1984 hits best-seller list after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts' comment

Kellyanne Conway's language is the latest in a string of behaviour from the Trump led Republicans to set off Orwellian alarm bells. Photo / Getty Images

It may not come as a surprise to those who have read the novel before, but George Orwell's 1984 have soared since Donald Trump became president of the United States last week.

The famed dystopian novel of life in a totalitarian state has shot to number 6 on Amazon's best-seller list, the Guardian reports.

The results came in hot on the heels of an interview with Kellyanne Conway, adviser to the reality-TV-star-turned-president, in which Conway used the much-debated (and mocked) phrase "alternative facts."

Conway was defending White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who had argued with media over attendance numbers at Trump's swearing-in. Spicer and Trump have said the event drew the largest-ever audience for an inauguration "period," despite obvious photo and statistical evidence to the contrary.

Conway called the false claims "alternative facts," a phrasing reminiscent of Orwell's "Ministry of Truth," which, he wrote, concerns itself with "lies."

"Alternative facts is a George Orwell phrase," Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty said on CNN's Reliable Sources.

Comparisons were made with the term "newspeak", a fictional language in 1984 that aims to eliminate personal thought.

Another term, "doublethink," is described in the book as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them".

In 1984, an omnipresent leader called "Big Brother" uses propaganda to enforce orthodoxy to the state which weilds extreme control over the people and persecutes independent thought.