In “1984,” his novel depicting the life in prospect for citizens under global totalitarianism, George Orwell described Big Brother’s use of NewSpeak as a technique to keep citizens so befuddled and fearfully cowed that they could not challenge the regime.
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Big Brother’s NewSpeak deliberately used ordinary words in arbitrary ways that made their meaning unclear. Language ceased to be a means to communicate thoughts clearly and became, instead, a method for obfuscation. It became part of the master plan to control people’s thinking and to prevent their discussing ideas with each other. The opportunity to plan rebellion was thus stifled.
The December 8, 2005, issue of the Hartford Courant has a news item that describes our own NewSpeak in action.
“Hecklers Disrupt Coulter’s Speech At UConn
By GRACE E. MERRITT
Courant Staff Writer
December 8 2005
STORRS—Music that seemed to come from somewhere in the raucous audience that packed the Jorgensen Center at the University of Connecticut Wednesday night brought Ann Coulter’s speech to an abrupt end about 15 minutes after she started....
“Some students were upset that the student government spent $16,000 to bring what they consider a “hateful” speaker to campus.
To provide another viewpoint to Coulter’s, the Progressive Students’ Alliance had brought in Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who made headlines in August by camping out near President Bush’s Texas ranch to protest her son’s death in Iraq. Sheehan’s speech Monday also was paid for with student government funds.”
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Today’s politically-correct NewSpeak in the United States works in a similar fashion to Big Brother’s NewSpeak, not to describe events, but to suppress discussion of the opposing side of a question. When, for example, Senators Charles Schumer, Hillary Rodham, Patrick Leahey, or Teddy Kennedy want to prevent a nomination or a legislative proposal moving from committee review to floor vote, they tag the subject with a code word such as racism, hateful, or divisive.
This is, among other things, a signal to the mainstream socialist media to
dig up any and all personal dirt that can be published to defame the personal character of the nominee or of the sponsors of the proposed legislation.
The following are three samples.
Standard dictionary definition of racism: - the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
- prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief”
Liberal-Progressive usage of “racism:" A Republican administration nominating a black or Hispanic woman for a Federal administrative, cabinet, or judicial post who is actively supported by her local NAACP chapter, but who is not an avowed atheistic socialist.
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Standard dictionary definition of hateful: - arousing, deserving of, or filled with hatred : hateful letters of abuse that had come unsigned.
- very unpleasant : I don’t have to stay in this hateful place.
Liberal-Progressive usage of “hateful:" Any criticism of persons other than heterosexual males, conservatives, religious Jews or Christians.
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Standard dictionary definition of divisive: - tending to cause disagreement or hostility between people, e.g., the highly divisive issue of abortion.
Liberal-Progressive usage of “divisive:" Questioning the effectiveness, prudence, or economic sustainability of welfare-state programs, such as Social Security, monopoly control of education by teachers’ unions; or questioning core dogma of liberal-socialism, such as the belief that there are no essential differences between men and women, and that single-parent families are just as good for children as homes with fathers and mothers.
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