What effect of the quote "whoever controls the past controls the future and whoever controls the present controls the past" did it have in 1984?

The mutability of the
past is one of the key ideas brought out in "".  This means that the past can be
changed to reflect the ideas of whomever is in control.  The controlling powers can then make
people believe that things happened that didn't really happen, thus giving the illusion that the
controlling powers were always right and always good. 's job in the Ministry of Truth in the
story was to do just that - rewrite the past.  He would receive little tidbits of old news
stories to rewrite so that the stories now reflected what the Party...