‘Who controls the present controls the past’: What Orwell’s ‘1984’ explains about the twisting of history to control the public

When political power seeks to rewrite the past, George Orwell’s 1984 feels less like fiction and more like warning. In his second term, President Trump has sparked concern from historians and civil rights advocates alike for reshaping official narratives—scrubbing websites, altering curricula, and echoing the very tactics Orwell feared. This piece draws a direct line from memory holes and Newspeak to modern-day efforts to sanitize history, raising an urgent question: Who gets to define truth when power decides what stays on the record? Laura Beers with The Conversation has the full story.