"But this was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control." -1984, G. Orwell
The "he" in that quote is the protagonist from 1984, "Winston." The context is that he's in the middle of considering the world stage at the moment. Of the three world powers, his homeland, Oceania, was presently at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia. Everyone else had been brainwashed into believing that this was the way it had always been but Winston remembered that not long before, it had been the other way around.
Winston worked at the Ministry of Truth and it was his job to monitor the news and make sure that all reports and records conformed to what was considered to be the official record provided by Big Brother. If something came in that went against that, it was rewritten to align with whatever the official propaganda was and then all traces of the actual story were destroyed.
The ultimate result of this was to effectively erase people's memories of the event. However, Winston consistently had access to the truth, so his mind wasn't so easily duped.
Orwell's work was sci-fi about the 80's written in the 40's so it's pure fancy, right? Well, consider this story about how 60% of Democrats don't think the Orlando shooting had anything to do with Islam. Right before our very eyes we see the Orwellian nature of the current administration. Even worse, they don't need a Minitrue to scrub the news for them... the press is doing it for them without coercion! What's more, we've got our own Miniplenty telling us the unemployment rate is under 5%.
Ultimately though, the ones to watch for are the Ministry of Love and the Thought Police.
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