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Professor uses George Orwell to warn about Trump second term

People thought Hitler was an ‘unimportant lunatic’ too …

A philosophy and law professor at Wayne State University who studies the writings of George Orwell (“1984”) is using the author to warn about another Trump presidency.

Writing in The Conversation, Mark Satta (pictured) says he believes “people were correct eight years ago” to connect Orwell’s views to Trump, including the difference between nationalism and patriotism.

“Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally,” Orwell wrote in 1945. “Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.”

For Satta, Trump’s reaction to losing in 2020 — trying to “subvert the election results by lying” and “encouraging insurrection” — is an example of his nationalism.

Trump “conceptualizes everything, as Orwell put it, ‘in terms of competitive prestige’ and ‘his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations,’” Satta says.

In “1984,” Oceania party members engage in a “Two Minutes of Hate” in which they’re “encouraged to scream and jeer at a video of a political opponent, prompt party members to focus their thoughts on ‘victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations.’”

Party members frequently turn on each other via “kidnapping, torture and murder,” and for Satta Trump’s warnings about the “enemy from within” demonstrate his “desire to turn on Americans who threaten his pursuit of power.”

Satta ultimately invokes Godwin’s Law and ties Trump to Orwell’s 1942 musings about his time as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War.

MORE: ‘Orwellian nightmares’: Professor trained in Soviet Union says U.S. universities becoming totalitarian

Criticizing how many believed that evil “always defeats itself in the long run” and how “the thing you most fear never really happens,” Orwell said people need to put forth a “concerted effort” to maintain “vigilance against backsliding.”

In addition,

Orwell criticized various intellectuals who treated Hitler as “a figure out of comic opera, not worth taking seriously.” And he criticized many English-speaking countries for being places where it was “fashionable to believe, right up to the outbreak of war, that Hitler was an unimportant lunatic and the German tanks made of cardboard.”

Satta cites “numerous commentators” — from outlets such as The Guardian, NPR, and NBC News, no less — who’ve noted Trump “routinely speaks like an autocrat,” and he worries that, like the Western nations before World War II, Americans aren’t taking such talk as the “threat to democracy that it is.”

According to his personal webpage, Satta’s interests include “First Amendment law, free speech, religious liberty, LGBTQ civil rights, [and the] philosophy of language.”

In The Conversation last summer, Satta reported on how laws against drag shows and “gender-affirming” care were being struck down in courts on First Amendment grounds.

More recently, regarding the case of parents who wore “XX” wristbands to a girls’ soccer game to protest the participation of a biological male, Satta said there are “important differences” between this situation and the historic Tinker free speech case.

“If the court views [the school] as neutrally enforcing its policies against threats, harassment, and intimidation [as the district contends], it seems unlikely that such a court would conclude that the parents’ First Amendment rights were violated,” he said.

MORE: University puts a trigger warning on George Orwell’s ‘1984’

IMAGE: Mark Satta/X

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About the Author
Associate Editor
Dave has been writing about education, politics, and entertainment for over 20 years, including a stint at the popular media bias site Newsbusters. He is a retired educator with over 25 years of service and is a member of the National Association of Scholars. Dave holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Delaware.