It seems evident, to me at least, that Asimov views "arms-length extremism" as a core part of the identity of upper case Leftism, at least in the West (and predominantly America). The way Asimov approaches 1984 appears to be the bog-standard "Well, if you're not a Nazi then you can't possibly be as evil as the Nazis". It betrays a view of looking at politics from a standpoint of a slope, rather than a hill that descends into immorality on both sides, and I'm sure Asimov derives that view (as does much of the modern world) from the reasons behind and outcomes of WWII. IMO, we still haven't gotten past this - even entertaining such a discussion can't be had without acknowledging the 'progressive Sword of Damocles' hanging overhead, and almost always descends into whatabout-whataboutism.

I really do hope that we eventually grow out of this phase and acknowledge that even the 'good guys' can be evil, we shouldn't need to wait and see a Communist Reich to know that the Leftist version of brownshirts are a bad thing, or wait until actual genocide is happening (or accept/ignore it as a possibility, even) or wait until it has a 1-to-1 mapping with Nazi atrocity to hold those kinds of behavior accountable just because they're not Nazis and they're not actually killing people.