The clocks are striking thirteen and there’s something in the air – Albertans seem to be reading George Orwell’s 1984 again

The last time George Orwell’s 1949 book “1984” was so popular —until now—was in 1984. When Orwell wrote it, the world was just recovering from WW II and getting used to the new “Cold War.” The Communists had taken over China, and Joey Smallwood forced Newfoundlanders to confederate with Canada. Worry was all about totalitarianism.

Thirty-five years later, in the real 1984, China was still a mostly rural country of nearly a billion people. It’d had its butt whipped by little Vietnam but had entered into negotiations with UK about taking over the British Colony of Hong Kong. Orwell’s thinly veiled send-up of the Soviet Union seemed not to have been realized by now: Konstantin Chernenko had displaced Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party, but soon a new man with what looked like a little tattoo of Italy on his forehead attempted to open up the totalitarian state (little did Gorbachev know then, the USSR would disintegrate in less than a decade hence). In fact, the Soviets looked so benign in 1984 that President Ronald Reagan could get away with joking that, “ we begin bombing in five minutes,” during his weekly National Public Radio broadcast.

It just didn’t seem like totalitarianism was a big worry in 1984. I mean, “War is Peace” might’ve still had a ring to it, but in the real 1984, Reverend Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Prize for the latter. So was there anything more than the name “1984” that made Orwell’s book a must read in its eponymous year?

Well, mind-control being a big part of the book, perhaps the new motion picture rating PG-13 might have been a trigger. Or the rapid popularity of brain-sucking personal computers, maybe? Certainly there were a lot of space shuttles happening, some with top secret payloads—spy satellites, presumably. Soviet Gospadina and cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya was the first woman to take a space-walk (countering that for the hearts and minds of freedom-loving Americans, US astronauts did their walks untethered). It seemed surveillance was ongoing but of little general concern. The Soviet’s best shot was to boycott the Olympics.

In 1984, most people had other things to worry about than Big Brother. But what makes “1984” a best-seller now, in 2021? In the real 1984 there were mass shootings: reminiscent of Trump’s 2021 Capitol Riot in Washington DC, a disgruntled corporal attacked the National Assembly in Quebec and stationed himself in the Speaker’s chair after shooting three people to death; in the same year, a California shooter killed 20 at a Macdonald’s restaurant; Bernard Goetz shot four young Black men on a NY-city express train (he said they were going to mug him). Do readers make some connection between now and 37 years ago? Is it that there are many more mass shootings in the USA today than back then? Was there something connecting 1949, “1984,” 1984, and 2021 to make gun violence relevant today?

1984 was a big year for attempted and successful assassinations: the IRA tried but failed to blow up Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a Brighton Hotel (five were killed and 31 wounded), Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams also survived an attempt on his life, was wounded but survived, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi was killed by her Sikh bodyguards (perhaps having something to do with her government’s attack on Sikhdom’s holiest temple in Amritsar just a few months earlier). Yet there seems little connection today with either the book or the year 1984 in this respect—unless people are worried that current bellicosity in social intercourse might turn to violence instead of bluster.

Today the big thing is Covid. I haven’t read “1984” in a long while (but I still have my Ma’s little paperback, priced 10¢—the one with the Anti-sex League’s sultry babe casting a glance over her shoulder at the protagonist on the cover) but the closest connection I can make is that, in the year 1984, the AIDS virus was identified and, for a while, it caused a general panic which inspired some pretty crazy conspiracy theories —and even some Christian activism which figures in premier Kenney’s student life (he worked at an AIDS hospice where he refused to let same-gender partners visit their dying loved ones because, in the days K-Boy tried to conserve as a federal MP, same-gender marriage wasn’t yet legal—and the rule was only legal spouses and family were allowed to visit). And one wonders what could possibly be crazier than Q-Anon and “Plandemics” today—except, perhaps, the 1984 charging of teachers at a California pre-school who were accused of Satanic ritual abuse of children (charges were dropped when zero evidence was found).

Yeah, I can see how adding the basement of a pizza parlour, a worldwide cabal of pedophiles, and a former FLOTUS, Senator, Secretary of State, and 2016 presidential candidate to that 1984 narrative sort of connects—except today, Q-Anon is getting bigger—maybe even bigger than Big Brother of “1984” infamy. Yeah, I can kinda see that as inviting a re-read of the Orwellian classic…

…while listening to Van Halen’s classic album “1984”…

PS: it’s nice to see Emily St John-Mandel in second place to the late, great Orwell: she was raised here on our little Island and we’re so proud of her.

Having read and revisited “1984” on numerous occasions, I am left with only one conclusion: we tend to execute the wrong people. Try and send a few politicians to the gallows — no appeals allowed. Public executions, of course. I mean why deny these grifters and exhibitionists their final and best public performances?