trump in the context of the election campaign and his presidency?

The connection can be found in two aspects. On the one hand, the intention of Newspeak, namely the distortion of facts and the creation of a new truth. Heinz Ickstadt, a German literary scholar, explains in an interview that Trump’s “distortion of facts is an attack on the language rules of the establishment”. This is how manipulation and individualism stand in opposition to each other, with Trump claiming individualism for himself despite the obvious contradiction. Such incompatibilities are the order of the day and are sold as reality. Adrian Daub also writes that the problem does not lie in the fact “that untruth is imposed as truth, but that every truth is sold as untrue”. The best example of this are the ”alternative facts”, which do exactly that. They exclude demonstrable information as false and at the same time introduce an incorrect statement as truth.

Orwell’s Newspeak encompasses this phenomenon with the B vocabulary, which consists of words with a political purpose.   Sebastian Christ argues that “Terms that could reveal the destructive character of totalitarian rule are replaced by new, more harmless words “.  In the case of the attendance at Trump’s inauguration, the uncomfortable truth that it was not the biggest inauguration is obscured by the fact that these are “alternative facts” and therefore cannot be evaluated.

On the other hand, however, the focus is not only on the handling of truth, but the form and linguistic style of Newspeak and compared it with that of Trump.  The characteristic of Newspeak lies above all in a vocabulary and a grammatically staccato-like and monotonous style of speech.  “Trump’s children’s babble” is similarly assessed by journalists.

“Trump’s language as president-elect of the United States is only incompletely described by the word ‘imprecise’.  His interviews are sometimes barely legible because he constantly gets caught up in strings of sentences, contradicts himself from paragraph to paragraph and is hardly in a position to justify a thought in any meaningful way.  His vocabulary is like that of a of a ninth grader at risk of failing. “

Trump’s vocabulary, his grammar and his “phraseology ” are reminiscent of Orwell’s Newspeak as well as the reinterpretation of truth and the exclusion of rebellious thoughts.  Thomas Klingenmaier sees Trump’s use of language as an attempt to lower the level of political language and come near the people, but in doing so he is also ensuring that numerous debates can no longer be held and problems can no longer be described.

Discourse is thereby lowered to simple slogans and platitudes, which is quite typical for politicians, but they usually have more to contribute to the explanation of a political decision than Trump does with his frequently used word “terrific”.

No longer directly related to the sales of “1984” after Trump’s inauguration, but still relevant to this argument, is

Trump’s ban on undesirable words in the wording of budget documents of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The ban on seven words is exactly what new speech is all about: the elimination of vocabulary that expresses something that the state does not like and about which no discourse should take place. The numerous comparisons of Trump and Orwell’s Newspeak by the media also ensured that the parallels were critically scrutinized. Ickstadt sees in Trump’s handling of the truth “not the systematic language regulation Orwell had in mind” nor does he consider it right to compare Trump’s press spokesman Spicer with the Ministry of Truth.  Nevertheless, the majority of newspaper reports see the clear parallels between Trump’s policies and the novel 1984, which can also be found in terms of black and white and doublethink.

Black and white and doublethink

Both terms play a key role in Orwell’s novel and in the comparison of Trump with 1984 and are closely related. “[T]he term ‘black and white’, which, depending on who it is used against, means its own opposite: for opponents, the shameless insinuation that black is white (treason) and for party members the loyal confirmation of the directive that black is white (party loyalty). “

So although exactly the same statement is made, the meaning behind it is different and depends on the context. This aspect is also taken up by the media reports.  The simultaneous acceptance of two contradictory facts occurs in Trump’s politics and Orwell’s novel. Like black and white, doublethink is also a neologism and refers to and refers to “the ability to hold  two mutually exclusive beliefs simultaneously”. Schwarzweiß assumes that one believes a new fact in accordance with the political directive and forgets that this was originally different. The improvement of policies requires doublethink.

“The party is officially infallible, but on a second level, party officials need to know what went wrong in the past so that things go better in the future. And then [they] must actively suppress their knowledge of these mistakes again. Truth and lies existed side by side in the minds of the party members. “ Sebastian Christ sees this aspect as the core of Trump’s election campaign and explains this using an example.  Trump spread the view that that the unemployment rate was 42 percent, when in fact it was 4.9 percent.  Christ assumes that Trump’s supporters are aware that this is a false statement. Nevertheless, they accept this lie “possibly as a kind of cipher: for the fact that they think things in the USA have gotten out of hand.“

Another example is Trump’s view of the working class. While he promised to give them a voice during the election campaign and to stand up for their interests, he nevertheless put together his “cabinet of bankers and billionaires who have never stood up for workers’ rights.” Examples can be found in large numbers and with regard to various topics – be it security policy, education policy, workers’ rights or health protection.  If you take a closer look at these examples, it is also noticeable that not only Trump himself uses the logic of doublethink, but also his entire ministerial team, who, like the party in 1984, makes use of this concept.  The “alternative facts” created by Trump and his administration need only be repeated often enough for them to become the truth. Similar to the party of Big Brother, the US government under Trump’s presidency is creating its own version of reality that suits its political agenda.

