Big Brother is making you watch him

A poster depicting an enormous face gazed from the wall. The caption ran, "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." So wrote George Orwell at the open of his dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Big Brother's image was everywhere, on printed material and on telescreens blasting state propaganda in homes, workplaces, streets and shops. The fictional Oceania demanded devotion to Big Brother, backed by the reminder that the people were under constant surveillance. New York City has an updated version of Big Brother. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is all over street kiosk videos and, of course, the social media feeds. On Valentine's Day, he was pictured at the Manhattan marriage bureau standing between bride and groom. City nurses on strike? Mamdani is right there on the picket line with them. Mayors typically avoid taking sides in labor disputes, preferring to mediate. But working in the background wouldn't have made Mamdani star of the news coverage. New Yorkers can't get his face out of their face. The city has 2,000 LinkNYC kiosks that play a revolving set of ads on 55-inch screens. I was walking down Madison Avenue, where every few blocks I saw a kiosk showing Mamdani celebrating his latest achievement, an expansion of the city's free pre-K program. The video tracks him strolling through a toy-filled classroom, cut with lingering close-ups. His enlarged face topped that of Orwell's poster Big Brother by several inches. Days later, I'm in the back seat of a cab, and the taxi TV screen is playing the same video featuring the mayor's unsettling frozen grin. There was no escape. LinkNYC charges for ads, but they run city public service announcements for free. However, there's a law banning elected officials from appearing in ads purporting to be public service announcements. Former Mayor Eric Adams didn't use such free video ads for personal aggrandizement. The ethics watchdogs at Reinvent Albany said that the ads violate the spirit of the law. Asked about that, a Mamdani spokeswoman dodged the question by arguing that advertising child care enrollment is a top priority. Sure, and the city can advertise its child care program without centering the announcements on a larger-than-life mug of the mayor. "If Adams did this everyone would be cringing and saying he was using the kiosks for shameless self-promotion," Nicole Gelinas, a Manhattan Institute fellow, said. You'd think from his prominence in the pre-K videos that Mamdani started the popular program. Not so. The current branded version of "pre-K for all" was launched two mayors ago, in 2014. Under Mamdani, the program has simply been expanded to cover 2-year-olds, a year younger than before. And the state, not the city, is paying for the first years. Another master of "look at me, I am everywhere" is not a leftist but the right-wing Donald Trump. Does a day go by in which he doesn't force the populace to think about him? Recall Trump following a ridiculous threat to invade Greenland with a "humorous" image of a gaudy gold Trump tower plopped in the middle of a Greenlandic town. Trump was already famous when he ran for office. Mamdani rose from near unknown to Gotham's mayor by running cheery TikTok videos that went viral. There is a big difference between Big Brother's appearances on the omnipresent telescreens and that of today's political powers. Oceania's leadership could spy on the viewers. Mamdani, Trump and their like presumably cannot. The original Big Brother also had the Thought Police to ensure he was watched. Mamdani doesn't need batons or prison cells. He's slicker. He exploits the public's addiction to social media and their echo chambers to drown the masses in his messages. The modern Big Brother has you watching him. Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop.