The problem with that Orwell quote
The Millers don't need to convince YOU that 2 + 2 = 5
Everyone’s remembered their high school English teacher’s favorite book. At least my timeline makes it seem that way.
In the past month, the nation and the world witnessed the unprovoked, extrajudicial assassinations of two American citizens by federal agents, in broad daylight and in front of cameras recording from multiple angles. Unlike at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas—once rallying cries for libertarians and the “patriot” movement—there were no snipers and no tanks. These citizens, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti, were committing no crimes, putting no one in danger. They were exercising rights and freedoms that are the essence of our national inheritance: to speak, assemble, bear arms; to be free from unreasonable search and seizure; to be secure in life, liberty, property. While ICE has rushed to recruit anyone who will answer the call, these killers respectively had nearly two decades and over eight years experience in federal law enforcement, according to the government.
In both cases, administration officials swiftly issued claims that bore no relationship to the documented reality.
A recap (skip to the next subhead if you don’t want to relive this)
On January 7, President Trump posted on Truth Social that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who ultimately shot her. Contrary to this claim, video footage from multiple angles shows that ICE agents illegally attempted to remove Good from her car1; Ross recklessly walked toward the front of Good’s car; and even when the car began moving (slowly), Ross was in a position only to be bumped in the hip, or even more likely missed, should the car have continued moving. Of course, Ross was also free to move back toward the side of the vehicle. Shooting at the vehicle would not stop the vehicle at that range, and, in fact, by shooting instead of moving aside, the agent would put himself at greater risk. But that’s exactly what he did: he fired once through the windshield and twice through the driver’s side window. As Ross was never in danger, and because of his condescending attitude in remarks caught in his own cellphone footage, one can only assume that he shot to kill because he felt like it, and knew he could do so with impunity. Subsequent administration claims that Good was a “terrorist” or that Ross suffered “internal bleeding” were just as disgraceful and ridiculous as Trump’s original response.
On January 24, after federal agents assassinated the peaceful, prone, and disarmed Alex Pretti, discharging at least ten shots in five seconds, Stephen Miller claimed on X that “An assassin tried to murder federal agents.” U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who has relished dressing and strutting around Minneapolis like a cross between an SS officer and bigtallbutchstyle, doubled down, claiming that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Bizarrely, Bovino, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and FBI Chief Kash Patel seemed to base similar claims on the fact that Pretti was carrying (but not wielding) a 9mm “semi-automatic” handgun, likely the most popular category of EDC and personal protection weapon in America.2
Stranger Things: U.S. dropped into Orwell’s 80s
This is when the Orwell quotes started flooding social media, becoming a rallying cry and near-ubiquitous response to any misrepresentations of the killings:
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - George Orwell, 1984
You’ve seen it in Reddit posts, Instagram stories, letters to the editor. More than anywhere else, you’ve seen it in replies, a viral Twitter-discourse trump card. Here’s Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer responding directly to Stephen Miller:
Here’s Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz reposting Adam Zyglis’s latest political cartoon:
The prevalence of the quote suggests that people are catching on to what I wrote two weeks ago: that MAGA was a revolution against the American way of life, just as Orwell’s Party began as a revolution against the liberal democratic capitalism that proceeded it.
If you still doubt that, by the way, just look at yesterday’s comments from Katie Miller, wife and self-styled toro bravo to Stephen Miller, who described “liberal democracy”—the foundation of Western civilization for the past three centuries—as “woke and deeply leftist ideology.”
Miller’s startling cognitive necrosis strikes at precisely what the Orwell quote misses about this moment.
Taken out of context, the Party’s “final, most essential demand” seems to describe the Trump administration’s reaction to the Minneapolis murders: to insist that Americans reject the evidence of their eyes and ears and believe that these were justified, “defensive” killings of dangerous domestic terrorists. But we have to remember that the speaker of the line is not Orwell, but Winston Smith, 1984’s tragically outmatched protagonist. Delivered as an inner monologue, Smith arrives at this reflection on the Party’s power while considering what he will write in a diary to O’Brien, a senior party official whom he thinks to be on his side, part of a Brotherhood of resistance. Crucially, for a moment, Winston himself doubts the evidence of his senses. Here’s the next sentence:
His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer.
As much as the description of a Party intellectual sounds like the wormtongued Charlie Kirk, we’re just not there yet. Trump administration officials are not denying reality with “subtle arguments,” and, perhaps more importantly, they are not waging a war for the hearts and minds of Winstons.
