Woke Language Is a Weapon of War

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Posted on 10/03/2024 7:13:34 AM PDT by MtnClimber

Those who love our country’s principles of justice — equality of rights, equality under the law, merit and responsibility — must not be taken in when old and precious words are given radically new and pernicious meanings. Such manipulation of language is a hallmark of ideological despotism that aims at the destruction of the capacity of citizens to speak and reason together about the “advantageous and the just,” as Aristotle put it so well more than two millennia ago at the beginning of his Politics.

The clear meaning of words must be respected if civic life is to endure in any meaningful way. Language, which is never merely “private language,” is rooted in common experience and, when undistorted by ideologues and tyrants, gives us access to a shared public space where the virtues and vices of human beings come to sight. Such is the venerable Western conception of the human being as a rational, ethical, and political animal, a conception challenged by every form of totalitarianism.

In the 20th century, the integrity of language came under systematic assault from totalitarian ideologues committed to the transformation of human nature and society. Cherished old words and concepts with tried-and-true meanings (“oldspeak,” as the totalitarians called them in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) gave way to “newspeak,” an ideological distortion of language that was woefully “wooden” (i.e., jargon-laden) and that deliberately undermined the human capacity to understand the most elementary realities before us. The age-old distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, were replaced by an ideology of “progress” where being “on the right side of History” is all that really matters. Being “reactionary” became the worst thing imaginable, requiring “reeducation” if not elimination.

Whatever served the cause of revolutionary transformation — however violent or mendacious — was said to be right and just, and thus obligatory. “Liberty,” “equality,” “peace,” “democracy,” and “justice” took on new, ideological meanings. All too often, this development went unappreciated by progressives and fellow travelers in the Western world. They, too, had come to accept the pernicious ideological distinction between “progress” and “reaction.” This distinction served to justify the unjustifiable, such as mass repression against those who were deemed “class enemies.”

The great sociologist of totalitarianism Paul Hollander liked to note that Western intellectuals and activists were never more impressed by Communist regimes than when they were most terroristic and surreal, such as during Stalin’s Great Terror or the Cultural Revolution unleashed by Chairman Mao. Even the poet W.H. Auden, who came to loathe totalitarianism, wrote excitedly in 1937 about “necessary murder.” Auden came to deeply regret that lapse in moral and civic judgment. Some indefatigable defenders of totalitarianism, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, never had such regrets.

One must be careful to avoid any simple or overwrought identification between the murderous ravages of classic totalitarianism and the totalitarian impulse as it manifests among the woke in America today. Civic and intellectual freedoms still exist in the Western world. Nonetheless, the thinking of the woke is undoubtedly totalitarian, and their linguistic deformations bear remarkable structural similarities to the earlier totalitarian abuse of language.....SNIP

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1 posted on 10/03/2024 7:13:34 AM PDT by MtnClimber

To: MtnClimber

2 posted on 10/03/2024 7:13:47 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)

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