Charlie English has published an essay in The New York Times on the role that George Orwell’s 1984 played in the Cold War, drawing comparisons to the book being banned in the United States in the twenty-first century.

English is a former journalist for The Guardian and author of The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature (2025).

Charlie English introduces George Orwell’s 1984 and its central premise: “First published in English in 1949, Orwell’s novel describes the dystopian world of Oceania, a totalitarian state where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works in a huge government department called the Ministry of Truth. The ministry is ironically named: Its role is not to safeguard the truth but to destroy it, to edit history to fit the present needs of the party and its leader, Big Brother, since, as the slogan runs, ‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'”

Orwell’s 1984 was an extended commentary on the censorship policies in Eastern European societies during the Cold War. “In the real Soviet system, every country had its equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, modeled on the Moscow template. In Poland, the largest Eastern European nation outside the Soviet Union, this censorship and propaganda apparatus was called the Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performances, and its headquarters occupied most of a city block in downtown Warsaw,” English emphasizes.

“From art to advertising, television to theater, the Main Office reached into all aspects of Polish life. It had employees in every TV and radio station, every film studio and every publishing house. Every typewriter in Poland had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed even to buy a ream of paper. Books that did not conform to the censor’s rules were pulped. …”

Charlie English’s essay makes direct comparisons between censorship by the Polish state during the Cold War and the censorship being carried out today by the Trump administration and by Republican representatives and governors in many states of the United States.

“In the mid-2020s, 1984 is again being restricted, this time by conservative, Trump-aligned politicians in the United States. In May 2023, the Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, signed into law Senate File 496, which according to the governor “puts parents in the driver’s seat” when it comes to their children’s education. In fact SF 496 forces Iowa schools to remove from their libraries thousands of books of which cultural conservatives disapprove.

“Mostly, SF 496, which is the subject of an ongoing legal battle, bans books that feature L.G.B.T.Q.+ characters or progressive themes such as feminism or are written by people of color. But the legislation also sweeps up several authors whose works lampoon totalitarianism and that were sent east by the C.I.A. book program, including Aldous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut and Orwell, whose 1984 and Animal Farm are both on banned lists,” according to English.

“SF 496 is but one cog in the growing apparatus of American censorship, as conservative action groups seek to ban books around the country. PEN America has documented close to 16,000 bans (instances in which a book has been withdrawn or access to it has been restricted because of its content) in schools since 2021, with 10,046 in the 2023-24 school year alone. The censorship efforts are mostly driven by Republican state legislators and parental-rights groups. Florida takes the lead, with more than 4,561 book bans recorded in that school year — including in one case a graphic novel adaptation of 1984 — via a combination of new state laws and parental pressure. Next come Iowa (with 3,671 book bans that year), Texas (538), Wisconsin (408), Virginia (121) and Kentucky (100).”

English, Charlie. “‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has.” The New York Times (27 July 2025).

English, Charlie. The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature. (Penguin, 2025).

Simpson, John. “Review of The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature.” The Guardian (14 March 2025).