While in the novel 1984 the media are state-controlled and the reports are constantly adapted to the current reality, Trump, on the other hand, is a “master of manipulation ‘ with his ’alternative facts” provides a full-time job for the media, which are constantly busy exposing the government’s fiction so that they do not become established as facts in the past and become truths.

Endless war

Another comparative aspect of the newspaper reports is the motif of “eternal war” or the ‘endless state of war’. Oceania is one of three fictitious states to emerge from the nuclear war in the 1950s.  It is in a perpetual state of war with the other two states, East Asia and Eurasia. At the same time, this has a legitimizing character in Orwell’s world. It gives an enemy on the outside that can be hated and a reason on the inside to justify the rationing of food and consumer goods.

“The military conflict has a unifying effect on the population: it outlines a common enemy and also a common mission, behind which the needs of the individual disappear. “ In addition to this idea of unity, the maintenance of the hierarchical power of the party played a role, which was to be guaranteed by a permanent war.

“The main work of war is destruction, not necessarily the destruction of human life, but of the products of human labor.  War is a means of destroying materials that could otherwise be used to make the masses comfortable and thus is intelligent in the long run.”

But where can the parallel to Trump be drawn? For Christ, Trump’s “fight against the establishment” announced during the election campaign is the central aspect that can also be found in his inaugural speech at the Capitol. He argues that the new US president is going against the usual courtesy of agreeing to work together.  He spoke of the “birth of a new millennium”, the ‘end of hollow phrases’ and the fight against the rotten political class in America. “Trump makes it clear that he views dissenters as enemies. And from now on, his fight is against them – in the spirit of the ‘permanent revolution’.”  The common enemy image (of Trump and his supporters) emerges clearly at this point, as does the suggestion that a long battle is expected. Possibly the one to destroy the truth.  This would be fitting in that Trump is waging a “running war with the media” because the media are not portraying him correctly and are instead trying to de-legitimize him as president.

The endlessness of wars is also taken up by the newspaper reports. If you look at the USA at the moment and in recent years, it is noticeable that it has been in a 17-year-long war, a “war on terror”, which is still not over since the attacks of September 11, 2001.  In other words, this is a de facto seemingly endless war. First in Afghanistan, then in Iraq and now US troops are fighting the Islamic State in Syria. Winston cannot remember not being at war in 1984, and the same goes for all teenage Americans at the moment.  However, this war was started under George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama.

The mistrust of our own people has also been known since the revelations of Edward Snowden. What is new, however, is that Trump is now perceived on the international level as a disruptive factor who exacerbates existing conditions.  “Now he is blaming traditional US allies and undermining NATO for an assortment of irritants – while newspeaking that he ‘loves’ Mexico, Australia, China, Israel, and pretty much every country.  Apparently, America’s default diplomatic posture is now belligerency and bullying. “

In connection with Orwell, this also indicates changing alliances and a contradictory argumentation. The latter is particularly evident in relation to
Trump’s election campaign theme of “dumb wars ”, as well as the Twitter statement made back in 2013 that the war in Afghanistan was a waste. Evaluated both against the backdrop of current fears of a trade war between the USA and China and Europe, Trump does not seem to think war is so stupid after all.  However, it remains to be seen whether the USA entering into a trade war against Europe and China will develop into a new “endless war”.

Big Brother is “ on Twitter?

In addition to these three central motifs of Newspeak, Doublethink and Endless War, the media reports also make further comparisons. Terms from Orwell’s novel such as reality control, in Trump’s case the creation of an alternative reality through alternative facts, or minutes of hatred, which express the schadenfreude of “Trump’s trolls on Twitter.” However, why 1984 offers a good explanation for Trump rarely appears in the argumentation.

Occasionally, the understanding of science in “1984” is reflected in relation to Trump’s treatment of it.  It assumes that science no longer exists in the original sense because it contradicts the principles of the Party.  Adrian Lobe sees in this the proximity to “Trump’s alternative fact machine “, as Trump also expresses contempt for science and negates its findings.  For example, Trump rejects climate change, which means that information about it can no longer be found on the official White House website or agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency which are only encouraged to publish research results in public. Both are tantamount to censorship and are reminiscent of the Party’s restrictive information policy in the novel 1984.

More frequently, however, Trump is compared to Big Brother.  “Trump is more like a cut-price version of Big Brother himself. Instead of the elite of Nineteen Eighty-Four, who keep Big Brother’s identity a mystery while they keep total control, this Big Brother, with his direct Twitter relationship with his followers, is fully on show. As Orwell foresaw, his slogan could be ‘Ignorance is strength’.”

Trump is therefore just as present as “Big Brother” in 1984.  The media, especially Twitter, take on the role of the telescreen. Although the aspect of surveillance is hardly mentioned in media reports as a criterion for comparison, the telescreen represents a means of communication between Big Brother’s party line and the population.  This is precisely where the similarity to Trump lies: the president’s ability to directly influence people’s opinions and feelings through social media.

