The Ministry of Truth was not a fact checking system. It was where the past was rewritten, with entire wars and alliances being erased, and required all previou

The Ministry of Truth was not a fact checking system. It was where the past was rewritten, with entire wars and alliances being erased, and required all previous documents to be destroyed and replaced. The point was that if no record of the past exists except for what is inside of our minds, the past is whatever we believe it to be. Hence 2 + 2 = 5, O'Brien raises his fingers and asks "How many fingers am I holding up?" and Winston eventually "remembers" the "wrong" number. Fact checkers don't "rewrite" anything, they don't destroy previous articles of information, they don't have an army to go out and destroy old documents. Disinformation is a reasonable national security concern, it seems silly to think otherwise given that it's a very obvious and established weapon.