The Orwellization of Words

The joys of redefinition, erasure, and coining of words.

In George Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984 the state redefines words, altering language itself so that contrary urges cannot even be thought of.  I hereby dub such redefinition the Orwellization of words.  

Hmm, how about a list of the recently Orwellized words of today.  Liberal, conservative, right, left, racist, populist, terrorist, genocide, democracy, socialist, journalism, inflation, law.  A paleo liberal stood for peace and free speech. The Orwellized liberal plumps for perpetual war and blanket censorship.  Your old school conservative was for a strong defense of the Americas and a balanced budget.  Post-Orwellization they go for world empire and a stupendously jaw-dropping debt.  A leftist stood for blue-collar labor.  Now anything the Democratic Party advocates is leftist, no matter that it is overwhelmingly pro Big Money.  A terrorist used to be any private party that spread terror (it was conveniently OK for recognized states to terrorize), now it’s anyone the state doesn’t like, up to and including the feared “information terrorist.”  Genocide was a determined attempt to exterminate a population, now it just means “something I really really don’t like.”   Journalism was exposing the dirty little secrets of the state, now it’s hiding those same secrets. Inflation used to be a spiral of wage increases causing price increases trigger more wage increases and so forth. There aren’t any wage increases any more so now it just means price increases. Let’s finish with the “rule of law,”  which Orwellizes to “do what we say or we’ll get you.”  This seems to me the very opposite of the rule of law.  This shows I have failed to Orwellize myself, disqualifying me for participation in the “democratic process.”  Self-Orwellization.  It’s a thing.

It’s tempting to include "fascist" but Orwell himself noted that in his day it already meant "any authoritarian regime that I don't like."   This has not changed.  In many conflicts, by use of this definition both sides can quite reasonably denounce one another as fascist.  Since "communism"  is used in the same way, it is not unusual to see the same policy or person denounced both as fascist and also as communist.

Then there are words that nevermore appear in the corporate media.  George Orwell did not fail to also anticipate this.  As facts tended to obstruct Orwellization, facts had to go.  Memory cannot be trusted so it suffices to destroy all records of the past.  In Orwell’s day records were made on paper, destroyable via burning.   In his novel 1984, openings to the flames were called “memory holes.”   I say that entire concepts can be forgotten, memory-holed.  Such are represented by words such as peace, corruption, compromise, justice, fairness, honesty, compassion, love, forgiveness, the little guy.  I guess this form of Orwellization should be called memory-holing, used to produce memory-holed words.  I was particular struck how in Bill Clinton's memoirs he never even hinted at the influence of Big Money on politics.  The whole idea that Big Money influenced policy at all was memory-holed.  If this cannot be even thought of then it cannot be questioned.  That confirmed to me that Big Money dominated his politics, but maybe that’s just weirdo me. 

Another form of Orwellization is the coining of words that represent phony concepts.  I suppose that could be called the budding of Newspeak.  What's the difference between a neoliberal and a neoconservative other than an increasingly meaningless party label?  How about "think tank”.  They aren't paid to think.  They are employed to sell a Big Money position.  (My brother-in-law worked for one and complained about this before he retired.)  So in this case “think” has been redefined to mean sales.  That’s Orwellization for ya.  Resistant as am I to Orwellization, I’ll go with “sales tank.”   “Sales tank representative so-and-so said…”

I'm sure there are more, but I've boycotted corporate media for the last five years so I'm behind the curve.  Little help?