How George Orwell would despair at today’s political discourse. His power-grabbing pigs in Animal Farm were an allegorical warning against Soviet-style dictatorship and propaganda. The more unequal the once egalitarian animal collective becomes, the more the ruling pig class rewrite their story.
Today, you do not need to look to totalitarian states to see politicians manipulate the narrative. Consider Donald Trump accusing his enemies of the flaws he himself is guilty of or, to pluck an example out of the air, our own prime minister claiming not to have made a bet we saw him shake hands on. For a generation of post-Johnson politicians, hoodwinking the public has become a reflex reaction.
