Room 101

I think 1984 is a book that will remain relevant for ages. It is a very insightful view of how people with power will manipulate information to control public perception. Of course things will not happen in such an obvious manner (as in 1984) but if you look closely at any administration, I am sure you will find in the subtleties, several of the techniques used by the ruling party of 1984, for example:

• Newspeak: The whole idea of Newspeak (the official language in Oceania) was to make thoughtcrime (the act of thinking something different from what the ruling party states) impossible. How were they trying to accomplish this? By creating a language in which no complex ideas could be formed; eliminating words every year. This is similar to Orwell's Animal Farm motto "Four legs good, two legs bad." An example in real life is the favorite phrase of several politicians: "It is a fight between good and evil." By reducing a complex scenario to a very simple argument, most people will not try to examine the situation further!
  
• Doublethink: The act of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, fervently believing both. An example in real life occurred very recently. There are several public statements by the administration on how Al Qaeda keeps getting crippled over the years thanks to the continuous war on terror, yet, Chertoff just said that Al Qaeda is strong and planning a second attack. How do you combine both statements? By doublethink: the white house speaker just said that the announcement about the strength of AlQaeda just confirms what the president has been saying over the years.
  
• Ministry of Truth: The department in charge of the "news." It corrects the historical records so that everything that the party says becomes true. It changes history! Of course, history is difficult to really change, but in practice it only matters to say something didn't happen convincingly enough, and people will believe it. I am sure there are several examples everywhere of this in real life; but the most obvious is when public figures deny they ever stated one claim; like Cheney saying that he never said he knew where the weapons of mass destruction were, or that there was never an argument of the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or the fact that the attorneys were fired because of performance, and not because they had a different political view.
  
• The names of state offices: Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, Ministry of Peace... all of them sound very good in words. Just like the "Patriot Act."
  

I wonder if Stephen Colbert took his idea of thinking with the gut from 1984:

"Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc." The shortest rendering that one could make of this in Oldspeak would be: 'Those whose ideas were formed before the Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of the principles of English Socialism.' ... To grasp the full meaning of the Newspeak sentence quoted above, one would have to have a clear idea of what is meant by Ingsoc. And in addition, only a person thoroughly grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate the full force of the word bellyfeel, which implied a blind, enthusiastic
acceptance difficult to imagine today;

You just need to feel it from the gut!

I am sure every ruling party in the world uses up to some extent these techniques, but it is good when you are able to see them through a world like 1984 :-) Highly recommended!