A Word Is Dead When Said, Some Say. I Say It Just Begins to Live That Day~Emily Dickinson
Doublethink is Bad for Democracy
George Orwell, the author of the dystopian novel 1984, wrote extensively about the power of words and the importance of using words that mean what they are intended to mean. He explained how politicians had honed the craft of using words to manipulate and mislead their intended audience, using words in a way that deceived and distracted the public from what was really happening.
Orwell wrote from his lived experience. 1984 was published in June of 1949. He had personally witnessed the effects of totalitarian governments in both Spain and Russia. He was concerned that America was dismissing the threat of communism and her citizens were under the mistaken impression that ‘it couldn’t happen here’. He wrote the book as a cautionary tale, using explicit examples of how the political speech of an authoritarian leader can be used to ‘defend the indefensible. His fictional terminology was based on what he was experiencing and researching. His novel is well worth the read/re-read for all of us.
Did You Know:
Orwell had a profound understanding of the impact of words on thought and society. He believed that there should be integrity with the words we choose so that the meaning is straightforward. It has been said that his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ was one of the most important articles on the power of language to come out of the 20th century. His novel made his points very clear to the everyday reader!
Big Brother was the leader of Oceania, a consolidated superstate of the Americas, British Isles, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa. The title of “Big Brother” connotes family, loving concern, a strong male to watch over the weak and vulnerable and evoked a sense of being cared for. The use of an endearing term for a leader of a brutal regime provides a veneer of benevolence which is deceiving.
Orwell coined terms to inoculate the reader against falling victim to propaganda and gaslighting. He used the word ‘doublethink’ to explain how the government used language to desensitize citizens from questioning contradictory concepts. Examples included the way Oceania named their governmental agencies. The Ministry of Plenty oversees shortage, the Ministry of Peace conducts a perpetual war, the Ministry of Love approves of cruel punishment and torture, and the Ministry of Truth spreads propaganda and revises historical facts.
Through doublethink, the public comes to believe the Party's contradictory slogans of “War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "Ignorance is Strength" as logical statements. Doublethink indoctrinated the people into believing that two contradictory concepts can both be true at the same time, thus undermining the capacity for rational thought. This renders a person incapable of understanding contradictions, leaving them vulnerable to government manipulation.
Additionally, the Party implemented ‘newspeak’, a language control program. By replacing or controlling everyone's native language, the public's cultural values and means of communication were gradually lost, making the subjects more susceptible to doublethink.
Why It Matters:
In today’s world, MAGA passes election integrity laws that actually suppresses the vote and make it harder to register to vote. They pass a big beautiful bill that is cruel and will cause enormous suffering economically and socially, targeting the poorest and most vulnerable just to finance a tax break for billionaires. Approximately $45 billion was appropriated from the big beautiful bill to create tortuous and inhumane concentration camps that warehouse those who have been illegally abducted by Homeland Security. MAGA messaging experts are skilled in doublethink and party members are obedient servants to the messaging.
We have our own 21st century version of ‘newspeak’. Leaders in this current regime deny historical facts of slavery and the brutality it caused, they deny that systemic racism has inflicted trauma on generations of minority populations and insist that women’s rights are a silly whim of unhappy, childless ‘cat ladies’. The use of the term climate change has been scrubbed from websites and not allowed to be used by employees of agencies responsible for predicting the weather or responding to climate disasters. College professors in state funded universities stand the risk of being fired or denied tenure if their students accuse them of lecturing on topics that make them uncomfortable or go against their worldview. Indiana recently passed a law that silences academic freedom and is euphemistically called the “Intellectual Diversity Requirement’’. The first executive orders signed by Trump and Governor Braun were to disallow the use of preferred pronouns in government agencies and to abolish programs that contained the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion’, arguing that “DEI” programs were exclusive and unfair.
What You Can Do:
Anat Shenker Osorio is our 21st century guru for understanding the power of political speech and its ability to defend the indefensible. She has given us a powerful messaging toolkit that helps us ‘hear’ the misleading messages and gives us the words to say what is really happening. Download the toolkit and practice the dos and don’ts—it takes a lot of practice to say what we mean and mean what we say!
Anat’s guide offers detailed explanations as to why each of these examples are so important. She continually cautions that if we don’t choose our words carefully, we become unwitting messengers of the lies or help normalize and desensitize ourselves to the chaos and destruction that is happening on a daily basis. By using these guidelines, we are not only speaking truth to power, but also speaking truth to each other.
Here are a few examples for this moment we are in:
Do say Epstein cover up…Don’t say Epstein files
Do say concentration camp…Don’t say alligator Alcatraz
Do say forced removal…Don’t say immigration policy
Do say abduct or disappeared…Don’t say deported, arrested
Do say Fascist power grab, hostile takeover of our government…Don’t say Constitutional crisis, government overreach or unprecedented
Do say Trump’s tariffs…Don’t say tariffs
Do say Big Ugly Bill or MAGA Murder Bill…Don’t say Big Beautiful Bill
Do say current regime…don’t say Trump Administration
The ultimate goal of an authoritarian government is to define what is true despite the evidence.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final command.”
The poet and novelist are warning us! Words matter!
Truthfully yours,
Debbie and the H4D Team
Additional Resources:
Download our Summer of Solidarity Communication Guide and Book and Movie Discussion Guide for additional resources in building a pro-democracy movement one conversation at a time.
From Writers Almanac.. Garrison Keillor:
Today is the birthday of English author Aldous Huxley, born in Godalming, Surrey (1894). He was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, a scientist and man of letters who was known as "Darwin's bulldog" for his defense of the theory of evolution. Huxley wrote a few novels that satirized English literary society, and these established him as a writer; it was his fifth book, Brave New World (1932), which arose out of his distrust of 20th-century politics and technology, for which he is most remembered. Huxley started out intending to write a parody of H.G. Wells' utopian novel Men Like Gods (1923). He ended by envisioning a future where society functions like one of Henry Ford's assembly lines: a mass-produced culture in which people are fed a steady diet of bland amusements and take an antidepressant called soma to keep themselves from feeling anything negative.
Brave New World is often compared with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), since they each offer a view of a dystopian future. Cultural critic Neil Postman spelled out the difference in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death:
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. ... In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us."
Wow! Thank you so much! I appreciate words. I do use regime, concentration camps, militarized ice. I plan to switch to epstein cover-up abd a few more descriptors. I have never used BBB, so I'm good there. Very useful!