Orwell has to do with both an overreaching left (thought crime) and right (surveillance state).
No, the surveillance state is certainly not a right-wing-specific thing, and in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi and other Soviet secret police agencies. Just to give you an idea:
By 1995, some 174,000 inoffizielle Mitarbeiter
(IMs) Stasi informants had been identified,
almost 2.5% of East Germany's population between
the ages of 18 and 60. 10,000 IMs were under 18
years of age.
The last line is significant, since the book talks on children denouncing their own parents, who live afraid of them.
Yes; a couple of years after the Stasi was created, though it was called Kommissariat 5 back then, before the GDR was officially established and could have official agencies.
So, you are claiming that he looked into the future to see what happens with the Stasi?
But even if you want to get technical: He started writing in 1946 and the final manuscript was presented in 1948. The "Volkskommissariat" may have been around, but you really can not compare their activity to the Stasi. If you were talking about them, then your quote makes no sense at all.
> So, you are claiming that he looked into the future to see what happens with the Stasi?
No, I'm claiming that from his position (particularly after his involvement in the Spanish Civil War), he was informed of the founding and early activities of the Stasi, and wrote the book based on the thought-experiment "what if a whole country was dominated by these principles?"
> The "Volkskommissariat" may have been around, but you really can not compare their activity to the Stasi.
That's not surprising, considering how "[i]n reality, K-5 was only nominally housed in the People's Police" (Dennis and Laporte, 2003).
For more about his experience in the Spanish Civil War and its influence on his writing, I suggest the In Our Time episode on Animal Farm: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wgkz4
No, the surveillance state is certainly not a right-wing-specific thing, and in fact Orwell was probably inspired by the Stasi and other Soviet secret police agencies. Just to give you an idea:
The last line is significant, since the book talks on children denouncing their own parents, who live afraid of them.