The danger of doublespeak

PLUS: Congressman Dan Goldman on House's President Biden impeachment inquiry

My fourteen-year-old mind appreciated “1984” by George Orwell. I understood its meaning and was absolutely certain that no such totalitarianism could ever exist in America. It was, however, clear that it existed in other places like the Soviet Union, China, Iran, and all of Eastern Europe. 

What bound those totalitarian societies were the way that they perceived truth, reality, or even clear language as a threat. Doublespeak existed as a daily practice over much of the world where the state subjugated human beings. The truth was always strangled in dictatorships. What became true was what the leader said was true. There was no debate beyond that. 

Among the greatest absurdities of the early 2000s was the insistence by Saddam Hussein’s spokesperson that there were no American tanks at the Baghdad airport when American tanks were there. 

Sean Spicer one upped him in 2017 when on day one of the Trump administration he lied to the world in “Baghdad Bob” fashion, insisting A is bigger than B, when in fact B was much larger than A.  There are many differences between Iraq and the United States. Two of them are that Baghdad Bob doesn’t appear on any Iraqi newscasts as a commentator, and he never danced on national television in a neon yellow shirt. 

There is an absurdism that is laughable between the antics of a Baghdad Bob or Sean Spicer, but there must also be a recognition between both of what is jointly chilling. Absurd lies can quickly become deadly lies. Those lies can become profoundly insidious when mandated by the state as dogma that impedes the freedom of speech, conscience and faith. 

In “1984,” Orwell introduces the concept of ‘doublespeak:’

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

There is a symmetry bordering on uniformity of Soviet-era architecture that stretches across thousands of miles of Europe across dozens of countries. It is soulless, brutal and ugly. Everywhere there is a lack of aesthetics, meaning or purpose rendered as design. Everything is bleak, hollow and grey. The same is true for language. 

Authoritarians hollow out the meaning of language and reduce words to pablum. Slogans replace thoughts, and conformity becomes enforced between the boundary lines of what can and cannot be said. The right combination of words can eviscerate meaning from any sentence and reduce it to a stultifying and stupefying stew of nothingness. The nothingness can be applied in many directions, including for the purposes of advancing indifference against evil in the name of a dogma or new ‘ism’ that always holds at its core that grievances are legitimate and payback earned. This ideology has been called many things, but no matter where it manifests itself or whatever it calls itself, it is antithetical to the concept of Americanism, which deserves robust defense — and now more than ever. 

Harvard is a place where Americanism has been replaced by a radical new dogmatism. It has replaced merit and academic achievement at one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning. It has been turned it into an ideological finishing school. Fareed Zakaria stated it perfectly when he said that elite US universities have gone from being “centers of excellence” to “institutions pushing political agendas.” It’s worth listening to more of what he has to say on the topic:

Unlike, Liz Magill, the former president of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard president Claudine Gay will keep her job after a long night of mild angst with the Harvard board. Below is the type of statement that I have written about above. It is opaque, bureaucratic, meaningless, banal and nothingness. 

As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University. Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.

In 1963, John Kennedy posed a question about the purpose of a private college or university in his remarks at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. It certainly applies to Harvard University today:

These and scores of others down through the years have recognized the obligations of the advantages which the graduation from a college such as this places upon them: to serve not only their private interest but the public interest as well. Many years ago, Woodrow Wilson said, "What good is a political party unless it's serving a great national purpose?" And what good is a private college or university unless it's serving a great national purpose? The library being constructed today - this College itself, all of this, of course, was not done merely to give this school's graduates an advantage, an economic advantage, in the life struggle. It does do that. But in return for that, in return for the great opportunity which society gives the graduates of this and related schools, it seems to me incumbent upon this and other schools' graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public interest. Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility. And I think, as your President said, that it must be a source of satisfaction to you that this school's graduates have recognized it. And I hope that the students who are here now will also recognize it in the future.

Harvard should re-examine its purpose. Perhaps a field trip for President Gay and the board will help them to understand the role of institutions like Harvard in teaching the greatest lessons that human history has ever offered.

They should go to Auschwitz, Wannsee and then to Theresienstadt, with a stop in Lidice. They are a group of people who badly need refreshing about the most important lessons of history from humanity’s greatest crisis. When they look at the long glass cases of Jewish children’s shoes and the cases of human hair perhaps they can ponder the concept of pain and their institutional obligation.

---

VIDEO COMMENTARY: Congressman calls House’s impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden a “sham”

I sat down with Representative Dan Goldman to discuss the Republican impeachment inquiry of President Biden, why they are insistent on consistently attacking his son Hunter, and how Donald Trump fits into their grand plan:

---