By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
Has the CBC been made part of the Ministry of Truth?“Experts say.” Which experts? The lexicographers working on the next edition of the Newspeak dictionary?
It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. … Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
So far, the MSM and Big Tech haven’t been able to exercise sufficient control over the Internet to install an effective memory hole function. For now, they’ve been limited to trying to change the debate by trying to change the usage and meaning of words. There’s an odd kind of precision in their sloppy language that tries to strip words of their nuanced meanings.
It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”, for instance. If you have a word like “good”, what need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood” will do just as well–better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of “good”, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like “excellent” and “splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood” covers the meaning, or “doubleplusgood” if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?
…
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
One of the problems with the Internet is that it can gum up the works when Our Betters want to erase their previous statement which are no longer politically correct. The Main Stream Media’s previous use of the now-raaaaaacist terms Wuhan virus or Chinese virus are too well backed up to allow them to credibly challenge Donald Trump’s using them. Their words won’t disappear, and too many people remember what they meant when they were spoken.
We need to remember that in the Real World 2 + 2 = 4.
This reminds me of the words of Syme, the dictionary editor in Nineteen Eighty Four—
It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. … Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
John Hinderacker has a post over at PowerLine looking at the question of whether Ilhan Omar’s statements are the result of a lack of familiarity with English (as Nancy Pelosi has suggested) or whether she is using a form of Progressive Newspeak. Specifically, Hinderacker examines Omar’s complaint that President Trump is dehumanizing people by referring to them as “illegal aliens.”
In point of fact and as a matter of law, the President is correct in his language. The law [8 U.S.C § 1101(a)(3)] defines alien as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.” It’s illegal for such persons to be in the United States unless properly admitted as residents (with green cards) or visitors/refugees (with visas). Aliens who are in the country illegally are breaking our laws, they are criminals, and they are subject to legal sanctions, including deportation.
There are two possibilities here. One is that Omar is poorly educated and is unfamiliar with the common English word “alien.” That could be. The second possibility is that she, like so many liberals, is trying to bully the rest of us into adopting their vocabulary, even when it does not accord with common usage, common sense, or, as here, the law.
Normally, I’d be inclined to shrug and say, “Embrace the power of AND,” but I believe the balance of the evidence weighs on the second choice. That opinion is strengthened by Omar’s repeated misstatements of the facts and by statements made by her allies among the current freshman class in the House of Representatives such as She Guevara (aka Alexandria ¡Ocasio-Cortez!).
No, we aren’t dehumanizing persons who law enforcement has probable cause to believe have crossed our borders illegally by detaining them until they can be processed by our immigration and legal systems. No, we are not placing them in concentration camps.
Dachau was the National Socialists first concentration camp, opened in 1933. While it was not nearly as brutal as the industrial scale death camps run by the SS (or perhaps as Stalin’s gulag), it was a place of terror, torture, and forced labor for the internal enemies of the state. None of the facilities holding detained immigrants here in the U. S. are remotely analogous to places like Dachau.
I don’t believe politicians like Omar and ¡Ocasio-Cortez! are stupid. I think that they’ve been rewarded for making outrageous claims that fit the narratives believed by enough voters in their districts to get them elected and that they believe they can get away with such loose talk on a national stage. I also believe that their claims will become more radical as they react poorly to fact-based pushback.
There’s nothing new in the SJWs’ current attempt to hijack our language by using words in ways that don’t fit their meanings found in common dictionaries. That method of trying to control the parameters of thought and argument was old when Orwell wrote his essay on Newspeak.
Sarah Hoyt has an essay over at PJ Media about her experience with The Semantic Whoredom of the Left. She has an interesting perspective as someone trained in linguistics who is not a native-speaker of English.
But it wasn’t until l’affaire prom dress that I realized it wasn’t just their etymology that was faulty but that these people had in fact built themselves an entirely new language, with words that are in common use, kidnapped, raped, and made to parade in public with disfiguring makeup. Or if you prefer, with words that are in common use voided of their signification, and filled with meanings they were never meant to have, meanings that can only be understood if you share the basic assumptions of leftist liberals.
Also,
It’s quite possible that the true believers are effectively beyond our reach. But we should try to force those who are new converts, freshly spewed from universities where the cult is taught, to unpack their assumptions and confront the real meaning of words.
Making them read dictionary definitions, and a bit of history is a good beginning.
Above all, do not accept their definition. Fight against it. They’re holding perfectly good words captive and making them commit acts against their nature.
Robert Weissberg has an essay posted in the Phi Beta Cons section of NRO called Academic Crimethink in which he analyzes how political correctness has crippled much academic research over the pas few decades. Read the whole thing.
I have one nit to pick. Mr. Weissberg refers to what academics do as crimethink. Actually, they are practicing crimestop to avoid straying from goodthink into the dangerous realm of crimethink.
To be fair, she’s not a 
“Experts say.” Which experts? The lexicographers working on the next edition of the Newspeak dictionary?
This reminds me of the words of Syme, the dictionary editor in Nineteen Eighty Four—
I don’t believe politicians like Omar and ¡Ocasio-Cortez! are stupid. I think that they’ve been rewarded for making outrageous claims that fit the narratives believed by enough voters in their districts to get them elected and that they believe they can get away with such loose talk on a national stage. I also believe that their claims will become more radical as they react poorly to fact-based pushback.