One thing that really irks me is when the socialist left pretends that George Orwell’s novel 1984 isn’t a story about their own political philosophy. Not long ago there reportedly was a surge in sales of 1984 which allegedly occurred in response to the election of Donald Trump. Now left wingers around the world are planning a massive simultaneous screening of the film adaptation of the novel starring John Hurt.

The demonstration, called “National Screening Day,” primarily involves cinemas in the U.S. but also includes venues in Canada, Croatia, Sweden and the United Kingdom, according to Monday reports. Al Jazeera said the event was created by Dylan Skolnick, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre on Long Island in New York, and Adam Birnbaum, director of film programing at Connecticut’s Avon Theatre Film Centre. “In particular, this undermining of the concept of facts and the demonization of foreign enemies [by the Trump administration] really resonate in ‘1984,’” Skolnick said.

The undermining of the concept of facts? What do they think was going on while Obama’s henchmen were exploiting the stupidity of the American voter in order to advance their political agenda? How about the notion that the terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction to a video on YouTube?

In 1984, the enemies most demonized were the domestic ones, the thought criminals who went against the party. In the real world, everywhere the totalitarian left has been in charge, some version of these human rights abuses have occurred in large numbers. Nothing remotely similar happens in America. The closest we usually get is when some public figure is publicly demonized and driven out of his job for saying something that breaks from the left’s politically correct orthodoxy. Dissent is not to be tolerated on the left. People on the right fight amongst themselves—primarily because it’s allowed.

“No one is suggesting that we’re living in Orwell’s world. But the road to that world is people just becoming disengaged and allowing their government to do whatever it wants,” Skolnick said.

I’ll go out on a limb and say Skolnick and Birnbaum are among the horde of doofuses who suddenly became concerned about what the government was doing only when a (nominal) Republican got elected. They almost certainly applauded every anti-freedom policy handed down during the Obama administration. They also swallowed everything the Democrat ministry of truth (aka the old legacy media) spoon fed to them.

1984 portrays a a totalitarian socialist society where it is unlawful to think independently. If anything it more resembles the mindset overtaking college campuses where a speaker saying something with which people disagree provokes violence and hatred eerily similar to the “Two Minutes Hate.” One might argue that a Trump rally bears some superficial resemblance to that as well, but ask yourself when was the last time a leftist guest speaker sparked a riot on the right. It doesn’t happen.

I suspect that 1984′s surge in sales happened because a bunch of lefties who never understood the book recommended it to their friends who never read it (and probably still haven’t). Only in the shallowest of readings can 1984 be viewed as applying uniquely to the Trump administration and not to his predecessor(s).

I’ve been a Trump skeptic and critic from the beginning. My bona fides in that area are well established. I’m not an apologist for the administration in any sense. Trump has a lot of difficulty with telling the truth, but the primary difference between Trump and Obama in that regard is that Trump is far less skilled at lying and everything he says is put under a microscope by left leaning media.

The current 1984 fad among the anti-Trump left is completely devoid of substance because they have no real concern about a large powerful government controlling people’s lives. They are perfectly fine with that arrangement as long as their party is in charge. When the President is a progressive Democrat, all of these cut rate Orwell buffs unconditionally love Big Brother.