"Freedom is Slavery" - Newspeak in the 21st century and the genius of Orwell

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Introduction

In the latest episode of one of my favourite podcasts the hosts brought up the interesting topic of the way that certain words are considered inappropriate for modern use.

Often these are due to reasons of misguided political correctness.

They referred to certain schools and universities "banning" or removing famous works of literature by authors like Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway because they contained language which might be deemed racist.

This seems to me to be a part of a modern day phenomenon where there appears to be a degree of trying to suppress or hide certain words and concepts.

Whilst the people doing this may be well meaning it does not change the fact that these types of literature were written at different times in history - eliminating them is in fact denying that these attitudes existed.

Further as I have stated before banning words and phrases does not really help the actual problem and may be counterproductive. It also fails to see the point that some of these novels had distinct anti-slavery narratives too!

The discussion brought to my mind something from one of my favourite novels, 1984 by George Orwell, i.e. the concept of "Newspeak".

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Spoiler Warning!

Before I proceed I must warn you that this may contain certain spoilers for the novel. If you haven't read 1984 go and read it now! It is not very long and you will likely thank me for it.

It is also a free in certain countries like Australia and you can read it online here.

Be careful though, if it is not yet in the public domain in your country and you read it "unlawfully" IngSoc (the FBI) will come and poke your eyes out!

That would be "ungood".

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Newspeak

I could write pages upon pages regarding the parallels in 1984 with the way modern society is going but I will stick with the concept of Newspeak to keep things relatively brief.

In 1984 we are confronted with the notion of a totalitarian government within a state known as Oceania.

Newspeak is referred to in various places in the novel but it is discussed in detail in an Appendix at the end entitled "The Principles of Newspeak".

Here is a short excerpt:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.

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Control of language to control thought

Can you think of any parallels with this today?

To me it seems that there are certain acceptable forms of verbiage in modern society.

By restricting these words certain forms of thought can no longer be expressed whether internally (in one's own mind) or externally in speech.

What is the use of free speech if you no longer have the words required to express yourself? Orwell goes on:

.....when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

[Newspeak's] vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.

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Control the thoughts and you control the actions

So in the fictional 1984 there was an imbalance in that everything that related to the functioning of the party was given sufficient language for it's proper expression and execution.

Everything else was linguistically and therefore cognitively restricted by being placed under the expressive restraints imposed by Newspeak.

One can see this as an ingenius method of not only suppressing unwanted modes of thought and hence unwanted actions, but also a means of promoting thoughts and actions that the party desired.

Newspeak was designed not to extend but to DIMINISH the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

Orwell goes into a lot of detail on the specifics of how Newspeak woks in the appendix.

Rather than copying it all here I have attempted to summarise the main points on how it works and goes about trying to achieve it's purposes.

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Some of the main principles of Newspeak

There are several aspects to Newspeak:

1. An overall reduction in the number of words.
2. The removal of adjectives, adverbs, synonyms and antonyms to reduce any potential subtlety of meaning and expression.
3. Where both a noun and a verb exists only the verb is kept to fulfill both roles - think means thought as well as the action of thinking.
4. To replace antonyms the negative version of any word is created by adding "un" as a prefix thus removing the need for unique words for the negative - e.g. warm is replaced by "uncold", bad becomes "ungood".
5. Words which are kept are stripped of undesirable meanings (e.g. the word free can be used to refer to the absence of something, but any meaning relating to freedom no longer exists since the concept of freedom itself no longer exists!)
6. The concept of "Doublethink". This is best explained by one of the most famous quotes from the book : "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength."
7. Vocabulary is divided into categories A, B and C which I will summarise below.

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The A Vocabulary

• A = "words needed for the business of everyday life" e.g. hit, run, dog etc.
• Some of the rules for reducing and replacing these are noted in my previous summary above - since these are the vast majority of words Orwell goes into considerable detail which I can't cover here.

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The B Vocabulary

• "Words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes"
• Mainly compound words and abbreviations.
• Intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.
• Some examples: Goodthink - meaning thinking in an orthodox and desirable manner, Crimethink - Newspeak for thought crime, Thinkpol - the thought police.
• A code that is not necessarily understood (at least fully) by those outside of the party.
• Some words function as euphemisms for negative concepts - e.g. Joycamp is a forced labour camp, MiniPax is the Ministry of Peace which is in itself a substitute for Ministry of War!

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The C Vocabulary

• C = "supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms....but the usual care was taken to define them rigidly and strip them of undesirable meanings."
• These don't really come up in the novel very much.

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Newspeak in the Modern Age

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I'm going to deliberately limit myself to a few examples here as I thought it would be an interesting idea for you to provide your own examples in the comments.

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War is Peace - Political Doublespeak

How many times have we been told that militarization or engaging in certain wars is necessary to maintain peace in our own countries?

Just take the examples of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and so many more.

Our politicians like to tell us that the only way to achieve peace is by bombing and killing people. It is classic double-speak.

Further the use of certain terms like "insurgent", "rendition", "enhanced interrogation" are euphemisms that governments love to use.

Also consider phrases like "friendly fire" or "collateral damage" - they fulfill similar roles and are straight out of the Orwellian playbook.

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Freedom is Slavery

Since 9/11 we have seen the erosion of our human rights in the US/UK and most of the western world.

Our governments give us the classic doublespeak that these are necessary to protect us and preserve our way of life. One must, however, consider the nonsensical nature of restricting and reducing our freedoms in order to protect them.

Our governments can spy on us, restrict our movements, imprison us or even execute us without trial and it is all to protect our freedoms (which they have actually taken away).

Further our free speech is getting curtailed further and further on a daily basis.

You can only say certain things and as I mentioned earlier this narrowing of language is perhaps the most similar in nature to the creation of Newspeak.

I'm not advocating people acting like arseholes online but the fact is that free speech means that people should be able to offend.

Further if we restricted everything we do based on someone being offended we would never do anything. Every time you stigmatise and remove one word another one takes it's place so it is a pointless exercise anyway.

One of the weird places I have seen this is when I go to medical appointments and get letters now I am called a "client".

This is so that people are not stigmatised by being called "patients".

I don't know about the rest of you but when I'm a patient I would rather just be called a patient.

I'm sure there are so many examples of the same kind of BS.

I could also talk about how most of us are also economic slaves to the established banking systems and current forms of government but I fear this is already getting too long.

I suppose "freedom is slavery" applies to us more and more every day.

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Conclusion

I'm starting to think more and more that perhaps some forces within our modern world are just directly trying to copy the things in 1984.

What examples of modern "Newspeak" can you think of? Let me know in the comments.

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Thank you for reading.

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