Is the US heading toward Big Brother-style oppression?

Americans love to criticize foreign countries for being run by dictatorial, tyrannical or oppressive regimes. But in today’s America, there is a growing trend of oppression, mostly based on racist discrimination against Arabs and religious bias against Muslims in the targeting of individuals who speak out in defense of Palestine.

Is the US transforming from a democracy based on freedom and individual rights into a totalitarian superstate like the one portrayed in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984?”

More and more, Americans are seeing the rise of policies that strip away the fundamental rights and freedoms that are allegedly guaranteed by the US Constitution. These policies bypass the fundamental legal foundations that protect citizens, such as habeas corpus, which protects individual liberties based on two fundamental rights: one that challenges the legality of someone’s detention to ensure individuals are not imprisoned unlawfully and the other that requires accused individuals to be brought before a court to determine the justification for custody.

Today, people in America are simply being arrested, incarcerated and deported, not because they have committed crimes but because of what Orwell called “Newspeak,” a new language engineered by the rulers of the fictional land of Oceania to eliminate dissenting ideas by reducing the range of thought.

People are literally being grabbed off American streets by masked government agents, just like the secret police in “1984.” In the US, grabbing people off the street helps avoid the necessity of taking those who have been apprehended through the constitutional legal process.

Last week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at the prestigious Tufts University, was grabbed from her campus by masked police in broad daylight. The reason? Ozturk co-authored an op-ed that was published in the university newspaper defending the rights of Palestinians targeted by Israel in a war funded by American tax dollars.

Weeks before, police grabbed graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from the Columbia University campus because of his pro-Palestine activism.

No charges have been filed in either case. Neither Ozturk nor Khalil have been brought before a court. The “suspects” were taken into custody, vilified in the media and threatened with deportation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described Ozturk, Khalil and 300 others who support Palestinian rights as “lunatics” — a word taken right out of the “1984” lexicon. This new definition of what is legal and what is not, as defined by the word “lunatic,” means that expressing unpopular views can be described as a crime.

Many recent US government actions embrace the codices of the dystopian state of Oceania, which is led by Big Brother.

The slogan “Big Brother is watching you” — a reminder of Oceania’s constant surveillance of its people — was used as the basis for a $200 million advertising campaign led by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. In the ads, which run daily on American TV, Noem warns anyone who is in the country illegally to leave now or be detained and expelled forever. “Follow the law, and you’ll find opportunity. Break it, and you’ll find consequences,” Noem warns.

To understand what is happening in America today, one needs to understand some other tenets of “1984.”

There is “who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” This is used as justification for the regime’s historical revisionism.

“Doublethink” allows the government to assert a false reality. It is based on the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true, a key tool of the ruling party’s control and manipulation of reality in “1984.”

In Orwell’s book, Room 101 is the most feared place in the Ministry of Love. It is where prisoners face their worst nightmares. Today, one might refer to it as Guantanamo Bay.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake” is the core of the regime’s ideology. It prioritizes power over truth or well-being, which is the process of circumventing the judicial system.

The idea that “two and two make five” is a symbol of The Party’s ability to dictate what is and is not reality.

The Thought Police are the enforcers of orthodoxy, monitoring even private thoughts, meaning that what they think you believe becomes a crime. This is founded on the principle: “Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime is death,” which emphasizes that rebellious thoughts are punishable, even without a judicial process.

Finally, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” These paradoxical slogans bludgeon the public into blind obedience.

Many recent US government actions embrace the codices of the dystopian state of Oceania, which is led by Big Brother.

Ray Hanania

Fortunately, unlike in “1984,” America has a judicial system that has not been usurped by a leader like Big Brother. So, judges have been standing in the way of the intended transition from democracy to tyranny. For example, a federal judge this month ordered a temporary halt to the expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a rarely invoked wartime law. A federal appeals court last week refused to lift that ban. The White House has described those migrants as “criminals,” even though they have never been proven in a court of law to be guilty of a crime.

There is no doubt that most Americans want individuals who have actually committed crimes to be jailed or expelled. The key point is whether the government bases its decisions on the rule of law, which states that a person is innocent until proven guilty, or on the Orwellian commandments that judge people based on their political views or their race or religion.

If the authorities can arrest and expel someone who is lawfully in the country for defending Palestine, the next pillar to be toppled will be the arrest of American citizens who share the exact same views. If this apparent crime of supporting Palestine can be used to expel legal residents, it thus becomes a legal precedent to apply to citizens.

The actualization of “1984” in the US is not that far in the future, as an American with so-called unpopular views might think.

• Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at www.Hanania.com. X: @RayHanania