open polity

Tag: populism

  • What Orwell’s 1984 Teaches Us about the Dangers of the Trump Administration’s Lies

    What Orwell’s 1984 Teaches Us about the Dangers of the Trump Administration’s Lies

    “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” —George Orwell, 1984

    This quote from George Orwell’s 1984 has been doing the rounds across social media in light of the actions taken by the Trump administration following the killings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis. 1984 is one of the quintessential works within the dystopian genre, as it expertly depicts propaganda, extreme surveillance, totalitarianism, and the erosion of truth. The book follows Winston Smith, a low-ranking member of ‘the Party’, who is frustrated by the pervasive eyes of the party and its ruler, Big Brother. In the book, Orwell depicts a hypersurveillance state, where truth is whatever the Party or Big Brother says it is. 

    ICE in Minneapolis

    Following the Trump administration’s response to the murder of Alex Pretti, more equivalences are being made to Orwell’s novel. 

    Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot multiple times and killed in broad daylight by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. This is the second ICE killing in Minneapolis, as it comes just weeks after Renee Good, a 37-year-old American woman, was also shot and killed by an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross. In both incidents, ICE agents acted out of control and took fatal measures that were not necessary. 

    The Ministry of Truth

    Following Renee’s killing, a statement by the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, was reiterated by the Department of Homeland Security account on X. In the statement, Miller says, “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. Anybody who lays a hand on you, tries to stop you or obstructs you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties”.

    The Trump administration was also quick to label her a ‘domestic terrorist’, with the president taking to Truth Social to claim that she was ‘very disorderly, obstructing and resisting’ and then ‘violently, willfully, viciously ran over the ICE agent who seems to have shot her in self-defence’. Video footage from the incident, however, shows that this was not the case; in fact, the last thing Renee said was “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you”. Renee Good presented no threat, and neither did Alex Pretti.

    Contrary to the defamatory claims made by the Trump administration, Pretti was holding his phone, not a gun, before he was beaten down and pepper sprayed. Alex Pretti was defending a woman who was being manhandled by ICE agents. There are several videos from witnesses that multiple, credible news sources have analysed and verified, which do not support claims made by the administration; in fact, they leave no room for deniability or a different version of events. 

    There are stark parallels between the actions taken by Big Brother’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ and the Trump administration’s response to the ICE killings. In the novel, the Ministry of Truth concerns itself with lies; it is a deliberate contradiction. It is responsible for the propaganda of the Party through rewriting history and controlling the news media, entertainment, education, and the fine arts.

    Trump is a known liar, but what we are seeing here is the erasure of truth at a systemic level. Much like the Ministry of Truth, the entire administration is promoting the same lies that brandish the victims of these shootings as ‘domestic terrorists’ and thus justify the actions taken by these ICE agents. Vice President JD Vance reposted a statement by Stephen Miller claiming that Pretti was ‘an assassin’ who ‘tried to murder federal agents’. 

    What’s worse is that we live in the digital age, governments and law enforcement have great means of surveillance at their disposal, but citizens can also surveil them when things like this happen with their phones. Instead of waiting for bodycam footage from the perpetrator, victims and witnesses can have their own footage. There is an abundance of credible evidence from the people who witnessed Alex Pretti’s execution that contradicts the version of events that the administration has concocted. This strategy of plausible deniability is merely an attempt for ICE as an agency to escape accountability to ensure it can continue carrying out Trump’s mission. 

    Arendt in Orwell and Reality

    Hannah Arendt can help us understand this tactic of lying. She talks about facts being fragile because they are contingent, which means that there is always a possibility for alternative realities. For example, in her book ‘Between Past and Future’, she states: “Since everything that has actually happened in the realm of human affairs could just as well have been otherwise, the possibilities for lying are boundless, and this boundlessness makes for self-defeat”.

    With regards to the ICE killings, the administration is able to lie because many people can conceive an alternative story where the ICE agents were acting in self defense, where Alex Pretti did pull again, where Renee Good was a hired agitator part of a wider left wing conspiracy tasked with assaulting law enforcement. Though the evidence shows that this was the case, it still could have been, the very possibility of it enables this alternative reality to take off.

    We see it in 1984 when the Ministry of Truth constantly contradicts itself through altering historical records, changing wartime alliances from Eastasia to Eurasia, fabricating the existence of “Comrade Ogilvy,” and revising economic forecasts. This is all possible due to the contingency of facts. 

    In 1984, Orwell takes it further by eroding what Arendt labels a rational truth. A rational truth pertains to mathematical, scientific or philosophical truths that are actively discovered and independent of opinion. These truths are harder to erode because there is no alternative imagination. In 1984, Big Brother coerced the citizens in Oceania into believing the mathematical falsehood that 2+2=5. 

    Now the administration has not gone to such extremes yet but it is not hard to imagine a world in which they do because the scale at which they are already twisting the truth is a very slippery slope. The administration cannot be allowed to lie about these killings; ICE agents and the organisation must face accountability. 

