by Vince McLeod

In George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984, the purpose of “Newspeak” was to make anti-government thoughts impossible. The logic was that if people were prevented by language from talking about opposing the government, they’d also be prevented from thinking about it. Being unable to think about opposing the government, they’d make perfect slaves.

In the West of 2023, our rulers have forced a form of Newspeak on us. As in 1984, the purpose of it is to make dissent impossible. The major difference is that, in our world, Newspeak works by confusing and corrupting existing definitions of words. This has the effect of making communication impossible, and thereby making resistance impossible.

The word ‘racist’ is the classic example of twisted definitions. The word used to refer to people with racial prejudice, who expressed contempt for others for no other reason than their race. But over time, as people displayed a willingness to submit to those shrieking “racist”, the definition expanded. Today some will argue that the term can only refer to white people.

Their term ‘racist’ is now so overused that you can be called racist for resisting racism, such as if you say, ‘It’s Okay To Be White’. ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ is an explicitly anti-racist statement, used primarily by working-class whites in response to comments such as that of Marama Davidson. That it can be considered racist shows that words (and phrases) can be twisted to their exact opposites in the Newspeak of 2023.

‘Nazi’ is a related example. Originally used to refer to members of the German NSDAP of 1920-1945, it’s now so overused that any nationalist or anti-globalist sentiments are written off as Nazi ones. Today, almost any unfashionable opinion attracts cries of Nazism.

As with racist, a person can explicitly decry Nazism, to the extent of listing multiple grievances with the doctrine, and still get accused of being a Nazi. Trying to distinguish between the nationalist aspects of Nazism and the totalitarian aspects is not permitted. To do so is to become a “Nazi apologist”.

‘Far right’ relates to the above examples. Logically, if the right-wing is capitalist, then the far-right ought to refer to hyper-capitalist neoliberals like the ACT Party. Bizarrely, however, those described as far-right today are primarily working-class nationalists, whose main complaint is often the corporate importation of cheap labour. Somehow the right-wing are corporates while the far-right is anti-corporate.

‘Nation’ no longer means a population united by ties of blood and soil, as it has always meant. In the Newspeak of 2023, national ties are just like masks that a person puts on and takes off as needed. Anyone can claim to be of any nationality. The dumbing-down of language has obscured the difference between those with established loyalties to the nation and those without. All are considered part of one big club, defined not by Nature but by the Government.

“The dumbing-down of language has obscured the difference between those with established loyalties to the nation and those without.”

‘Disinformation’ now means ‘anything said by someone the Government doesn’t like’. This has been made evident by the New Zealand Government’s Disinformation Project, which serves as a Ministry of Truth, smearing anyone who speaks out against the ruling class. Enemies of the Government, in Newspeak, are incapable of speaking the truth. Everything they say is either disinformation, misinformation or malinformation.

‘The economy’ now means ‘the interests of international banking and finance’. It doesn’t have anything to do with the material needs of the nation being met. Today’s Newspeak will claim that the economy is doing well because unemployment is low, and will ignore the fact that most of those jobs don’t pay enough for the workers to own homes and raise families.

It doesn’t matter if people can raise families, because, as per the Newspeak definition of nation, the nation doesn’t need families. It can just import them from overseas, and as long as the GDP goes up, it’s all good. Herein it can be seen that the Newspeak of 2023 is a form of neoliberal totalitarianism, unlike the national socialist and communist forms of totalitarianism in surface ways, but like them in fundamental ways.

‘Conspiracy theorist’, heard often in the mainstream media of 2023, is classic Newspeak. It’s another term for ‘wrongthinker’, denoting someone who is outside of society, a memetic outlaw. Even though human history is a parade of conspiracies, one after the other, anyone who notices a conspiracy in 2023 is equated with the severely mentally ill. ‘Conspiracy theorist’, in 2023 speak, is a synonym for ‘schizophrenic’, i.e. a person whose paranoia leads them to see things that aren’t there.

There’s a reason why Confucius said that, if he were to be offered power, the first thing he would do would be the “rectification of names”; i.e. he would make sure that words had accurate, commonly-understood meanings again. Newspeak was a thing in ancient China, just as it was in 1984, and just as it is in 2023. Wherever you have totalitarianism, you have centralised attempts to control expression.

“In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it,” Orwell wrote. In 2023 thought-crime has been made impossible by the fact that each of us has been trapped in a silo of language, where communication is crippled by an absence of common understanding of the words we are using.

The Newspeak of 2023 has twisted all language, not to the service of Big Brother, but to “globohomo” – the alliance of globalist capitalism and globalist communism that has forced neoliberalism on the populations of the West. It’s no longer a sure thing, when a person uses a particular word, that their audience will understand the intended meaning of that word. And so, we’re too confused to resist our ruling classes.

 

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms! https://linktr.ee/vjmpublishing

and at the Counterspin Media Substack at https://www.counterspinmedia.substack.com

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