While Huxley’s concerns focused on the dangers of technology, Orwell also understood people were at the center of any imagined dystopia of the future. In Animal Farm, published in 1945, Orwell was intent on revealing the true nature of fascism and its necessary partner of totalitarianism and its impact on the choices and behavior of the people (or in his book, the animals) implementing their supposed egalitarian utopia.
In a simple allegory symbolizing the 1917 Russian Revolution, Orwell tells the story of abused and overworked farm animals who rebel against the human farmer who is their oppressive master and proceed to establish their version of a utopia with egalitarian rules. Eventually the pigs, who have become the leaders, ignore the rules, manipulate the other animals, and establish a ruling society much like the one they rebelled against. Still pretending to embrace equality, the pigs adopt an absurdly contradictory slogan: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In real life, Russian revolutionaries who preached universal equality followed the same course, replacing the tyrannical rule of the czars with an even more tyrannical communist dictatorship.
In Animal Farm, the pigs use propaganda, fear, and force to maintain authority, as opposition is suppressed. For Orwell, his book wasn’t just a warning about Soviet Russia, but about the nature of the left itself—exploiting important and serious issues to rise to power, and then using newfound influence to consolidate control.
Orwell understood that the real goal of leftist revolutionaries is not to solve the problems that lifted them to power. The Marxist goal is to achieve power, using lies about a better future free of victimhood and suffering to reach their goal. It is the ultimate vicious circle, benefiting the few who become rich and powerful in the process. The left’s natural totalitarian instinct co-opts important issues, weaponizes them, rides them to death in pursuit of power and money. In the end, civilizations are destroyed as they fall victim to the abusers and mass murderers masquerading as leaders and politicians.
Once a pervasive atmosphere of fear is created, both authors recognized, it becomes a perfect cudgel to beat any opposition into submission. The true danger illustrated in both books is a small technocratic elite who insist that the world outside is terrifying, and only they have the knowledge and experience to keep that danger at bay.
From Deplorables to “Semi-Fascist”
The left promotes Big Government by criticizing and condemning the intent and abilities of citizens. After all, why would you need an all-encompassing government if people were competent enough to run their own lives? As the agents of the state reduce individuals to a commodity to be used or abandoned, it’s inevitable that bureaucrats slouch into the notion that the only thing the little people are really worth is the tax dollars they generate to keep the living entity of government functioning and alive.
We are at a point with our bureaucratic state that the citizen must be kept distracted and in fear. Keeping the average citizen out of the hair of the Masters of the Universe is job one. How better to accomplish this than by pitting groups of Americans against each other? And how better to do that than by condemning one group of people as dangerous domestic terrorists simply because they’re conservatives? Or because they support Donald Trump? Or because they oppose the establishment’s favored policy and positions?
You can live in fear of the apocalypses they predict, or you can live in fear of being found out you don’t believe them.
The Marxist worldview relies on a condemnation of average people and their value to excuse the necessity of an all-powerful state. But you don’t need to be a Marxist to be willing to destroy people to appease the Gods of Money and Power. Just ask Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Clinton unlocked the door to characterizing average citizens as enemies of society with her insulting description of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Biden put those attacks on steroids when he lashed out at Trump supporters as “semi-fascist” and threats to democracy.
There’s a tradition in politics to go after your political opponent. We expect debates, insults, and accusations. It’s part and parcel of the political process as we get to know who and what the candidates are made of. We take much of it with a grain of salt. But today’s Democratic Party decided it was time to smear and condemn American voters who happen to disagree with them on policy or support their political opposition.
