The MAGA Memory Hole

Tom Nichols: “Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, works for the totalitarian Ministry of Truth, where his assignment is to produce lies. He rewrites history so that whatever the regime says today cannot be contradicted by something it might have said yesterday. (He ensures, for example, that Big Brother’s ‘Order for the Day’ announcements about the regime’s achievements match up with everything the leader predicted in previous statements, and he excises any untidy references in the state media to people who have been arrested and disappeared.) Once history is fixed, Winston drops contradictory materials into ‘the memory hole,’ a small opening near every desk that leads to a furnace, where the inconvenient past is quickly incinerated.”

“Leaders of the current GOP presumably do not have such memory holes in their offices, but they’re doing their best to replicate the effect. Republicans who once claimed to be against Donald Trump, and ridiculed him, are now expending kilocalories of political energy to convince their constituents and the rest of the American public that they have always been faithful to Trump.”