Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) was ridiculed on Tuesday over an oddly worded tweet that suggested George Orwell’s book 1984 had become reality in the U.S.
“1984 is a great fiction novel to read but it seems like it is becoming the reality we are currently living under more and more each day,” tweeted Cawthorn, the 25-year-old, first-term congressman and Donald Trump megafan.
For a short tweet, critics found a lot of issues with it. For starters, all novels are fiction. More importantly, it sounded like Cawthorn has either never read 1984 or needs a major refresher on the dystopian classic.
The Orwell reference is often bandied around by conservatives, usually incorrectly. The book paints a picture of a future under a totalitarian regime. Orwell, a democratic socialist, portrayed how such a government could assert and maintain power by manipulating truth and reality through propaganda.
In January, after Trump was banned from Twitter for inciting the mob that ransacked the U.S. Capitol, his son Donald Trump Jr. declared: “We are living in Orwell’s 1984. Free speech no longer exists in America.” And last month, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) announced: “The only thing Orwell got wrong was the year,” shortly after tweeting about the Biden administration’s efforts to block vaccine misinformation and support local officials who implement mandatory vaccines to protect constituents from COVID-19.
Cawthorn’s addition to the list was promptly torn to shreds: