The Left’s Orwellian Perversion of Language
Article by Lauri B. Regan in The American Thinker
The Left’s Orwellian Perversion of Language
Lies and propaganda are now the mainstay of leftist communications. A twenty-first century reincarnation of George Orwell’s 1984 Newspeak is one of their primary mechanisms utilized to prevent critical thought and debate while expanding power by “reimagining” (their word du jour) language:
In the novel, the ruling English Socialist Party (Ingsoc) created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will.
Whether operating in academia, the media, social justice movements, or the Democrat party, the left has stifled free speech and intimidated Americans into submission (as we’ve seen in corporate America and professional sports) through its cancel culture and lies (Russia collusion, Russian bounties, Russian disinformation). It’s achieving its goals through the perversion of language to control society.
This is nothing new. Recall the days when the world was going to end from “global warming.” When that prediction failed, the left devised the term “climate change,” understanding that any weather event would easily fall under that reimagined term. As expected, every weather event is now used as an excuse for government and progressives to decry human consumption of energy and limit our freedoms.
Similarly, Donald Trump and other rational humans recognized the pandemic was caused by the Wuhan virus (named after its place of origin like many viruses). Alas, the left now finds itself in bed with the Chinese, so Covid-19 became the reimagined name.
Apparently a student of Orwell, Congresswoman Spanberger recognized that if Democrats don’t stop using words like “socialism” and “defund the police,” we’re going to get f-----g killed in 2022.” Here is a partial list of words and phrases that have been butchered by the left to retain -- and gain -- power:
Immigration
The most recent dystopian dictate from Biden/Harris is the order to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol to cease using the terms “alien,” “illegal alien,” and “assimilation.” Those words will be replaced with “noncitizen or migrant,” “undocumented,” and “integration,” respectively. CBP’s head explained, “We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.”
No, they do not enforce our nation’s laws. If they did, our borders would be closed rather than having tens of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing it. And while words matter, the majority of those flocking into the country don’t speak English, so this Orwellian decree is meant for U.S. consumption, not the “dignity” of illegal aliens.
This is reminiscent of the insanity of the Obama administration scrubbing FBI training materials of references to the terms “terrorism,” “terrorist,” and “jihad,” replacing them with euphemisms like “man-caused disasters” lest we offend the Muslims committing such atrocities.
In yet one more effort to undo Trump’s successful policies, Biden seeks a more “humane” immigration system so facilities that were labeled “cages” under Trump are now “shelters” under Biden. With Newspeak, the situation on our southern border is not a “crisis” but rather a “challenge.” Alas, Biden didn’t get the memo (or likely forgot) so Jen Psaki was forced to walk back his mistaken use of “crisis” this week explaining that the crisis is actually in Central America, not on our border.
Spending Bills
In order to ram through trillions in spending and tax increases, Biden and the Democrats have redefined the words bipartisan and reconciliation. According to Biden, any legislation that has the support of at least one Republican voter is now bipartisan since the dictionary “doesn’t say the Republicans have to be in Congress."
Biden’s spending packages would never pass the Senate with a bipartisan filibuster-proof 60 votes so Democrats have devised faux descriptions to ensure they’re defined in a way that guaranties passage with a simple majority. Voila: an infrastructure bill is now budget legislation, passing through the reconciliation process while bypassing the filibuster.
Speaking of infrastructure, only 6% of Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill goes to roads and bridges. The rest is “a progressive boondoggle” resembling AOC’s Green New Deal while also addressing Democrats’ other obsession, “equality.” Kirsten Gillibrand proudly took to twitter to announce, “Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” Who knew? And according to Biden, the “infrastructure” bill will, “extend access to quality, affordable home or community-based care” for seniors and people with disabilities.
No surprise that this bill has little to do with “shovel ready jobs,” (an Obama/Biden lie promised to pass their “stimulus” swindle) and everything to do with redistributing wealth. It follows the Covid-relief bill as to which only 9% of the $1.9 trillion went to Covid while the rest was described by the Wall Street Journal as a “progressive blowout for the ages that does little for the economy but will finance Democratic interest groups for years.” Words certainly matter when scamming American taxpayers.
And while Democrats are advancing a slavery reparations bill, they’re also concealing such payments in signed legislation including labeling them “agricultural support” – for black farmers only -- and providing funds for “Historically Black Colleges and Universities as well as Minority Serving Institutions.” This is racism but they’ve redefined that as well.
Systemic Racism/Anti-Racism
Every day whites are accused of being racist for something they did or did not do. America and its police are systemically racist, America was founded in 1619 by racist slave-owners, whites suffer from unconscious racism and so on. If you do not abide by critical race theory’s anti-racist agenda, you are a racist. Christopher Rufo explains:
There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell.
In our Oceania of today, neo-Marxism is dictating that every white person is guilty of the crime of simply being born white.
One of Biden’s first executive orders directed the federal government to “affirmatively advance equity” as if the Civil War never occurred, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were never passed, affirmative action never existed, and Black people haven’t advanced in every profession imaginable.
Corporate America is similarly obsessed with Coca Cola telling its employees to “be less white” while Home Depot is boycotted for remaining silent. Social justice warriors cancel you for not virtue-signaling when they order you do so.
Thus, we find ourselves in 1984’s Oceania when Georgia is boycotted for voting rights legislation that is more lenient than New York or Delaware simply because the left demands it. Voter I.D. requirements and voter suppression are, in Newspeak, reminiscent of the KKK notwithstanding that ID’s are required to board a plane, buy cigarettes, cannabis and liquor, or cash a check.
The term “Jim Crow” is now being abused much like Nazi and Hitler were to describe Trump and his supporters. Laws established to prevent voter fraud, according to Biden, “make Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” And the filibuster, that so many Democrats including Biden in a lengthy speech in 2005 defended as being a hallmark of democracy, is suddenly a Jim Crow relic.
Domestic Politics
“Peaceful protests” now include rioting, looting, and torching businesses, with a financial cost of an estimated $2 billion. The mainstream media never aired videos of the “violent BLM protests” since, in the Newspeak lexicon, only Trump supporters commit violence.
Hypocrisy is a bulwark of Democrats’ power. There is no better example of this than the way in which they define “incitement.” Democrats impeached Trump for “inciting” the January 6th riots despite the fact that he told his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically.”
On the other hand, Maxine Waters is given a pass for telling crowds, “If you see anybody from [Trump’s] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them.” When she clearly incited crowds to violence telling them to “stay in the streets,” “fight for justice,” “get more active,” and “make sure they know that we mean business,” Pelosi explained, “Maxine talked about confrontation in the manner of the civil rights movement” and should “absolutely not” apologize. Every House Democrat agreed.
Democrats don’t like conservatives holding a majority on the Supreme Court so Rashida Tlaib is now claiming that when Republicans fulfilled their Constitutional duty to fill vacancies, they “stole” the majority, hence we must “expand” the court. Jerry Nadler claims Democrats are not “packing” the court, they’re “unpacking it.” Ed Markey justified the move because the court is “broken,” “out of balance,” and “needs to be fixed,” adding that “expanding the court is equal justice.”
There are many other examples of Newspeak permeating our discourse. The Associated Press banned the word “mistress” using “companion, friend, or lover” instead. Businesses, colleges, and media outlets either require gender neutral pronouns or the use of personally selected terms. Boys aren’t necessarily boys and can compete in girls’ sports by simply claiming they’re a girl. In New Oceania, gender is fluid. Headmaster is now banned at many private schools and the City of Berkeley banned terms like “manhole,” “manpower” (now “human effort”), “bondsman” and “pregnant woman” “to be consistent with principles of inclusion” (notwithstanding that only 0.4% of our population defines as transgender). And a BLM co-founder and proud Marxist explained that purchasing multiple expensive homes is not capitalism because it’s for her family.
Foreign Policy
Obama advisor Ben Rhodes admitted years ago that the administration’s lies regarding the Iran nuclear deal were disseminated through the “echo chamber” (aka the mainstream media). They told the world that the JCPOA would prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons despite it actually greenlighting their eventual sanctioned development. They promised that Iranian President Rouhani was a “moderate” despite him being anything but (just as they tell us that Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas is a moderate when both he and Rouhani are terror-sponsors).
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour reports that Palestinian presidential candidate Marwan Barghouti is an “activist” despite serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison for multiple terrorist attacks. One of Biden’s first executive orders was to revoke the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization despite their continuing acts of terrorism; in Oceania, they’re committing man-caused disasters.
Bizarrely, State Department spokesman, Ned Price refuses to utter the term Abraham Accords, negotiated by the Trump administration leading to peace between Israel and at least four Arab nations. Instead, Price refers to them as “normalization agreements” to avoid mentioning the Patriarch of the Jewish people and the father from which Christianity and Islam also descended.
-isms
The left spent years accusing Trump of fascism, applying the term as carelessly as they used the Hitler comparison. Their raison d’etre is to demonize and delegitimize Trump and Republicans, historical accuracy be damned. They also demonize and delegitimize Israel through anti-Zionism as a means to camouflage their antisemitism.
Since, as Spanberger noted, Democrats shouldn’t use the word socialism to describe their policies lest the public be frightened, so they’re disguising their true intentions behind spending bills with Newspeak-like names including the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), America Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama stimulus), American Rescue Plan (Biden “Covid” bill), and American Jobs Plan (Biden infrastructure bill). Don’t be fooled, they’re all plans that redistribute wealth and aim to achieve “equity.”
Finally, the Chinese Communist Party violates the human rights of all its citizens but especially the Uighurs who are treated horrifically by the regime that controls through communism. Given that Biden is in bed with the Chinese, he justified their abuses claiming, “Culturally, there are different norms in each country and their leaders are expected to follow.” H.R. McMaster recognizes Newspeak when he hears it responding, “You could call that bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity."
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As the left becomes more emboldened by its control of the federal government, expect more Newspeak to be used, but don’t fall for the propaganda. We have entered a new age in America and if we don’t recognize this true crisis for what it is, we’ll find ourselves living in Oceania with no way out.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/the_lefts_orwellian_perversion_of_language.html
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