Over at familysecuritymatters.com, Ronald R. Cherry M.D., has a very good article on Doublethink; the stratagems Totalitarians deploy to obscure reality.
“In order to control millions of people totalitarian or proto-totalitarian governments find it necessary to somehow prod their subjects into accepting that which is not true. Intelligent people will naturally see the truth and thereby comprehend when government lies to them – and so that’s the rub – how does totalitarian government deal with intelligent people when they must be lied to? George Orwell provides the answer – intelligent people must be conditioned to reject self-evident truth – to reject the sanity of common sense – to accept the insanity of Orwellian Doublethink – to accept the lie and the truth in their minds simultaneously – “with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
How do Dictatorships lie to intelligent people and get away with it? In the early stages of totalitarianism the use of Orwellian Newspeak is preferred to blatant in-your-face lies because Newspeak (otherwise known as Doublespeak) is the clever manipulation of words which mean one thing to the speaker and something very different or it’s opposite to the listener, thus one may plant a false idea into another’s head by lying to them directly, or by using the tricky technique of Doublespeak. For example a politician utters support for a woman’s “right to choose” – Orwellian Doublespeak for supporting a woman’s right to kill. Another politician is an advocate of “climate change” – Orwellian Doublespeak for belief in man-caused global warming – and a denial of solar–driven climate change which results in both global warming and global cooling. In the mind of a co-believer the words “climate change” evoke an image of man-made global warming. In the mind of a naive man the words “climate change” evoke an image of the natural changes that occur in weather – both warming and cooling. Mission accomplished – simply by uttering the incantation “climate change” the politician may win the approval of both – each with opposite mental images – one false and one true – hopefully gaining the vote of both. The politician does not advocate natural solar-driven climate change, but the naive man now thinks he does because that is the image painted in his mind by the Orwellian Doublespeak words “climate change.” This rhetorical technique is superior (in the wrongful sense) to the direct lie because, at the end of the day, the naive man will possess the same false idea that would occur had the politician lied to him directly – by telling him (the naive man) that he (the politician) believed in natural solar-driven climate change – but with the use of Orwellian Doublespeak there is the advantage of plausible deniability regarding the implantation of a false idea. The naive man may be intelligent enough to figure it all out (that the politician does not advocate natural solar-driven climate change), but the politician hopes the man has been conditioned by Orwellian Doublethink into acceptance of the lie and the truth simultaneously, and still have his vote.
Doublespeak lies tend to confuse or escape the notice of unsuspecting people. For example, government which confiscates middle class property through excessive taxation, while lining their own pockets and redistributing the stolen property to a lazy so-called proletariat class – in return for votes – is government deemed to be a provider of “Equity” and “Social Justice.” Never mind that forced equal property outcome destroys the work ethic of both the middle class and the so-called proletariat class leading to economic collapse, and never mind that forced equal property outcome is a big Orwellian lie because, like the Pigs of Animal Farm, the self-serving government class empowered to take (collectivize) the people’s property always ends up with the lion’s share of the people’s property – the worst form of inequity and social injustice. Greed and theft by the people who administer totalitarian government cannot be publically identified as greed and theft, so the injustice is called “Social Justice” – Orwellian Doublespeak for government greed and theft. Another example of Doublespeak is the term “Affirmative Action” – words used to describe the destruction of a student’s right to gain graduate school admission based on an out-of-favor ethnic group or skin color – rather than admission based purely on academic achievement and studious preparation – thus “Affirmative Action” is a politically correct Doublespeak term for affirmation of wrong action. We also have the phrase “Living Constitution” – Orwellian Doublespeak for Dead Constitution. The “Living Constitution” is law which is not derived from We the People, law not derived from the American majority, but law arbitrarily derived from a small judicial or administrative minority. The so-called “Living Constitution” does not take its breath of life from the people’s amendment process (the real life and breath of our Constitution) but from the minds of a small effete class of “Philosopher Kings.” Constitutional law derived exclusively from a small governing minority means the Constitution is living for them – but dead for the rest of us – the opposite of what our Founding Fathers intended.” (from the article)
Read the whole article here.
