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This is the whole point of 1984. It's not some overbearing government entity that surveils their citizens; the citizens bring it on themselves.

They willingly relinquish their right to privacy in service of protection against a potential threat, or the appearance of one.




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These comments make me think that both you and the commenter you replied to have never read 1984.

It's anti totalitarian propaganda. There is IIRC not much about how Airstrip One came to be, it's kinda always been there because the state controls history. People did not ask for the telescreens, they accept them.

The system in the book is so strongly based on heavy-handed coercion and manipulation that I actually find it psychologically implausible (though, North Korea...). The strength of the book, I would say, is not its plausibility, but the intensity of the nightmare and the quality of the prose that describes it.




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