  • Opinion: Do Andrew Tate Supporters Pose a Threat to Society ?

    Opinion: Do Andrew Tate Supporters Pose a Threat to Society ?

    Data from YouGov in 2023, on male opinions of Andrew Tate by age group, shows that while the majority remain unfavourable, increased awareness is associated with a higher likelihood of favourable views, even as overall unfavourability remains largely unchanged. Greater exposure to social media increases the likelihood of encountering harmful content, particularly for younger users who spend more time in digital spaces and have fewer cognitive and social safeguards against it. Australia’s decision to ban under-16s from social media therefore comes at a salient moment. It reflects growing impatience with platforms that continue to roll out new features, such as X’s Grok, while regulatory frameworks struggle to keep pace.

    Furthermore, a growing body of research links high levels of screen time in children to poorer outcomes in language development, attention, memory, and problem-solving. These concerns are increasingly reflected in clinical practice. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC), which represents 23 medical royal colleges and faculties, has reported repeated testimony from frontline clinicians encountering severe harms associated with technology use across primary, secondary, and community healthcare settings. Doctors have described rising cases involving impaired concentration, reduced attention spans, and cognitive difficulties observed across multiple medical specialties. In response to the scale and consistency of these cases, the AoMRC has begun formally gathering evidence on the recurring cognitive and psychological impacts that may be attributed to prolonged exposure to digital platforms and devices.

    Therefore, the case for meaningful change to laws on social media no longer rests on the behaviour of a marginal group or a handful of extreme personalities. It is increasingly grounded in concern about how digital environments shape cognition, attention, and susceptibility to simplified narratives at scale. When platforms reward repetition, emotional intensity, and binary thinking, they do more than contain harmful ideas. They create the conditions under which those ideas can move beyond private digital echo chambers and begin to cohere into movements, campaigns, and political identities.

    So, when do these views break out of personal digital echo chambers and into movements and campaigns?

    The link between Andrew Tate’s appeal and wider political dynamics becomes clearer when placed in the context of research on populism and sexism. Recent work by Marcos-Marne, Inguanzo, and de Zuñiga (2024) demonstrates that sexist attitudes are not merely adjacent to populist views but are positively correlated with them, even in cases where populism is otherwise weak. This suggests that misogyny is not simply tolerated within right-wing populism, but is integral to the psychological and ideological worldview it promotes. 

    Tate’s worldview closely mirrors the core components of right-wing populism. Populism is defined by 

    1. People-centrism, which draws a sharp boundary between a morally pure “people” and corrupt or illegitimate outsiders; 
    2. Anti-elitism, which frames institutions, experts, and cultural authorities as immoral or hostile; 
    3. A Manichean logic that reduces politics to a struggle between good and evil. 

    In its exclusionary forms, populism often fuses anti-immigration sentiment with rigid gender hierarchies, positioning feminism and gender equality as threats to social order rather than advances in justice. Tate’s rhetoric follows this template almost perfectly, casting men as victims of a corrupt elite order and women as both prizes and problems within that system.

    Crucially, this ideological package thrives on simplicity. Research from Erisen et al. show that people’s “need for cognition” differs and thus helps explain why such messages resonate unevenly. 

    Individuals with a low need for cognition tend to prefer simple explanations and clear moral narratives over complex, multi-causal accounts of social problems. They are more receptive to slogans, blame attribution, and binary thinking, precisely the style of content that social media algorithms reward and amplify. By contrast, those with a high need for cognition are more likely to tolerate ambiguity, engage with structural explanations, even when they hold strong views.

    This helps explain why Tate’s influence does not persuade the majority, but does consistently mobilise a minority: his ideas offer emotionally satisfying, cognitively economical answers to real feelings of alienation, status anxiety, and loss of control. Social media does not create these dispositions, but it accelerates their formation and hardens them through repetition, affirmation, and isolation within digital echo chambers.

    From this perspective, a simple ban on social media for young people is best understood as a starting point rather than a solution. It may reduce exposure during formative years, particularly for those most vulnerable to simplistic and exclusionary worldviews. But it also forces a more difficult question: if harmful ideas flourish because they are easy, emotionally resonant, and constantly reinforced, then countering them requires investment elsewhere. That means building environments (educational, cultural, and civic) that enrich young people cognitively, rather than merely restricting them technologically. It means fostering critical thinking, media literacy, and social belonging that does not rely on grievance or domination.

    The risk posed by Andrew Tate’s supporters is not that they form a majority, nor that they will inevitably coalesce into organised extremism. It is that a digitally amplified minority can normalise exclusionary ideas, seed broader populist movements, and shape political discourse before institutions are ready to respond. Responsibility therefore lies less with individual users than with the platforms that design, reward, and monetise these dynamics. A social media ban may not solve the problem, but it signals a shift in seriousness. As long as outrage, grievance, and extremism remain profitable, platforms will continue to host them. Regulation is not about silencing speech, but about forcing accountability where market incentives have consistently failed.