MOZOM-analyse

Are we living in 2026 or 1984?

George Orwell, the Orwell Foundation, European law, ECB, FTC, JRC, Pew Research Center and independent media and search research Society 9 augustus 2026 om 09:00

Type: Analyse Author: Paul Giezen Published: 9 augustus 2026 om 09:00 Report a correction

Editorial caricature of George Orwell next to a modern citizen monitored by cameras, smartphone, news feeds and digital payments, while the years 1984 and 2026 are contrasted

Source: George Orwell, the Orwell Foundation, European law, ECB, FTC, JRC, Pew Research Center and independent media and search research
MOZOM headline: Are we living in 2026 or 1984?
Original headline: Orwell's warning compared with our digital reality
Author: Paul Giezen
Date: 9 augustus 2026 om 09:00
Subject: Comparison between the power mechanisms from George Orwell's 1984 and surveillance, information selection, language, digital payments and political communication in 2026

Summary of the original report

1984 follows Winston Smith, an employee of the Ministry of Truth who rewrites old messages so that the past always fits the current party line. The Party uses Big Brother, telescreens, the Thought Police, Newspeak, doublethink, permanent enemies and control over private relationships to control not only behavior but ultimately reality in the minds of citizens. The three slogans War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength summarize the mechanism: words do not have to be logical when power can determine which contradiction remains visible and permitted. In 2026, that totalitarian end state will not exist in European democracies. However, the technical building blocks for observation, profiling, information selection and practical exclusion have been developed further than Orwell could concretely imagine.

1984 and 2026: parallels, evidence and limits

The table compares mechanisms, not complete forms of government. A strong technical agreement does not prove joint political direction; conversely, a formal right does not prove that every citizen can easily exercise that right.

Orwellian mechanism	In 1984	Contemporary agreement	Critical but objective judgement
Telescreens	Screens broadcast propaganda and continuously observe residents; turning it off is impossible for most people.	Smartphones, smart televisions, doorbells, license plate cameras, facial recognition and location data can record movements and behavior.	Strong technical parallel. The difference is that registration is spread across public and private parties and is legally limited. Linking files can reduce that difference in practice.
Big Brother and the complete personal file	One Party sees the citizen as one object to be fully monitored and assessed.	Platforms, banks, shops, telecom companies, employers and governments each own parts of someone's behavioral, financial and communication profile. The FTC described large-scale commercial surveillance of major platforms.	No proven central total file, but a growing possibility to combine separate data. The question of power shifts from collection to access, linking and reuse.
Ministry of Truth	Winston rewrites old newspapers until the archive again matches the current party line.	Online texts can be edited, search results can fade away and AI answers summarize sources without users opening the original publication.	The past is not centrally erased because libraries, web archives, and competing sources exist. But what isn't at the top can become practically invisible to the mass audience.
Newspeak: language as a tool of power	The vocabulary is deliberately reduced so that unwanted thoughts ultimately become difficult to formulate.	Political labels, euphemisms, policy jargon and platform rules help determine which words are socially acceptable, findable or monetizable.	There is no central dictionary that abolishes words. However, repeated terminology can narrow the frame of mind, especially when major media, institutions and platforms use the same labels.
Doublethink	Citizens must accept two contradictory statements at once and forget that there ever was a contradiction.	Political camps regularly accept conflicting standards for allies and opponents. Security can be called freedom, restriction can be called protection and escalation can be sold as peace policy.	The rhetorical similarity is clear. The democratic difference remains that citizens, judges, opposition and media are still allowed to point out the contradiction, although that does not guarantee equal reach.
War is Peace	Permanent war keeps the population fearful, united and dependent on the Party; the enemy can switch without breaking the story.	Governments talk about deterrence, defence, peacekeeping missions and security while expanding armaments, military deployment or emergency powers.	Not every defense measure is Orwellian and real threats exist. The parallel arises when the means becomes structural, criticism is considered disloyalty and the announced end point of peace keeps moving forward.
Permanent enemy images and daily anger	The Two Minutes Hate focuses collective emotion on the designated enemy and solidifies group loyalty.	News and social platforms reward conflict, outrage and enemy images. The JRC states that negative, emotional and conflict-oriented content receives more attention and dissemination.	Strong psychological parallel, but without one permanent director. Governments, opposition, influencers, media, platforms and the public can all contribute to the same outrage machine.
Thought Police and Self-Censorship	Not only action, but even deviant thinking is a crime.	People may change their words for fear of account loss, reputational damage, employer reactions, registration or an incorrect automated assessment.	An ordinary thought is not a crime in a democratic constitutional state. Yet the feeling of being constantly judged can cause a chilling effect before the police or judge come into the picture.
Unperson: disappearing from public view	An unwanted person is removed from documents and collective memory.	Accounts can be suspended, revenue stopped, reach limited and names disappear from recommendations. The DSA requires explanations and objections, but these procedures take time and do not automatically work perfectly.	No one is literally erased from all archives. However, practical invisibility on dominant platforms can have major social, political and economic consequences.
The information gate	The Party determines which information the population receives and which version is considered true.	Google ranks hundreds of billions of pages. SISTRIX measured less than one percent click-through rate per position on the second results page. In AI overviews, Pew found 8 percent click through to regular results and 1 percent to the cited sources.	This is not a completely closed filter bubble, but it is a powerful attention trap: who makes the first selection influences which reality the average user actually examines.
Control over payment and participation	The Party controls work, rations, property and thus the practical ability to live independently.	Cash use is declining and more and more transactions are made via identifiable accounts, cards and apps. According to the ECB, the share of cash payments at physical points of sale fell from 59 percent in 2022 to 52 percent in 2024.	Digital payment is not a party ration. Less usable cash does make citizens more dependent on technical access, financial gatekeepers and audit obligations. The current ECB design explicitly states that a digital euro must replenish cash and not be programmable.
Power as a goal	O'Brien makes it clear that the Party no longer needs an end goal beyond power; power sustains itself.	Governments, security services, regulators, companies and bureaucracies have incentives to maintain budgets, powers, market power and institutional right to exist.	Self-preservation is not proof of totalitarianism. Orwell becomes relevant when temporary powers become permanent, control hardly recedes and every expansion is justified anew with the same higher purpose.