The strategy to attack and define American citizens as an internal enemy had begun in September 2016, just two months before the presidential election. Hillary Clinton started the ignominious decline when she attacked Donald Trump supporters during an event in New York City. Time magazine reported: “Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lashed out at many supporters of Donald Trump Friday. . . . ‘You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right,’ Clinton said, drawing laughter and applause as she addressed about 1,000 donors at an LGBT for Hillary fundraising gala in New York City. ‘The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.’ Adding that Trump had ‘given voice’ to many of those elements through his campaign rhetoric and retweets, she continued that, ‘some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.’”2
Here was an American presidential nominee, former senator, secretary of state, and first lady exhibiting contempt for and smearing tens of millions of Americans as irredeemable bigots. This was not an unscripted riff. It was a narrative Clinton repeated multiple times, including during in an interview with an Israeli television station.3
This was inevitable, because the core of the new Democrats is underlying contempt. It is what both Huxley and Orwell warn us about—the resentment, envy, and inhumanity that feed the political left. Pitting citizens against each other and creating suspicion, resentment, and paranoia about one’s neighbor foments fear and a sense of vulnerability. It sends a message that only a massive government can help you because your neighbors and communities are too far gone.
Two days after her hate speech, Clinton expressed “regret” for the remarks. Amazingly, her regret was not for attacking American citizens, but for using the word half. She noted in a statement: “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’—that was wrong.”4 She never clarified how much less than half of tens of millions of voters she assigns as “irredeemable.” But that was the point. The damage was done and the tone set.
There was no mistake made in Clinton’s 2016 rhetoric and no lesson to learn, because the left meant to begin characterizing citizens as an internal enemy. Fast-forward to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, which picked up that baton and kept swinging. In August 2022, just prior to the midterm elections, Biden made a clear comment to specifically malign Trump supporters, whom he called “MAGA Republicans.” Biden used the four-letter word as an insult, but the term comes from Trump himself. MAGA is short for the “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan from Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, a motto embraced by Trump supporters. Biden continued using the term in his attacks on Republicans in his 2024 reelection campaign.
Criminalizing the Opposition
Politico reported in 2022: “At a Democratic fundraising event in Maryland, the president denounced his predecessor and followers he labeled as ‘extreme’ Republicans. . . . ‘What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of extreme MAGA philosophy,’ Biden told Democratic donors in the Washington suburb of Rockville. Calling out those he labeled as ‘extreme’ Republicans, Biden said: ‘It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the—I’m going to say something . . . it’s like semi-fascism.’”5
Biden is famous for saying things off script. He mentions when “they” will be mad at him if he takes a question, or “they” have told him who to call on at one of his rare press conferences. Calling tens of millions of private American citizens “fascist” (half, whole, or venti) is not something one does casually. It’s discussed and decided upon. Biden was primed to make sure he said it and in a manner that would be heard and remembered. So he actually announced he was going to “say something.” That’s how invested leftists are in demonizing and isolating the American people. It’s an act of desperation and the place where the left has always gone in the countries it parasitically consumes.
Douglas Murray—an author, political critic, and journalist—noted this about Biden’s remark and the White House joining in on the well-worn leftist strategy of using the power of government to criminalize opposition:
When she was asked about the comments, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre went further. From the White House briefing podium she said that MAGA Republicans are an “extreme threat to democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.” It is “one of the most extreme agendas we have seen,” she declared. . . . Yet it is insulting their way out of an argument that Biden and his accomplices are doing. They are not trying to correct their opponents. They are trying to anathematize them. They are using the strongest words in the political dictionary to try to declare them non-persons. . . . It is the same with the way in which some people on the left have used the word “racist” in recent decades. They used it so much because they found it so useful. It covered people in a coat of slime which it was exceptionally hard to get off. For while calling someone a racist is easy, disproving it or getting a correction is very hard.6
None of this is a gaffe by thoughtless people; it’s an intentional strategy implemented by bullies to gain and maintain political power. When pressed about the divisive nature of Biden’s comments, Jean-Pierre went so far as to state directly that opinions not deemed “mainstream” are extremist. “And, again, we see a majority of Americans who disagree. And so when you are not with where the majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme. . . . That is an extreme way of thinking.”7 (For his entire presidency, a majority of Americans disapproved of Biden’s performance as president. Wouldn’t that make all the citizens who approve of him extremists?)
