Fr. Kevin Drew, Catholic Exchange - In 1949 the Englishman George Orwell wrote a book titled 1984. It was about life in a totalitarian state—one that held total control over peoples’ lives. Orwell invented terms used in the book that resonate today: Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak. Today the term Orwellian is used to describe official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past. One famous quote from 1984 is: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”... In 1968 students in the city of Krakow, Poland, organized an unofficial lecture titled “Orwell’s 1984 and Poland today.”