My hottest take: 1984 is a classic and a good book for teenagers but is also kind of elitist and gets totalitarian systems kind of backward, Big Brother doesn't exist it's the "Inner Party" that controls everything in 1984... https://twitter.com/morningmoneyben/status/1347699047470166017

BUT Hitler and Stalin did exist and in many ways controlled their own "inner parties" while also be influenced by them as well. Likewise these two men, as human beings, made choices that had big consequences in their own downfalls...

Stalin having all of his doctors shot made it that much harder for him to deal with his declining health, Hitler's drug abuse and terrible military decisions are also important in his story...

Likewise the "proles" in 1984 are shown as being childish, dumb, and blissfully happy. This makes sense for the narrative but is totally wrong, see the German tradition of the Flüsterwitzer (whisper joke) which carried on in Nazi Germany...

even though by the end of the war you could be shot for telling one. A classic from Wikipedia:

Hitler and Göring are standing on the Berlin Radio Tower. Hitler tells Göring he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. “Why don’t you just jump?” Göring suggests.

Like there's one scene in the novel where Smith here's some big cacophony of noise and thinks "Finally, the proles have started a revolution for freedom!" or something and then runs around the corner and see them charging towards a store that is selling new pots and pans...

and is totally let down it isn't The Revolution...but like of course the proles care about this, they have a chance to have a basic need in their lives, the ability to cook food, met. Of course, they care more about that than your abstract concepts of "freedom" Winston...

Anyway in conclusion 1984 is a great novel, but in some ways it's better thought of more as a book by a committed Marxist losing his faith in all he held dear than some sort of deep insight in The Future or profoundly evil totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century

Postscript: Blair's journalistic stuff, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Spike, Homage to Catalonia, etc is better than his fiction, while his fiction remains classic and good books for teens to check out.