What’s more, the internet makes it much easier to spread “alternative facts” much easier, especially since people “carry around telescreens in their pockets in the form of smartphones “.  Rodden sees Trump’s active Twitter connection to his supporters and followers in dominating headlines and dictating the conversation. So “Big Brother” doesn’t see you, he tweets.

“1984” as an all-purpose intellectual weapon

So what conclusions can be drawn from these comparative aspects?  First and foremost, it is certainly clear that there are indeed parallels between  Trump and Orwell’s dystopia exist and are communicated in this way by the media.  Although the book as a whole is not necessarily applicable to Trump, certain aspects are reflected in his policies and behavior.  At the same time, the numerous articles on the similarities are critically scrutinized and differences highlighted.

John Broich sees the main differences primarily in the availability of information and the separation of powers. Whereas in 1984 there is a one-party system in which all information is subject to the control of the party, in the USA today, despite possible distortions due to “alternative facts” information is freely available – be it through the internet in particular or the media in general. Moreover, while power appears to be concentrated in Trump and his administration, the separation of powers is still in force and political power is distributed among various actors.  America today is not a totalitarian state whose ideology completely permeates the entire life of the population and creates similar conditions similar to those in Orwell’s novel. “If Big Brother were actually sitting in the Oval Office, he wouldn’t be whining on Twitter that Meryl Streep is overrated. He’d just have her disappeared. “

Despite this sometimes harsh criticism, the comparisons between Trump and Orwell’s novel continued in the months that followed. Even months later, references to Orwell could still be found from time to time when Trump’s latest “escapades” were evaluated in the media. But is this really unusual?  Jakob Biazza argues that it is nothing new that “people, especially in times that seem more grotesque or threatening than any fiction, seek orientation or solace in art “. If one considers that other dystopias were also on the Trump’s inauguration were also back on the bestseller lists, this thesis seems justifiable. The bestseller list is almost treated as a “political barometer ” to analyze the current political situation.

This gives the impression of an approaching and unpredictable ideology that part of the American population is afraid of.  Lobe also describes something similar, seeing in Orwell a classic that “conveys a diffuse feeling of powerlessness and speechlessness that many Americans feel under their new president.“
Chauncey DeVega even goes so far as to claim that the Americans know that something is fundamentally wrong, but do not have the language to describe it – this is strongly reminiscent of Newspeak. The consequence is that people “turn to literary fictions because they expect them to provide information and guidance about the reality of their lives “.

The question remains as to why Orwell’s 1984, of all things, should be the number 1 option for providing these insights. Newspeak, doublethink or Big Brother appear to be obvious arguments, the surveillance aspect.  1984 is school reading in America, so we can assume that the dystopia has a certain level of familiarity and that people can at least remember the general plot. When the book thematicized the latent fear of totalitarian, ideologically saturated systems of power “, this could apply just as well to today’s circumstances.

Orwell’s work provides a roadmap for understanding the current political situation. “That kind of unreality that is propagated as reality is what people feel reminded of and that’s why they keep coming back. “ The ‘alternative facts’ are a key term for Trump’s policies and his handling of facts, factoids and the truth – but also lies.  Conversely, the newspaper reports indicate that Orwell’s work has also become powerful and is developing into an intellectual weapon with which to combat oppression and totalitarian tendencies, by creating an awareness of how to deal with reality and truth. For if one compares Orwell’s 1984 and Trump, the parallels are clearly recognizable, but one point is also fundamentally different:

America is still a democracy. With a free press and the right to right to question “alternative facts” in order to create new headlines, new excitement and, above all, a lot of criticism.

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Smith, Kyle (2017): Please stop comparing Trump’s presidency to Orwell’s ‘1984’. In: New York Post, 19.02.2017. Available online at
https://nypost.com/2017/02/19/please-stop-comparing-trumps-presidency-to-orwells-1984/, last checked on 13.03.2018.

Stelter, Brian (2017): ‘Alternative facts:’ Why the Trump team is ‘planting a flag’ in war on media. In: CNN, 22.01.2017. Available online at
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Tiller, Mark (2017): Make Oceania Great Again. In: Medium, 07.02.2017. Online available at https://medium.com/@mtrhetorik/make-oceania-great-again-20e691837c56, last checked on 13.03.2018.

Urbelis, Alexander J. (2017): How ‘1984’ can decode Trump’s first 100 days. In: CNN International Edition, 31.01.2017. Available online at
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/31/opinions/why-we-read-1984-urbelis-opinion/index.html, last checked on 12.03.2018.

Wheeler, Brian (2017): The Trump era’s top-selling dystopian novels. In: BBC News, 29.01.2017. Available online at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38764041,last checked on 17.03.2018.

Patricia Hammer B.A. and Magdalena Kanther B.A. are studying Political Science at Phillips University Marburg.