Doublespeak; the Newspeak of the MAGA regime

BOSTON — MAGA conservatives have dusted off their well‑worn cultural prop, George Orwell’s 1984, to warn the nation about supposed “Democrat overreach” and creeping socialism. Their argument: any attempt at public safety—from workplace inspections to hurricane evacuations—is evidence of a looming Big Brother.

The problem, scholars say, is that they keep quoting a book they’ve never actually read.

“They’ve skimmed the CliffsNotes for the big, scary parts,” said Prof. Tad Crater, a literary scholar at Northeastern University in Boston. “But they ignore the undercurrents of surveillance, propaganda, and state‑manufactured reality. Those are the actual teeth of 1984, and they’re missing all of them.”

In Orwell’s novel, the Ministry of Love’s most chilling work isn’t just monitoring people—it’s rewriting history until the lie becomes truth. Reality, as Party interrogators tell protagonist Winston Smith, is “whatever we say it is.”

That, Crater points out, should ring uncomfortably familiar to anyone watching the latest MAGA talking points about the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“First they mattered. Then they didn’t. Now they never existed,” Crater said. “That’s not a slippery slope toward Orwell’s world, that’s a slippary sloap speeding through it.”

But in the current conservative retelling, Orwell’s warnings are less about the dangers of manipulating truth and more about the horror of being asked to follow building codes or wear seatbelts.

“It’s like watching someone read Moby‑Dick and come away thinking it’s an anti‑fishing pamphlet,” Crater said.

Meanwhile, MAGA influencers continue warning their followers that Orwell foresaw Democrats’ sinister plan to … check their food labels.

“Freedom,” said one prominent pro‑Trump podcaster, “is never having to know what’s in your meat.”

‘The Rations Have Never Been Higher’

Down in Gainesville, Florida, Bob “Bobby Mac” McClendon runs Trump’s America Superstore—a sprawling roadside emporium selling MAGA hats, Trump and MAGA‑branded flags, and glossy posters of Donald Trump so contrived the eyes seem to follow you around the room.

McClendon says 1984 is “basically prophecy” and claims he sees parallels every time the government tries to tell him what to do.

“Democrats say it’s for safety, but that’s what Big Brother said,” McClendon told Alpine 6 Action News, leaning on a display of gold‑leaf ‘Trump 2028’ Bible covers. “You think in the book they called it the Ministry of Love because they loved people? No. Same thing here. They call it public safety, but it’s just control.”

Asked about criticisms that MAGA interpretations miss the novel’s deeper points about propaganda and manipulated reality, McClendon smiled knowingly.

“For example, did you know the chocolate ration is higher than it’s ever been?” he said without a trace of irony. “That’s straight from 1984. Back then they told you one thing one day, then another the next, and people just believed it. We got the same thing now—only difference is, our side’s telling the truth.”

McClendon added that his store recently started stocking “Don’t Tread on Me” beef jerky, which he says is “the only snack in America not owned by George Soros.”

Crater, when told of McClendon’s analysis, sighed audibly. “You don’t warn against the dangers of propaganda by practicing it,” he said. “Otherwise you’re not fighting Orwell’s world—you’re running it, complete with ration announcements and slogans that mean the opposite of what they say.”

Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance recently toured what he called the “American Ministry of Information,” a taxpayer‑funded messaging hub that produces daily updates on “the super awesome true things MAGA is doing to MAGA.”

“It’s incredible,” Vance told reporters while holding a commemorative mug reading Ignorance Is Strength. “The work they’re doing to keep the public informed is just next‑level patriotism. Every morning they send me a list of today’s facts, and I know they’re real because they’re printed in red, white, and blue ink. I mean, if you can’t trust that, what can you trust?”

Vance says he hopes to expand the Ministry’s outreach so “every American knows the truth about how great things are”—even if that truth occasionally needs a quick rewrite.

At this very moment, Crater says he doesn’t believe the United States is fully headed toward the totalitarian nightmare Orwell depicted. “We’re not living in 1984,” he said. “The threat is always there, of course—Orwell wasn’t a prophet, he was a Socialist satirist looking at the world around him and sketching wild yet plausible extrapolations based on the social, economic, and political climates of his day.”

But, Crater warns, it would be foolish to treat the book as a far‑off fairy tale. “The risk of slipping into that Oceania‑Airstrip One landscape is more probable now than at any other time in my life,” he said. “And the truly Orwellian twist? We might not even notice when we’ve arrived.”