George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning. Donald Trump views is as a 'how-to' guide

In the hallowed grounds of All Saints' church in Sutton Courtenay, Oxon, George Orwell must be spinning in his grave. His classic novel 1984 laid out the framework for an authoritarian dystopian future he hoped never to witness. Yet Donald Trump appears to view 1984 as a how-to handbook for governance.

Positioning himself as the omnipotent Big Brother, he is arresting people for "thoughtcrime", rewriting history like Orwell's Ministry of Truth, and barring terms like "equality" and "inclusion" with the unashamed brazenness of Orwell's "Newspeak". Millions of Americans who voted for Trump believed he was the voice of sanity and common sense, vowing to undo the excesses of extreme liberal "woke" policies, eradicate diversity programmes that seemed prejudiced against white males, keep trans athletes out of women's sports, and halt the flood of illegal immigration.

True to his word he has done so, but Trump's brutish grasp of politics has taken Orwellian totalitarianism and tipped it into the realm of lunacy, chaos and confusion. Big Brother would be mortified. The global economy is in disarray in the aftermath of his onagain, off-again tariffs. At home, Americans who saw Trump as their hope for law and order are bewildered to see him flout both, threatening to defy the constitution by running for a third term in office in 2028.

Thoughtcrime - the Orwellian offence of merely thinking of wrongdoing - became a chilling reality when Trump condoned the arrest of pro-Palestinian university student Mahmoud Khalil in New York last month, targeted for deportation simply for expressing sympathy for Hamas, despite committing no actual crime.

Orwell's "doublethink" - accepting two conflicting beliefs as both true - has become Trump dogma. He has repeatedly portrayed truth as lies. Indeed, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro called the tariffs a $600billion tax cut - even though it is Americans who must pay the tariffs on imports. Like Big Brother, Trump is rewriting history, with his executive order demanding that "improper ideology" be removed from America's museums and national monuments.

Without a trace of irony, Trump claims there has been a "widespread effort to rewrite our nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology" By that, he means any narrative that doesn't fit his view of the US as a land unsullied by racism, slavery, and economic and judicial inequality. Trump does not want Americans thinking of Christopher Columbus as a colonial land-grabber, of pioneering colonists stealing native lands and breaking treaties, or being reminded that the KKK burned crosses outside the homes of black Americans.

The President blames "woke" historians for rewriting history to include empathy for America's oppressed minorities, rather than focusing on the steel and railway magnates who Made America Great the first time around. In a line that could have been penned by Orwell, Trump states that "rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens social divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe".

To that end, he is bringing out of storage hundreds of statues of American Civil War "heroes" of the losing pro-slavery Confederacy mothballed by the Biden administration. Orwellian "doublethink" is also evident in his confused trade policy. Tariffs are designed to encourage companies to make more of their products in the US, and generate billions of dollars to offset tax cuts, Trump declared.

But US-based manufacturing would see American consumers buy fewer imported goods, generating less tariff revenue for the government. Trump has offered to drop tariffs if countries meet his demand to crack down on illegal immigration and the drug trade across US borders, yet if he does so there will be no additional revenue and companies will have no incentive to move production to America. "All of these tariffs are internally inconsistent with each other," said Chad Bown, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington DC. What might future historians say of Trump's disturbing dive into an Orwellian dystopia?

More importantly, will they be allowed to say anything at all?