Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Tom Tomorrow (ThisModernWorld.com); Dominique Mosbergen
(The Huffington Post, 6-12-13)
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| Knock-knock at my front door. Then it was Nineteen Eighty-Four. |
Sales of Orwell's book 1984 skyrocket in wake of NSA scandal
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| (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com) |
[Written in 1948, which provided the title by reversing the last two digits, author Orwell composed a tale of Burma and England, two police states, one brutal, one efficient.]
On June 8, 1949, George Orwell published a novel describing a
fictitious world gripped in the vise of constant war and a society held
captive by the ever-watchful gaze of a shadowy totalitarian dictator
known as "Big Brother."
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| (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com) |
This week, in the wake of the ongoing National Security Administration surveillance scandal, dystopian classic 1984 is again experiencing a resurgence in popularity.
Sales of at least three editions of 1984 have skyrocketed in recent days, according to Amazon's Movers & Shakers page,
which tracks items with the biggest positive sales change over the past
24 hours. Sales of the Centennial Edition of the book, for instance,
had increased by more than 4,000 percent as of Tuesday afternoon. The
book was ranked fifth on the Movers & Shakers list at press time.
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| (Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com) |
(Orwell's Animal Farm, another dystopian classic, has also seen an increase in popularity of more than 250 percent.)
As the Los Angeles Times points out, President Obama even referenced 1984
last week as he defended the NSA's broad and controversial Internet
surveillance program, details of which recently leaked to the public.
"In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but... More
- NSA = "National [Spying] Agency," which does to the US what the CIA does to the world, with the help of the CIA, and the DHS, FBI, NSC, Pentagon, and your favorite corporations. (That's why it's called the "military-industrial complex," as it combines corporate and state powers).