Newspeak and its history (1)

I read an article about this leftist professor who condemned the Canadian truckers this morning. According to him, the shouts of “freedom” while the surrounded Ottawa was a bad use of the word, and they really wanted to impose a “far-right” notion of freedom. A transparent and shameless lie, that’s what I say.

In high school, I had to read George Orwell’s novel 1984. I never liked Winston and Julia’s relationship —I think he did it wrong, even more now that I’m married— but Newspeak’s still interesting to me. It sounds like a dumb premise, the thing about controlling everyone’s thoughts by shrinking their vocabulary, doesn’t it? Of course it does, but what people say these days and back then miss the point, that’s my opinion.

Sure, butchering English or any other language is no way to manipulate people, it’ll never work. But the critics don’t pay attention to the story if that’s their complaint. The Party used other means to influence their minions. Endless surveillance, the pretense of an eternal war, the cruel punishments for anyone who defies them, mutilating English was just the finishing touch, and it should be obvious that it was easily another part among many in their final plan.

I think if Orwell were still alive, he’d write a prequel or expansion of his novel, all about Newspeak. The expansion’d be better, I’d really like to know how the Party planned to brainwash everybody. It’s such a shame he died so many years ago. And it’s so much worse that the news is helping me guess how they’d get away with it. Any-hoos, the leftist professor was careful to distinguish the “far-right” notion of freedom from other notions, and that’s the first step in creating a new, politically correct language.

Before getting rid of unpleasant meanings, you always have to separate them from the ones that are still allowable. That’s what made it so important for the professor to force a distinction that didn’t exist before. The truckers and their supporters want just one thing: bodily autonomy. And until the new virus came from wherever, the leftists wanted it, too, for different reasons. Now they add other caveats to allow abortion and forbid rejecting unwanted vaccines at the same time.

Political correctness serves Newspeak by censuring those meanings the powerful would rather not think about. That professor’s such a great toady.