we have always been at war with Eastasia

English

Alternative forms

• we have always been at war with East Asia
• we have always been at war with Eurasia
• we've always been at war with Eastasia
• we've always been at war with East Asia
• we've always been at war with Eurasia

Etymology

From the 1949 George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the world is divided into the superpowers of Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania. Oceania is in a state of perpetual war with one of the other powers but its alliance keeps shifting, and the government never acknowledges that its current adversary is its former ally and vice versa.

Phrase

we have always been at war with Eastasia

1. (humorous) Used to highlight a situation in which circumstances have changed, yet this change has gone unacknowledged or is being denied.
   • 2012, Jon Loeliger, Matthew McCullough, Version Control with Git: Powerful Tools and Techniques for Collaborative Software Development, page 344:

     Now it truly is as if it never existed in this repository! And we've always been at war with Eastasia.

   • 2016, George Megalogenis, Balancing Act: Australia Between Recession and Renewal:

     The more conversational, many-to-many nature of the medium also acts as a counterweight to older-style broadcast politics, where rulers could more easily get away with assurances that, "We've always been at war with Eastasia".

   • 2021, Charles Finch, What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year, page 184:

     "The President never downplayed the virus," according to press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. We have always been at war with Eastasia.