Now here is quite a thing. What is being suggested, is that the primary users of any of these terms are supposedly Russian bots, or other vectors for material that can be 'safely dismissed' out of hand as "propaganda".
This is not, strictly speaking, "Orwellian" - in the sense of Orwell's conception of "Newspeak". That, after all, was the deliberate efforts to change cognition and render rebellion impossible through the policing of language by removing whole words and thus, potentially, concepts ... whilst proffering other, more rote and mechanical formulations elsewhere. A pruning and 'simplification' of thought, with the goal of removing the "thought" bit.
No, this is something else. It is keeping alive [for how long, who can say], these terms rather than attempting to obviate them from our collective political discourse.
And doing so with a very specific agenda in mind - rendering them from potentially quite apt terms of description and/or castigation ... particularly of those in power today [you know, the politics of the "Establishment" .. oop there's one right there!] ... into taboo terms.
Words which delineate and demarcate the user, the possessor as some sort of false-flag enemy agent; who has no interest in the furtherance of democracy or in the positive participation of their state's genuine political process. And who therefore, once again, can safely be de-legitimated rather than listened to or otherwise dialogued with (lest they, you know, change the minds of people they talk to with facts and/or persuasive rhetoric) , as "propaganda and propagandists do not argue in good faith" or whatever.
In a way, it is even more effective than the properly Orwellian approach outlined several paragraphs above.
Because it is not attempting to render un-words, concepts with long and embedded histories in the English [or, for that matter, any other] Lexicon and accompanying political consciousness.
Besides, as an associate pointed out with reference to Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun series ... there's a reasonable argument that even removing words does not, in and of itself, manage to successfully 'reprogram the human mind' to remove entire concepts in the manner envisaged by Orwell's fictional governmental antagonists. It simply means we find new ways to express them.
Even assuming that "forbidden words" themselves don't remain or even encounter additional currency and saliency in less public popular/political culture. [this may or may not be an instance of the Streisand Effect] .
So instead, we have this - the attempt to turn the proper and appropriate words to describe things as they are [even though they are, yes, often over-used in some particulars, and with rather flexible definitional ambits ... as, as it happens, are almost all terms of serious political discourse anyway ["Democracy", anyone?], but I digress ... ] ...
... to turn these words into things that will be kept alive rather than erased. Precisely because they serve to mark out whom you're not allowed to listen to, and what you're not allowed to hear or "take seriously".
As I said above - in a way, this is more effective than simple erasure. As it is easier, in many spheres and in many respects to learn to "hate" than it is to "forget".
Now as a bit of a disclaimer, I do happen to think that quite frequently, "Rothschild" is basically a hallmark of conspiracy-theory tier rambling specularism rather than any serious nor immanent Critique of Power; and I can definitely see how both that and "Zionist" can be utilized in manners which we might broadly term "Anti-Semitic".
But it is a strange world indeed, to wake up one morning and find out that the commonly accepted Academic Term for the dominant politico-economic paradigm of the last thirty years here in the Anglosphere [and, for that matter, much further afield - via its neo-"imperialist" imposition as part and parcel with the "Neocon" foreign policy-set ... referred to, once again in literal academic textbooks as the "Neo-Neo Synthesis/Consensus"] ...
... that this is now apparently some sort of insta-signifer of subversive Russian State Agent employ, by the user.
No, the primary use for terms such as "Neoliberal" has, and is, and will be - the observational and deductive calling out of Neoliberalism. As, and when and whyfor it occurs.
No wonder you're "not allowed"" to use it, Citizen!
In a manner akin to the true ending of the parable of The Emperor's New Clothes - wherein the small child is locked up for insulting Royalty , by pointing out the actual nature of the foolish Ruler's new "garments" ..
... the one thing "they in Power" absolutely cannot stand is a simple, succinct, and easily communicated/understood statement of Truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment