I think, George Orwell’s 1984 should be considered to be #1 currently. Mainly based on the idea of “The Thought Police”.
There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin and Victory Coffee always
intellectualtakeout.org
1st snippet…
“There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell’s dystopian novel
1984. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith’s varicose ulcer,
apparently a symbol of his humanity (or something), which always seems to be “throbbing.” Gross.”
“None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it’s not the worst thing in
1984. To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn’t keep Big Brother out of your head.”
“Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in
1984 aren’t that interested in controlling behavior or speech. They do, of course, but it’s only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.”
““When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will,” O’Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith near the end of the book.”
“Big Brother’s tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved thoughts. We see how this works when Winston’s neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.”
2nd snippet…
“The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, fortunately, largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found in
1984, East Germany, and China; but the rise of “cancel culture” shows the pressure to conform to all sorts of orthodoxies (smelly or not) remains strong.”
“The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in
1984, but the next generation will have to decide if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE’s Dan Sanchez
recently observed that many people today feel like they’re “walking on eggshells” and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation.”
“That’s a lot of pressure, especially for people still learning the acceptable boundaries of a new moral code that is constantly evolving. Most people, if the pressure is sufficient, will eventually say “2+2=5” just to escape punishment. That’s exactly what Winston Smith does at the end of
1984, after all.”