The modern trap does not have to be completely closed

The classic filter bubble thesis states that personalization shows people almost exclusively confirmatory information. The scientific literature does not find a universal and equally strong effect for this. However, this counterevidence does not make ranking power unimportant. Google recognizes that location, language, settings, search context, source authority, and sometimes previous visits influence the order. In the 2020 SISTRIX measurement, the first organic result received an average of 28.5 percent click-through rate, the second 15.7 percent and every position on page two less than one percent. Pew saw in actual American surfing behavior from March 2025 that users clicked on a normal search result in 8 percent of visits with an AI overview, compared to 15 percent without such an overview; only 1 percent clicked on a source in the AI response. The PNAS experiment also showed that a deliberately skewed search order can shift preferences, often without participants noticing the control. These studies do not prove any political assignment to Google. They do prove that the first selection is given disproportionate influence and that formal availability of a source is not the same as practical visibility.

Freedom on paper, selection in practice

The Digital Services Act contains real countervailing powers: platforms must explain removals, enable objections and offer a non-personalized feed for major services. The law explicitly mentions freedom of expression, media freedom, pluralism and elections as interests to be protected. That is a significant difference with Oceania. At the same time, the effect is not value-free. Concepts such as systemic risk, harmful content and disinformation require interpretation; Platforms that face significant legal and reputational risks may also restrict legal content too broadly out of an abundance of caution. Freedom organization ARTICLE 19 warned of this over-removal risk during its creation. Therefore, the fair conclusion is not that the DSA abolishes freedom, but also not that a formal right of objection resolves the power difference. Freedom of expression only really exists when rules are predictable, legal criticism is not secretly suppressed and recovery comes quickly enough to still have meaning.

Countervailing power exists, but must be proven again and again

The EU AI Act prohibits certain manipulative AI applications and social scoring and limits live biometric identification by law enforcement agencies to specified exceptions. It is striking why: the legislator mentions discrimination, exclusion, violation of dignity and the feeling of constant surveillance as risks. The European Media Freedom Act requires more transparency about media ownership and state advertising and requires editorial independence of public media. At the same time, the Media Pluralism Monitor 2025 concluded that important risks surrounding market plurality remain in all EU member states. Countervailing power is therefore not absent, but neither is it self-evident. Rules can protect citizens, while the same regulatory infrastructure, when interpreted broadly, creates new gatekeepers. It is precisely this dual possibility that makes democratic control more important than reassuring slogans.

Possible message behind the news

The modern route to 1984 does not have to start with a dictator claiming all power. It can also consist of hundreds of individually defensible steps: more cameras for security, more data for convenience, more moderation against harm, more financial control against abuse and more central selection against disinformation. Each step can have a legitimate purpose. The Orwellian risk arises when the sum is no longer assessed, alternatives disappear and criticism of the system itself is treated as a danger to the system. Popular or right-wing opposition is also not automatically correct because it is growing; nor should it be placed outside the normal democratic debate solely because of its divergent ideas.

Neutral conclusion

Are we living in 2026 or 1984? Calendar technically in 2026 and constitutionally not in Orwell's Oceania. There are elections, independent judges, competing media, demonstrations, archives and visible dissenting voices. But technologically we live with possibilities that Big Brother could only dream of: portable telescreens, permanent location data, biometric recognition, personal news selection and payments that increasingly leave a digital trail. Complete control is neither proven nor completed. The infrastructure for this is becoming increasingly normal. Orwell's most important warning is therefore not that every government is already the Party, but that freedom can disappear in small, rational-sounding steps when convenience, security and correct information are repeatedly declared more important than controllable power. The decisive question is not whether a system has good intentions today. The decisive question is what that same system can do tomorrow when the power, the definition of danger or the permitted truth changes.