In 1984 by George Orwell, Room 101 of the Ministry of Love is where evil itself resides. Big Brother monitors every citizen, so The Party knows every single person's greatest fears. Room 101 is the last resort for torture. The final phase of re-education. Nobody emerges from Room 101 without submitting to Big Brother, without betraying everyone they know in service of Big Brother.

Winston, the main character, undergoes every type of torture imaginable. Through beatings, sensory deprivation, forced starvation, and all kinds of psychological torture. And, still, he refused to talk. He'd remained unshakable for so long.

The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

Winston is forced to watch other prisoners go into Room 101. Eventually, it's his turn. A member of The Party named O'Brien straps him to a chair.

“You asked me once," says O'Brien, “what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. It varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal."

The door opens again. A guard comes in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He sets it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien is standing. Winston cannot not see what the thing is.

“In your case," says O'Brien, "the worst thing in the world happens to be rats."

One of the other methods of torture involves negative feedback—what Leftists would call “gaslighting." It means convincing someone that they're absolutely insane—that they no longer have a grasp on reality.

Life has become so much like 1984 that we can look at the torture scenes and actually somewhat relate.

At one point, O'Brien tells Winson, “We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them." Compare that to this quote: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." That's Karl Marx, describing the Marxist mission. And this requires every aspect of life to be determined by political activism.

This idea has not gone away. I'm sure you've noticed. It's practically the mission statement of the Left today.

A few years before his death, Orwell said, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism."

The entire dystopia of 1984 is based on The Soviet Union. Let's just say it's no coincidence that Big Brother has a mustache.

China has a rich legacy of torture. During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party used a variety of torture techniques. These became more and more advanced over time. This included public humiliation and public executions.

One specific kind of public humiliation is what's called "The Struggle Session." It was a punishment reserved for people who committed wrong-think. The point was to publicly degrade the person until they swore allegiance to the Communist Party. Their focus is on the elimination of the power base and/or class position of enemy classes or groups. It was also a warning to everyone watching: If you don't bend your knee to communism, you will be destroyed.

If you don't bend your knee to communism, you will be destroyed.

It was a way to punish anyone who so much as disagreed with Communist Party dogma.

These struggle sessions often took place in busy areas.

They also took place at universities, like the struggle session for the professor You Xiaoli, as recounted by Anne Thurston, in Enemies of the People:

You Xiaoli was standing, precariously balanced, on a stool. Her body was bent over from the waist into a right angle, and her arms, elbows stiff and straight, were behind her back, one hand grasping the other at the wrist. It was the position known as "doing the airplane." Around her neck was a heavy chain, and attached to the chain was a blackboard, a real blackboard, one that had been removed from a classroom at the university where You Xiaoli, for more than ten years, had served as a full professor. On both sides of the blackboard were chalked her name and the myriad crimes she was alleged to have committed...

The scene was taking place at the university, too, in a sports field at one of China's most prestigious institutions of higher learning. In the audience were You Xiaoli's students and colleagues and former friends. Workers from local factories and peasants from nearby communes had been bussed in for the spectacle. From the audience came repeated, rhythmic chants ... "down with You Xiaoli! Down with You Xiaoli!"

"I had many feelings at that struggle session," recalls You Xiaoli. "I thought there were some bad people in the audience. But I also thought there were many ignorant people, people who did not understand what was happening, so I pitied that kind of person. They brought workers and peasants into the meetings, and they could not understand what was happening. But I was also angry."

Struggle sessions have been revived, and exported to America. They come in many forms.

Forced apologies.

Beatings in public—like the mob attack on Rand Paul.

Or the 12-year-old boy who was sucker-punched.

Or the 12-year-old boy who was stabbed for being white.

Anti-racism seminars, like the one in Seattle.

Or the one involving Sandia Labs executives seminar.