America's Two Minutes Hate

If you went online yesterday to announce you were splitting from the President over an AI image generated three months ago, you got played by the authoritarian progressive movement.

You know what the Two Minutes Hate is, right?

For those who have never read George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the “Two Minutes Hate” is a daily, compulsory ritual in which citizens of the totalitarian state are gathered to watch propaganda films depicting the regime’s enemies, most notably Emmanuel Goldstein. As the images play, the crowd is whipped into a frenzy, shouting, cursing, and venting raw anger on cue. By the end of the spectacle, that hatred is seamlessly redirected into fervent loyalty and gratitude toward Big Brother, reinforcing the emotional bond between the public and the state.

Orwell uses the Two Minutes Hate to show how authoritarian systems control people not just through force, but through emotion. It channels public frustration toward a manufactured enemy, enforces conformity by making participation unavoidable, and prevents independent thought by keeping citizens in a constant cycle of outrage and release. It is less about persuasion than conditioning, training people to feel what the regime wants, when it wants it.

The image of President Trump as Emmanuel Goldstein rings true.

In 1984, Goldstein is presented as the chief enemy of the state, a former Party insider who turned traitor and now leads a shadowy resistance known as the Brotherhood. He is depicted in propaganda as the ideological opposite of Big Brother, a subversive figure spreading dissent, encouraging free thought, and undermining the Party’s absolute authority. During the Two Minutes Hate, his image is broadcast to the public as a focal point for their anger, complete with exaggerated features and a bleating, irritating voice designed to provoke instinctive contempt.

The Party claims to hate Goldstein because he represents rebellion, intellectual independence, and the possibility of organized opposition. In a system built on total control of truth and thought, even the idea of an alternative is dangerous. By portraying him as a constant, ever-present threat, the state justifies its surveillance, repression, and perpetual state of emergency. Whether Goldstein actually exists as described, or is largely a fabrication of the Party, is left deliberately ambiguous, which reinforces Orwell’s point, the enemy’s reality matters less than his usefulness.

I think it is a bit ironic that Orwell created an antagonist to the state with a surname that evokes Jewish identity, especially given the current wave of antisemitism on the political left.

Orwell never commented on his selection of the name “Goldstein,” but many think since he was consistently critical of antisemitism and totalitarianism alike, it likely echoes how regimes, particularly the Nazis, used Jewish figures as symbolic enemies, exaggerating traits and turning them into objects of public hatred. In 1984, Goldstein is portrayed in a deliberately caricatured way, with physical and vocal features designed to provoke contempt, much like how propaganda posters and films depicted enemies in real-world authoritarian systems. In that sense, the name may be part of Orwell’s broader effort to show how regimes construct a recognizable “other” to unify people through shared hostility.

Ultimately, Goldstein functions as a political tool. He absorbs public frustration that might otherwise be directed at the regime, unifies citizens through shared hatred, and gives the Party a convenient explanation for any failure or hardship. The state does not merely oppose him; it needs him because a large part of its identity is simply opposition to Goldstein and The Brotherhood.

The same is true for the contemporary Democrat Party that defines itself only in terms of opposition to President Trump.

Now that our Two Minutes Hate is subsiding in the third minute, we can take a sobering look at how the meeting between the Pope and David Axelrod, the Pope’s indictment of the action in Iran, CBS’s platforming of progressive Catholic authorities, the ginned up outrage over a stupid AI image and the convenient timing of it all just before the mid-terms, turned into a flurry of propaganda and agitprop that many bought hook, line and sinker.

I’ve always found it remarkable that Democrats somehow have the energy to keep Orwell’s “Two minutes Hate“ going for 24 hours of every day, week, month and year. As noted, the purpose of the “Two Minutes Hate” is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatreds towards politically expedient enemies and to re-direct the members’ subconscious feelings away from the Party’s government of Oceania and onto the “enemies of the state”.

No difference here except, of course, for the grating, grinding, debilitating fatigue of listening to the constant white noise of their complaints. Jean Kirkpatrick prophetically (she said it in the real1984) got it right when she called them the “blame America first crowd”.

No difference here except, of course, for the grating, grinding, debilitating fatigue of listening to the constant white noise of their complaints. Jean Kirkpatrick prophetically (she said it in the real1984) got it right when she called them the “blame America first crowd”.

But given the reaction yesterday to an AI generated image of Trump in robes laying hands on a bedridden man, generated back in February that he stupidly shared online, it’s hard not to notice there is a segment of “Republicans” who know how to do the Two Minutes Hate, too.

I stand by my comment yesterday that if you are ready to split with Trump and the MAGA effort, you probably were just looking for an excuse—and this gave it to you.

You got played.