NewsPronto

 
The Times


.

USA Conversation

The Conversation USA

The Conversation USA

‘Who controls the present controls the past’: What Orwell’s ‘1984’ explains about the twisting of history to control the public

  • Written by Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University
imageGeorge Orwell's '1984' has some lessons for 2025.NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images

When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical...

Read more: ‘Who controls the present controls the past’: What Orwell’s ‘1984’ explains about the twisting of...

More Articles ...

  1. Americans still have faith in local news − but few are willing to pay for it
  2. How school choice policies evolved from supporting Black students to subsidizing middle-class families
  3. Your brain learns from rejection − here’s how it becomes your compass for connection
  4. NCAA will pay its current and former athletes in an agreement that will transform college sports
  5. Lafayette helped Americans turn the tide in their fight for independence – and 50 years later, he helped forge the growing nation’s sense of identity
  6. If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before humans were all gone?
  7. From Kent State to Los Angeles, using armed forces to police civilians is a high-risk strategy
  8. Coral reefs face an uncertain recovery from the 4th global mass bleaching event – can climate refuges help?
  9. Was the Boulder attack terrorism or a hate crime? 2 experts unpack the complexities
  10. Beyond de-extinction and dire wolves, gene editing can help today’s endangered species
  11. ‘The Eternal Queen of Asian Pop’ sings one last encore from beyond the grave
  12. US health care is rife with high costs and deep inequities, and that’s no accident – a public health historian explains how the system was shaped to serve profit and politicians
  13. Debates over presidential power to suspend habeas corpus resurface in Trump administration
  14. Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet
  15. Golden Dome dangers: An arms control expert explains how Trump’s missile defense threatens to make the US less safe
  16. Why Kissinger would have been a Fortnite champ − and other foreign policy lessons from the gaming world
  17. AmeriCorps is on the chopping block – despite research showing that the national service agency is making a difference in local communities
  18. 4 creative ways to engage children in STEM over the summer: Tips to foster curiosity and problem-solving at home
  19. Trump’s justifications for the latest travel ban aren’t supported by the data on immigration and terrorism
  20. How Trump’s ‘gold standard’ politicizes federal science
  21. Detroit voters have an opportunity to pick a mayor who will ease zoning, improve transit and protect long-term residents
  22. Game theory explains why reasonable parents make vaccine choices that fuel outbreaks
  23. Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web destroyed more than aircraft – it tore apart the old idea that bases far behind the front lines are safe
  24. 100 years ago, the Supreme Court made a landmark ruling on parents’ rights in education – today, another case raises new questions
  25. Stop the ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ snap judgments and watch your world become more interesting
  26. How illicit markets fueled by data breaches sell your personal information to criminals
  27. Cuts to school lunch and food bank funding mean less fresh produce for children and families
  28. Reproducibility may be the key idea students need to balance trust in evidence with healthy skepticism
  29. In pardoning reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, Trump taps into a sense of persecution felt by his conservative Christian base
  30. How your electric bill may be paying for big data centers’ energy use
  31. Your left and right brain hear language differently − a neuroscientist explains how
  32. Memories of the good parts of using drugs can keep people hooked − altering the neurons that store them could help treat addiction
  33. ‘Loyal to the oil’ – how religion and striking it rich shape Canada’s hockey fandom
  34. What a sunny van Gogh painting of ‘The Sower’ tells us about Pope Leo’s message of hope
  35. 1 in 4 children suffers from chronic pain − school nurses could be key to helping them manage it
  36. What is vibe coding? A computer scientist explains what it means to have AI write computer code − and what risks that can entail
  37. Extreme weather’s true damage cost is often a mystery – that’s a problem for understanding storm risk, but it can be fixed
  38. Storm damage costs are often a mystery – that’s a problem for understanding extreme weather risk
  39. Supreme Court changes the game on federal environmental reviews
  40. Uncertainty at NASA − Trump withdraws his nominee for administrator while the agency faces a steep proposed budget cut
  41. We asked over 8,700 people in 6 countries to think about future generations in decision-making, and this is what we found
  42. Peace has long been elusive in rural Colombia – Black women’s community groups try to bring it closer each day
  43. A bottlenose dolphin? Or Tursiops truncatus? Why biologists give organisms those strange, unpronounceable names
  44. It’s miller moth season in Colorado – an entomologist explains why they’re important and where they’re headed
  45. The Michelin Guide is Eurocentric and elitist − yet it will soon be an arbiter of culinary excellence in Philly
  46. Is methylene blue really a brain booster? A pharmacologist explains the science
  47. Autocrats don’t act like Hitler or Stalin anymore − instead of governing with violence, they use manipulation
  48. Reducing American antisemitism requires more than condemning opposition to Israel and targeting elite universities
  49. Even if Putin and Zelenskyy do go face-to-face, don’t expect wonders − their one meeting in 2019 ended in failure
  50. California plan to ban most plants within 5 feet of homes for wildfire safety overlooks some important truths about flammability