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George Orwell wrote plenty of biting, memorable lines in his career as a novelist, journalist, and critic.
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent."
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."
But one phrase from an essay exploring why H.G. Wells—one of Orwell's boyhood heroes—could never adequately grapple with the true nature of totalitarianism remains among the most resonant and most chilling.
"Because [Wells] belonged to the 19th century," Orwell wrote in August 1941, "he was, and is still, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts, they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them."
Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present. Anyone aware of what was happening not only in England but across Europe, North Africa, and Asia in the summer of 1941—and indeed for years before that—knows exactly what Orwell was on about.
To make it plain, he follows up that "Dark Ages" line with another: "The people who have shown the best understanding of Fascism are either those who have suffered under it or those who have a Fascist streak in themselves."
Today, creatures from the Dark Ages have undeniably marched straight into the heart of the Republican Party, and if calling the GOP "fascist" might not be altogether accurate, with former President Donald Trump as its autocratic and undisputed leader the party of Lincoln has devolved with dizzying speed into a bleak cult of personality and never-ending grievance.
And how has Trump's GOP, and more specifically the bitter MAGA core of the party, embodied its own American version of the Dark Ages? Let us count the ways.
Today's Republican Party candidly proposes to control what women can and cannot do with their own bodies—even women (and children) who are victims of sexual violence and incest.
Today's Republican Party pledges fealty to an adjudicated rapist, a draft dodger, a lifelong grifter, and a convicted felon—a fine example of that "feudal loyalty" cited by Orwell. After all, serfs accepted that the Lord of the Manor was above the law, even as he openly fleeced them, brutalized them, and lived large off their labor. Sound familiar?
In governors' mansions and state houses across the country, today's Republican Party is tirelessly battling the scourge of free meals for hungry children—because if history has taught us anything, it's that well-nourished, well-educated kids often grow up to be reliable defenders of democracy and freedom, and what a blow that would be to these United States.
Today's Republican Party is making voting more and more difficult for pretty much everyone in America ... except white rural voters. Those voting rights are sacred, and always shall be.
Not content to see Biblical language, imagery, and messaging on our currency, in the courts, and in countless other aspects of our lives, today's Republican Party is determined to shove the foundational concepts of Jewish and Christian theology down the throat of every Protestant, Catholic, Presbyterian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Satanist, agnostic, and atheist in America.
In line with that patently unconstitutional scheme, today's GOP has vowed, in its 2024 party convention platform, to "use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America."
Whether Republicans plan to embrace Christian-loving Communists, Marxists, and Socialists—hello, Senator Sanders!—is unclear.
The list of ways in which today's GOP mirrors debased, crude, joy-destroying authoritarian regimes all over the world goes on and on. But to accurately gauge just how out of step with mainstream America the Republican Party really is, pay heed to what the former president and his allies plan to put in place if Trump regains the White House.
In a move right out of the authoritarian playbook, Trump has stated, more than once, that he "has every right" to use the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies.
Another anarchic MAGA man, Steve Bannon, has been even more specific. "Of course [Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg] should be—and will be—jailed," he told Axios.
Not to be outdone, the architects of the infamous Project 2025 "presidential transition" initiative promise to "take down the Deep State and return the government to the people" by remaking America's political and civic life along "conservative" (translation: extremist) lines.
What will that look like? How about abandoning the government's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Or eliminating the Department of Education. Or severely cutting Medicaid and Medicare. Or replacing President Joe Biden's Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force with a dedicated "pro-life" agency.
All of these plans are animated by a core ethos, Christian nationalism, which seeks to blunt, and perhaps do away with entirely, America's most striking and dynamic characteristic: its ever-evolving pluralism.
If, at this point, you don't feel the hot breath of creatures out of the Dark Ages at your back—well, at the risk of sounding preachy, you're just not paying attention.
Benedict Cosgrove is a librarian, former editor at LIFE.com, and freelance writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian, and other outlets. He lives in New York City.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
