This didn't stop people from still insisting that The Handmaid's Tale was Real Life, Actually during the Trump administration too, because something something Mike Pence something something ACB is in a misogynistic cult (which, to be fair, she is). It's the bougie feminist equivalent of the way National Review neocons used to treat 1984, completely ignoring the satirical and hyperbolic aspect of dystopian literature in favor of insisting that your own least favorite dystopia is five minutes away from becoming objective, unexaggerated reality.
Well I think the difference is a society like 1984 is possible today with the tech we have, albeit it would likely have to be in a geographically small country (like Britain where the novel is set). North Korea sounds pretty close already.
Not overly familiar with Handmaid's Tale but I would imagine life under the Taliban or ISIS is not all that dissimilar. The problem there is making the villains stand-ins for socially conservative Christians which is a ridiculous strawman since even if they got their way on every single social issue the world they'd build wouldn't be remotely like that.
