Last night I went to see the Broadway production of '1984'. It is brilliant. Both visceral and intellectual. But what's striking is that both the makers and some of the actors in this production claim Orwell's novel is a good guide to the Trump era. There were a fair few millennials at last night's performance, some no doubt hoping to get tips for how to understand and oppose Trump. In truth, '1984' is a far better guide to some of Trump's critics in the illiberal left, especially among so-called SJWs. They have far more in common with Big Brother than Trump does.
The Broadway production had it all. The invention of Newspeak words to police how people think and talk about the world and about reality itself, a practice now pursued by adherents to the cult of genderfluidity with its bizarre new pronouns and obsession with correctspeak and its chastising of anyone who utters such truths as "There are two sexes". There was the Anti-Sex League that polices the "sex instinct" on behalf of Big Brother, which brought to mind today's campus feminism and its launching of a sexual inquisition against anyone who dares to have drunk or daft or regretted sex.
There was the Ministry of Truth's casual erasing of "problematic" people from history, which today finds expression in those Year Zero leftists who agitate for the toppling of statues of "bad people" or the expulsion of certain philosophers from the university curriculum.
There were the Child Spies who harass the older generation for their prejudices and their misuse of Newspeak, which made me think of those more entitled media and political millennials who drone on about oldies stealing their futures and having "backward ideas".
And of course there was the Two Minutes' Hate against enemies of the Party, which in last night's production was like a grotesque physical manifestation of the modern Twitterstorm -- people raging and screaming and flinging hate at those who dare to think differently to them.
I hope more and more millennials and SJWs and others on the new left go to see this play and then over drinks afterwards whisper among themselves: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Is this story about... us?"
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