Almost 75 years after it was published, George Orwell’s novel 1984 has nothing on today’s Republican Party when it comes to language. The novel features such ideological practices as “newspeak” and “doublethink” that
conform language to the needs of a society’s authoritarian leadership to maintain control of its population. Newspeak is a minimalist language designed to make the utterance of heretical thoughts–those that challenge central authority–impossible. Doublethink refers to the ability to believe and say that black is white, in contradiction of plain facts, in order to uphold the regime.
Does any of this sound familiar today? Since the rise of “Trumpism” in the Republican Party, we have seen the explosion not only of blatant lies, but also the creation of “alternative” facts to support law-free rule. We have seen “Don’t say gay” restrictions for the early grades of schools in Florida, and the deletion of critical race theory from curriculums ranging up to college level. Lately we’ve seen an apparently new development in the distortion of language in the service of ideological manipulation: the notion that one can speak of things without mentioning what they are about.
This rang a bell for me, one that rings back half a century in my work life and that I have always since associated with the most destructive elements of conservative politics in the U.S. Perhaps it is no small coincidence that Orwell’s book was published on my mother’s birthday in the year that I was born. Continue reading “GOP Speak: You can talk about it, just don’t mention it”
