It’s a gloomy October night. Rain drips steadily onto the empty streets of Washington, D.C. A giant banner with the face of a leader hangs across a government building. The wind makes it sway in a strange, almost hypnotic rhythm. “American Workers First,” the banner declares. The face – Donald J. Trump. Only metres away from Capitol Hill, this was one of the first things I saw after arriving in the U.S. capital. I couldn’t help but feel that I had stepped straight into George Orwell’s 1984.
Orwell’s novel is a timeless warning – a cautionary tale about how easily freedom can erode when power becomes absolute. It shows how control over truth, language, and loyalty can turn citizens into tools of the state. As I settled into life in the United States, the parallels became increasingly difficult to ignore.
After eight weeks in the country, one thing is clear: the line between democracy and authoritarianism feels thinner than ever. What once seemed like distant literary warnings — surveillance, censorship, and loyalty over truth – now echo in real-life headlines.
Just last month, six foreign students and journalists had their U.S. visas revoked after they publicly criticized conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. Their alleged “security risk”? Expressing opinions on social media. The U.S. State Department later claimed it was an administrative matter, but the message was unmistakable: speech that offends the powerful can cost you your freedom.
Since returning to power, Trump has consolidated authority in ways that would alarm even his former allies. Within weeks of his inauguration, he dismissed dozens of inspectors general — the internal watchdogs responsible for investigating government misconduct. According to Politico and Reuters, several of those officials have since filed lawsuits, arguing that their removal violated federal law. Without these independent monitors, the government loses one of its last internal checks – a quiet but crucial safeguard against abuse.
Then came the sweeping executive order titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies”. On the surface, it sounds benign — who could oppose accountability? But as Axios and The Washington Post reported, the order effectively placed previously independent agencies like the SEC and FTC under direct White House supervision. Decisions that were once made by nonpartisan experts now require political approval. It’s a bureaucratic echo of Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth”: an illusion of neutrality tightly controlled from above.
The creation of the “Weaponization Working Group,” led by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, added another layer to this growing pattern. Tasked with reviewing “politicized prosecutions,” the group’s mandate appears to target those who investigated Trump or his allies. ABC News described it as “unprecedented,” and several legal scholars warned that it risks turning the Department of Justice into an instrument of political retribution.
Each of these actions – visa revocations, loyalty purges, centralized control may seem isolated. But in 1984, tyranny did not arrive all at once. It crept in through language and policy, normalizing fear until dissent itself became a crime. Orwell’s “Big Brother” didn’t need to watch every citizen – only enough of them to make everyone else afraid to speak.
Three conversations with Trump supporters I will remember: the first with a local businessman from Nogales, Arizona. “It’s just business.” he said on why he preferred to vote republican. “We are already following our agenda” representatives of the conservative Heritage Foundation told us while we spoke with them in Washington, D.C. “Tell them a cowboy from Kentucky told you why things here are the way they are” a Texas resident told me while explaining why he strongly believes Trump is the best thing to happen to the United States. People so different, yet one thing was true for all of them: they do see the injustice that happens at times, but chose to remain loyal to the current administration.
Standing in front of that banner in Washington, I realized Orwell’s world isn’t just fiction. It’s a mirror — reflecting what happens when power faces no resistance, when truth bends to loyalty, and when silence becomes the safest response. The question is no longer whether America could ever become like 1984. The question is whether anyone will notice if it already has.
But Orwell didn’t write to predict the future — he wrote to prevent it. The story isn’t over yet, and neither is America’s democracy. The ending depends on how awake its citizens choose to be.
