1984 is not in the future. there were actual governments like the kind depicted in the novel when the novel was written. and the descriptions of politically manipulated language and history are also not contingent on any particular kind of technological apparatus

the first part especially bugs me whenever i see a news or opinion piece warning that some new trend will "make 1984 a reality." there was a place Orwell implicitly based much of the novel off of that already existed! and another government like it that had just been defeated

part of this is Orwell's fault (I am much more of a fan of Darkness at Noon) but you also can't hold him fully responsible for people's unwillingness to read

consequentially people perpetually project the novel out as a warning of something bad that *could happen* rather than something that was *actually happening* when the novel was written

and when they think of how it *could happen* they ignore that the most important parts of the totalitarian system in the novel almost entirely had to do with management of language and history rather than technological control

at the end O'Brien's triumphant speech to Winston Smith is Orwell's way of showing that *nothing* exists independently of the Party. not just in a normative sense, but a descriptive one. because it controls memory and language, it effectively makes reality

perhaps the most pernicious part of this is that it turns 1984 into a kind of science fiction genre threat that is always perpetually over the horizon but never quite arrives

rather than something that was real, actually happened, and never went away either