Opinion

Four Orwellian Biden Moments That Give ‘1984’ A Run For Its Money

DailyWire.com

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Biden is doing great.

George Orwell’s magnum opus, Nineteen Eighty-Four, features the dangers of a totalitarian government that goes beyond mere exertion of force into redefining the nature of truth itself. In the regime of Big Brother, mere compliance with governmental edicts is not enough — one must submit his heart, soul, mind, and strength to every opinion, policy, and action that the state pursues.

Rather than treating the dystopian novel as a warning, the Biden administration has leveraged its premise as an instruction manual for key practices — to cover its tracks, to grab more power, and to force irrational policies upon the American people.

Disinformation Governance Board

Winston Smith, the protagonist of Nineteen Eighty-Four, finds himself employed at the Ministry of Truth — a government agency tasked with charting official narratives transmitted to the people via propaganda. Smith is charged with rewriting past newspapers to correspond with the party’s worldview before incinerating any documents that may conflict with the new version.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration launched the Disinformation Governance Board — an entity at the Department of Homeland Security tasked with combating misinformation and dictating truth to the masses. Especially after Nina Jankowicz, an overt partisan, was tapped to lead the board, conservatives blasted the Biden administration for launching its very own Ministry of Truth.

“I confess, I at first thought this announcement was satire. Surely, no American administration would ever use the power of government to sit in judgment on the First Amendment speech of its own citizens,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “Sadly, I was mistaken. Rather than protecting our border or the American homeland, you have chosen to make policing Americans’ speech your priority. This new board is most certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately.”

Although the Disinformation Governance Board was eventually forced to stand down — a development the White House blamed on disinformation — social media companies have also taken the mantle of becoming the arbiters of truth. One day after the Disinformation Governance Board was disbanded, Twitter announced a new round of policies geared toward issuing warning labels on “false coverage” of the war in Ukraine.

Beyond the Department of Homeland Security, the Biden administration has repeatedly signaled to allies in Silicon Valley that it expects help to push official narratives. Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last year that social media users “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others” if they post “misinformation online.”

In even more Orwellian parallels, Twitter has censored conservative commentators and entire news outlets for “thoughtcrimes” such as calling transgender athletes by their true sex or publishing reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop weeks before the general election.

Birthing People

Among Big Brother’s most prioritized projects in Nineteen Eighty-Four was the creation and promulgation of “newspeak” — an altered version of the English language meant to recategorize thought such that dissent from the government is impossible.

As Daily Wire host Matt Walsh recently discovered, officials at the highest level of government are incapable of defining the term “woman” — despite their purportedly robust commitment to advancing women’s rights. Indeed, many progressives — including members of the Biden administration — have imported the assumptions of radical gender ideology into the word, which used to simply mean “adult human female.”

Last year, President Biden’s $6 trillion budget proposal allocated funds to address the “high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people.” The term, which moved from the most radical corners of academia to the halls of the White House in a matter of months, is used to clarify — or, more accurately, obfuscate — that women who still have their uteruses despite hormones and surgeries can give birth.

“When we talk about birthing people, we’re being inclusive. It’s that simple,” pro-abortion group NARAL explained last year. “We use gender-neutral language when talking about pregnancy, because it’s not just cis-gender women that can get pregnant and give birth.”

As with the government in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the term “birthing people” is not meant to forward a rational argument for the case that men can get pregnant. Rather, it is meant to reframe thought and block dissent with radical gender ideology.

What Is A Recession?

In June, progressives failed to define the term “woman.” In July, progressives are trying to redefine the term “recession.”

All signs point to the United States economy soon meeting the rule-of-thumb definition of a recession, since economic growth appeared to have been negative in the first and second quarters of this year as consumer spending and business activity begin to decline. Rather than answering for the poor economy — which had been recovering until soaring inflation, persistent supply chain issues, and policies against oil and gas production — the Biden administration is devoting its energies to wordplay.

“While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House said in a blog post. “Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data — including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes.”

In a particularly Orwellian imitation, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen argued that the United States is not in a “recession,” but rather in a “transition in which growth is slowing” — because in Biden’s America, even the economy transitions instead of being identified by its current state.

“We need to be growing at a steady and sustainable pace,” Yellen said, even though growth is currently negative. “So there is a slowdown and businesses can see that and that’s appropriate, given that people now have jobs and we have a strong labor market.”

Rationing

One of Winston Smith’s tasks at the Ministry of Truth was the fabrication of a newspaper to support Big Brother cutting chocolate rations from 30 grams per week to 20 grams per week. Yet within one day of the policy, the propaganda machine convinced the people that Big Brother had actually raised rations to 20 grams per week — leading to demonstrations of thanksgiving.

In the same manner, President Biden took a victory lap after gas prices started to decline from their heights of more than $5.00 per gallon. Despite arguing that his “actions are working” and “prices are coming down” — especially due to his steady release of strategic reserve oil, some of which found its way to a Chinese company with links to Hunter Biden — he failed to mention that gas was only $2.38 per gallon on the day he assumed office. 

Jared Bernstein, a member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, added that the administration’s policies have produced “a bit of breathing room in making ends meet” as the market observes “the fastest decline in retail gas prices in a decade.”

In the same manner, the White House has repeatedly argued that its first budget “cut the federal deficit” — the difference between government spending and government revenue — by $350 billion, while alleging that the second proposal will slash $1.3 trillion from the deficit. What is missing in this equation, which even left-wing fact-checkers have called “misleading,” is the fact that deficits reached record highs in 2020 and 2021 because of stimulus packages meant to address the lockdown-induced recession. 

With his most recent budget, President Biden will be presiding over a $1.2 trillion deficit — far higher than any deficit seen before COVID or during the second term of President Barack Obama.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire. 

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