1984
..is a dystopian novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. 1984 centers on the consequences of government over-reach, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and....

1) ....repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviors within society. More broadly, it examines the role of truth and facts within politics and their manipulation. (Quite similar to what we are witnessing currently)

2) The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian...

3) ..superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not exist.

4) The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. Winston enters a forbidden relationship with a co-worker, Julia.

5) 1984 has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. Many terms used in the novel have entered common usage, including Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, prole, and memory hole....

6) 1984 also popularised the adjective "Orwellian", which carries a connotation to things such as official deception, secret surveillance, brazenly misleading terminology, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.

7) Orwell wrote a thesis in 1944, on implications of dividing the world up into "zones of influence", which had been focused in the Tehran Conference. Three years later, he wrote most of the book from 1947 to 1948 despite being seriously ill with tuberculosis.

8) In the book several themes are expanded upon from earlier essays from Orwell. These include Nationalism, Futurology, Censorship, Surveillance, and Perpetual Wars. All fears Orwell had and wrote about to somehow influence or warn future generations of the "slippery slope"...

9) Regarding Nationalism Owell writes that Positive nationalism is Oceanians' perpetual love for Big Brother, defined by love.

Negative nationalism is Oceanians' perpetual hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein; Stalinism and Anglophobia are defined by hatred.

10) The Party's vision of the future is "there will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always...—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler."

11) A major theme of 1984 is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs are modified and public archives rewritten to rid them of "unpersons" (persons who are erased from history by the Party).

12) The inhabitants of Oceania have no real privacy. They live in apartments equipped with two-way telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones...

13) Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some denounce their parents.

Can you say "Contact Reporting"?

14) Eric Arthur Blair, known by his pen name "George Orwell", was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism...

15) His great-grandfather, Charles Blair, was a wealthy country gentleman in Dorset who married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the Earl of Westmorland, and had income as an absentee landlord of plantations in Jamaica. Eric Blair described his family as "lower-upper-middle class"

16) At the outbreak of WWII, Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in central London, staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. He submitted his name to the Central Register for work, but nothing transpired.

17) Orwell was declared "unfit for any kind of military service" by the Medical Board, but soon afterwards found an opportunity to become involved by joining the Home Guard. He shared Tom Wintringham's socialist vision for the Home Guard as a revolutionary People's Militia...

18) August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" by the BBC's Eastern Service. When interviewed for the job he indicated that he "accept[ed] absolutely the need for propaganda to be directed by the government" stressed in wartime, the execution of govt policy was essential.

19) In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC post that he had occupied for two years. His resignation followed a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts. He returned finally to London to cover the July 1945 general election.

20) Orwells first success came when "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" was published in Britain on 17 August 1945, and a year later in the US, on 26 August 1946. Unfortunately, his wife would go for a hysterectomy in March 1945 and die on the operating table.

21) May 1946, Susan Watson's (Orwell's adopted son's nanny) boyfriend David Holbrook visited him. A fan of Orwell since school days, he found the reality very different, with Orwell hostile and disagreeable because of Holbrook's membership of the Communist Party.
(Spoiler Alert)

22) You see, having the experiences Orwell faced throughout his life, they manifested themselves into a distrust of government at first, then with the loss of his wife, became hateful and bitter. His fear was a totalitarian regime in western nations. I'll let him tell you:

23) "1984 was based on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office."

24) 1984 is a warning about allowing communism/socialism into western society because of the extent of the oppression, surveillance, and propaganda and the sheer futility of resistance, ultimate subjugation and broken ACCEPTANCE of the people.

25) This final warning...his last book, has to be viewed in all its magnitude. Using his waning health, he allows a glimpse of the bleak future that a Communist/Socialist regime would be in America or the UK should it take root.

And this coming from a self professed Socialist..