George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and 21st-Century Authoritarianism:

Surveillance, Propaganda, Truth Control, and Resistance in Israel-Palestine, Bangladesh, and Global Totalitarian States

Abstract

This article examines 21st-century totalitarianism in the light
of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. To understand
authoritarian practices, it focuses on Israel’s biometric surveillance in
occupied lands of Palestine (Weizman 89), Bangladesh’s recent past
digital repression and “mirror house” prisons (Anbarasan, Hussain),
and panoptic states, e.g., China and Russia. The paper explores how
Orwellian party control is manifested by propaganda (Said 134) and
legal architectures. It cashes in on the theories of panopticon (Foucault
201), hegemony (Gramsci 24), manufacturing consent (Chomsky and
Herman 15), and totalitarianism (Arendt 351). It shows how subaltern
resistance, also known as “tactics of the weak” (De Certeau 48), goes
on via encrypted dissent and blockchain archives. The study employs
a combination of legal analysis, digital ethnography, and archival
research to connect literary theory and political science. It emphasizes
on truth’s radical potential. Finally, the paper recommends personal
and public privacy, official transparency, and historical accountability
as necessary defenses against modern authoritarianism.