The object of torture is torture. This "rewriting" of events is not reserved for totalitarian governments.
It is this. Published June 06, What is ironic about the phrase, "the mutability of the past" from ? Some Fascist German leaders of the time boasted that if you tell a lie loud enough and often enough, people will accept it as truth.
Instead, they are looking at history as something which exists in the present. To understand the irony behind the quote from George Orwell's novel"the mutability of the past," one must first understand what the terms being used mean.
It is an exaggeration of a phenomenon that Orwell observed in his own time and reported with true clarity in People most readily believe that which they can believe most conveniently.