It’s incredible that Jean-Pierre says the federal government considers people who hold opinions that differ from the Democrats’ preferred narrative to be extremists—a word chosen for specific reasons. Extremists is the word the US and other national governments use to describe terrorists.
That very night, Biden delivered a live, prime-time address to the nation. The campaign-style rally was held at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where in 1787 the Constitution was debated and finalized before it was sent to the states for ratification. Directly behind Biden the building was awash in a bloodred light, with Biden framed by two marines in the background. He then drowned in irony, using classic fascist imagery to declare Trump supporters a danger to the country, with outrageous rhetoric that could easily be switched out in a speech about ISIS or al-Qaeda:
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said. “The Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.”8
The majority of Americans considered the speech divisive and “fearmongering.”9 The imagery was so startling, even liberals were critical.10 Biden ran as a “uniter” to get us back to “normal” after four years of Trump. The theme of his inaugural was “America United.” To highlight just how significantly Biden voters were misled, the key to his inaugural address was this statement: “We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.”11
What an astounding fraud. But if there was any doubt about what the establishment agenda really is, the Biden team wanted to make sure everyone knew the federal government was looking with a jaundiced eye at tens of millions of Americans who supported, or might be thinking about supporting, former president Trump.
Frightening Americans into silence and retreat remains the goal by signaling that the federal government—from the highest office in the land down the chain of command—will come after you in a way that will ruin your life if you support an opponent of the regime.
A Swamp of Corruption, Crisis, and Fear
Keeping Americans afraid to speak their minds, to participate in politics, and to criticize the establishment is at the core of progressive agenda. The left can win power based on lies, but it can never sustain support once the people realize the leftist utopia is really Dante’s Inferno.
We now have a history of victimized people and ruined nations as evidence of the left’s grift and malevolent intentions. The people of the collapsed Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, and many other nations finally understood—for many, too late—the fact that any iteration of Marxism and the left is not a salve, it’s a cancer.
It’s one thing to be dealing with a totalitarian dictatorship where there is no constitution or bill of rights that ostensibly protect you from government overreach, corruption, and crime. But the federal bureaucratic state has convinced itself it is the only thing that matters; that it is the living entity on which the country relies. It is now so big and administered by faceless bureaucrats (much like Biden’s executive office) that worry about accountability does not exist, emboldening the system even more.
To illustrate the swamp of corruption, crisis, and fear plaguing the US government, below are some examples that made headlines during the Trump presidency and afterward.
FBI Corruption
Durham Report/Framing of Trump
Most Americans were shocked to learn the extent to which the FBI actively worked to undermine Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy for president. The operation to frame him as a Russian spy (absurd on its face) continued after he became the president-elect, and proceeded even after he became president. It took years, but only after Special Counsel John Durham’s 306-page report was released in May 2023 was the extent of the scheme made clear.
The Washington Times reported: “Mr. Durham said FBI agents were so eager to pursue Donald Trump, both as a candidate and then as president, that they heralded ‘seriously flawed information’ and abandoned their ‘own principles regarding objectivity and integrity.’ Mr. Durham wrote that the FBI’s behavior was ‘seriously deficient’ and caused the agency ‘severe reputational harm.’ The report details how the Clinton campaign, through operatives paid to dig up dirt on her opponent, gave the FBI some of the flawed information, possibly as part of a plan to ‘vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”12
Also revealed by the Durham Report: “Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server,” the Washington Times reported.13
Moreover, then–CIA chief John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama and other top officials on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal . . . to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” according to reporting by the Post in 2020.14, 15
This vile effort to engage in what some have considered a coup against a president of the United States was successful in a significant way—half the nation was consumed by the fear that larger, darker forces were at work. That only the government could save them from this modern Manchurian candidate. As a deliberate misinformation campaign it was not only designed to personally smear Trump but to make everyone in his orbit, and American voters, afraid of him.
