Everyone has heard of the book. Whenever those in power see their influence waning, they claim the other side is trying to create an Orwellian state.

The former Green Party minister of economics in Deutschland actually wrote the foreword for the latest German translation of Orwell’s timeless classic. This is a textbook example of what Orwell wrote about: the inversion of reality. As it was (and is) mostly the Sozialist Green Parties in Germany that are building a state of totalitarian censorship — as exemplified by the same Green Party minister having a German citizen arrested just for calling him a dimwit on Twitter at the beginning of the year. Crazy times.

Anyway — most people know about 1984. But how many have actually read it? Some are forced to in school. And when you are forced to do something, you’re unlikely to enjoy it — which means you’ll probably learn very little.

So the real question is: how many people have read the book because they wanted to? I would assume not many. Because the book opens your eyes to state power and how the media inverts reality to keep that power running, and I see millions in every Western country not understanding that at all.

Orwell’s absolute genius shines through when he dissects how Big Brother uses language to destroy people’s ability to think: can you think about freedom when the state has censored the word “freedom” so much that nobody even remembers that the word existed?

Cognitive dissonance is another brilliant aspect of the story — explained in the final torture scene, where the protagonist Winston must deny reality before his very eyes in order to end the suffering inflicted by the personification of the state: O’Brien.

What Orwell missed, though: the deconstruction of gender and race that has been happening for the last 50 years. But what he unveiled more than anyone else was how wars are used to keep people in check. There is always a war going on since forever and the reason why is shown in 1984.

Today, the so-called debt-based economy and the resulting never-ending materialistic consumption have somewhat replaced the need for large conventional wars. But Orwell couldn’t foresee that, because it was Nixon who detached the U.S. dollar from the gold standard in 1971, long after Orwell’s death.

However, if you add an understanding of the debt-based economy, gender deconstruction, and mass migration to what 1984 teaches you, the current “clown world” suddenly makes total sense.

By the way: you can check out a free audiobook of 1984 here.