The Winston figure, if he exists in America today, knows that federal agents wantonly murdered Renée Good and Alex Pretti. He quickly and correctly interpreted video footage of these murders. He immediately recognized and dismissed the dissembling of Party apparatchiks and their social media amplifiers. But the Party is not speaking to Winston. The Party is speaking to its base. Unlike the historical GOP or DNC, the Party does not need the “moveable middle,” not right now. It only needs gerrymandering, a pliant judiciary, and the asymmetry of the Electoral College, through which its base can maintain power. And the base is only interested in power. Perhaps more precisely, the base is only interested in winning.
Just listen to the wind whistling through the skulls of Natalie Danelishen, Rogan O’Handley, and Grant Godwin, all Party influencers:
The comments on posts like these sometimes feature Winstons, people who rehash versions of all the points I made above. The replies? “fk you” “she deserved 2 bullets” “FAFO”.
This Party doesn’t need to coerce anyone to deny the evidence of their senses. It doesn’t matter that we all know these were unjustified murders, just as it doesn’t matter when Katie Miller calls the Founding Fathers “woke.” The base declares victory and moves on.3
Parting thought: myth as reaction to modernity
As I’ve written before, it’s evident that many in the Party hate America: what it is, what it was, and what it was becoming.
Nine months after I wrote that post, it’s even clearer that Party members from the rank and file to the White House are ready to abandon any of the 27 amendments to the Constitution (especially the 1st, 2nd, 14th, and 22nd); previously conservative arguments about “states’ rights”; the principles of the Declaration of Independence; and cultural norms like the separation of church and state. That’s why the MAGA movement is inherently anti-conservative: laws and customs are permitted when they advance power, discarded when they check power.
Don’t take my word for it. Party podcaster Tim Pool put it well in a video posted today: “I’m not licking the boot. It’s my boot. I voted for it. I’m the one stomping.”
X user Yugopnik recently posted a theory as to why our emerging dystopia features so much proud imbecility rather than the “subtle arguments” Orwell predicted.
I would point out to Yugopnik that plenty of people on the left also lack critical thinking ability, also flit among ideological positions and alliances based on convenience and fashion rather than principle. Instead of a single arbiter of truth in an individual like Trump, the left has its diseased hivemind of internet discourse. Instead of abstract power, the left worships abstract justice. That’s what “peak woke” was.4
So, why are so many people today not just rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears, but passing over that evidence entirely in favor of readymade narratives? I’m sure I’ll return to this subject, but for now I’ll offer a quick riff on Yugopnik’s hot take.
Our world has become too complex. I don’t mean that we know more about particle physics, pyramids, and whale calls than we did a decade ago. I mean that in our daily lives, regular people continuously run up against technologies, systems, and theories that they do not and cannot understand. And everything depends on these mysteries. The price of eggs in Pittsburgh depends on the price of tofu in Quanzhou which depends on whether the new president of Taiwan makes an official visit to Washington. We had fifteen days to flatten the curve: driveway beers and N95s to keep our noses warm. Drones over New Jersey. The Discombobulator. What the hell is 6G? Ask Siri. Ask Claude. Most importantly, what I do tell my boomerang son, back in his childhood bedroom after I insisted he learn coding at that expensive liberal arts college?
In response to this confusion, some reach for power, some reach for justice, most reach for easy narratives. This is not the situation that Orwell envisioned.
As of this writing, it seems that enough people did accept the evidence of their eyes and ears, and after the second murder in Minneapolis the Party base was a little bit smaller and a little bit quieter than leaders had imagined. Tenured ICE agents are fed up and mistrustful of the new recruits. Greg Bovino is heading back to El Centro and the subtler Tom Homan is packing his parka. Trump and Gov. Tim Walz had a “very good call.”
It’s not over. The Party’s revolution will continue. And when the next atrocity happens, the shitposters still won’t care what America’s Winstons think.
The administration’s counterargument to any claims that its actions are illegal seems to be that anything done in Donald Trump’s name must be legal because Donald Trump is the law.
As Atlantic staff writer Tyler Austin Harper pointed out, this line of argument reveals that photo-ops notwithstanding, many in the Trump administration and broader MAGA-movement are LARPers ready to abandon the Second Amendment because they don’t use it.
Less like “2 + 2 = 5,” more like “interception by Riley Moss.”
To deny this is to verify it.