Newspeak, 2007 style
H.R 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 recently passed by the House – a companion bill is in the Senate – is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment: It begins, “AN ACT – To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.”
Those whose pulse did not quicken at “other purposes” have probably not read George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” or they voted for the other George both times.
Orwell’s jeremiad on the corruption of the English language and its corrosive effect on a democracy was written two years before his novel “1984” spelled out in chilling detail the danger of Newspeak, which renders citizens incapable of independent thought by depriving them of the words necessary to form ideas other than those promulgated by the state.</em>
Lots of Orwell these days…
Continue with The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act: A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak
