Revisiting Orwell & "Newspeak"

~George Orwell's "1984"

As cultures decay, the language decays too. 
Examine how words are used to disguise rather than illuminate an action.
So you liberate a city by destroying it.
Lies are alternative facts.

Since the obvious ease and willingness of the White House to blatantly deceive the public became self evident, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 has been in high demand. The book had climbed all the way to No. 1 on Amazon’s best-sellers list, and remains on the best seller list.

The novel, from which phrases like “Big Brother” and “doublethink” were born, is likely the U.K.’s most famous depiction of an authoritarian surveillance state. And much of the book, particularly its fictional thought-suppressing language, Newspeak, will seem pertinent.  Some phrases in particular  - “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command” ― have seemed especially relevant in the wake of deceptions over things as indisputable as crowd size, good being evil, up being down.

Here is a link to another piece that further explores "Newspeak" and the role Orwell's 1984 plays in today's post truth world. (There is a link to where you can read the novel free online as well).
Of course 1984, while echoing today's decay; is not a manifesto of how to deal with our plight.
On the contrary, humanity, independent thought, truth and justice lose at the end...and  the protagonists don’t survive.

There is however another Orwell penned piece which may be a better source of advice regarding our current state of malaise.  His essay, "Politics And The English Language" deals with his personal observations of language being used by politicos as a weapon of mass deception.

Orwellian Thought Crime

"You must be a bigot if you point out bigotry"
Words are sabotaged to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Someone who thinks this way cannot ever begin to conceptualize truth.

So the desire of anti-democracy ideologues is to remove the ability of those who would criticize their anti-democratic activities and to curtail the flow of democratic ideas.
There is abundant evidence that one of the ways they do this is by intentionally destroying language.
Language is the medium through which ideas flow.

Language is systematically mapped and words historically used to describe potentates and the traditional authorities in their service , these potentates have purposefully twisted those words into terms used against those who oppose such plutocracy. This tactic both attacks the opponents of democracy and more importantly deprives them of the words that can be used to attack aristocracy.

A simple example is the term "race-baiting".
In the Nexis database, uses of "race-baiting" undergo a sudden switch in the early 1990's.
Before then, "race-baiting" referred to racists.
Afterward, it referred in a twisted way to people who oppose racism.
What happened?
It's simple:  Stink Tank rhetoricians were tired of the political advantage that their opponents had from their use of that word, so they took it away from them.

A more complicated example is the word "racist".
Language revisionist rhetoricians have tried to take this word away as well by constantly coming up with new ways to stick the word onto liberals and their policies.
For example they referred to affirmative action as "racist".
Obviously this is false; it is an example of this attempt to destroy language.
Racism is the notion that one race is intrinsically better than another.
Affirmative action is arguably discriminatory, as a means of partially offsetting discrimination in other places and times, but it is not racist.
Pro-aristocracy spokesmen have even stuck the word "racist" on people for opposing racism.
The notion seems to be that these people addressed themselves to the topic of race, and the word "racist" is sort of an adjective relating somehow to race.
In any event this is an attack on language...the medium we use to communicate ideas.
And ideas form the basis of civilization.
Ultimately the attack on language is an attack on civilization itself.



The entire reason for Orwell’s destruction of language
was to literally narrow the person’s ability to think certain thoughts.
It’s beyond thought crime, and it’s happening right here, right now.
It does not matter what year is on your calendar, it’s 1984.