Also, that you have reduced 1984 to a neat metaphor is a failing on your part, not Orwell. The man wrote hundreds of pages on the effects of totalitarianism. As did hundreds of other writers.
What I meant was people use it as a neat metaphor, by likening anything that smells in anyway similar to 1984 with something bad, and unworthy of further consideration, thereby prematurely stunting critical debate.
Hilariously, such blinkered thinking, and confinement to a limited set of goodthink far afield from anything they could paint as similar to 1984, is the very rigidly-controlled result those people, who prematurely shutdown debate by invoking 1984, pretend to be against!
My only failing here is conveying this to you clearly. I'm sorry.