One point in favor of 1984 and Animal Farm is that Orwell was intimitely familiar with real-life totalitarian regimes, having fought for the communists in Spain etc. His writing is more credible IMO because he’s criticizing the side he fought for rather than the side he fought against. (I mean, he’s criticizing both, for sure—his critiques apply equally to fascism—but most authors who warn us of dystopian futures are warning us against their outgroup, so to speak, whereas Orwell is warning us against what used to be his ingroup.)
One point in favor of 1984 and Animal Farm is that Orwell was intimitely familiar with real-life totalitarian regimes, having fought for the communists in Spain etc. His writing is more credible IMO because he’s criticizing the side he fought for rather than the side he fought against. (I mean, he’s criticizing both, for sure—his critiques apply equally to fascism—but most authors who warn us of dystopian futures are warning us against their outgroup, so to speak, whereas Orwell is warning us against what used to be his ingroup.)