Speaking of Politics

...And Orwell’s experience in the Spanish Civil War certainly darkened his view of modern politics: He had seen the propaganda of Spanish Communists reported in England as truth, and their brutality ignored altogether...

...The best way to explain is by quoting a couple of typical references to it from journalists...

...Isaac Rosenfeld once observed that Orwell was a “radical in politics and a conservative in feeling,” and here Orwell makes an error to which conservatives are naturally prone: that of supposing people have become dumber during a period which happens to coincide with one’s adult memory...

...In my mind, the rightness of his statement excuses whatever tergiversations he feels he must employ to make his position more acceptable to the public...

...Indeed, both these writers entertain the same fear...

...Politics and the English Language” is worth reading, and probably deserves its place in college writing textbooks, but that’s despite rather than because of the fact that it rests on the mistaken premise that abuses of the English language have become more frequent and more fl agrant in recent times than they were in some unspecifi ed past...

...Yet journalists and intellectuals often fi nd it irresistible to believe that most people lack the mental means to see through the skulduggery of modern politics...

...People by and large aren’t impressed by transparent lies: That’s what makes them transparent...

...The passage from Orwell’s essay most often quoted is this one: The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifi es “something not desirable...

...Often, though, this says as much about our own political opinions as about anything else...

...It’s strange that George Orwell, so dismissive of those whom he derided as “intellectuals,” should have adopted essentially the same attitude...

...Thus, the Berkeley linguistician George Lakoff has convinced a large proportion of the Democratic party that Republicans have maintained power for such an unaccountably long time by simply reworking a few phrases to their advantage: “Death tax” instead of inheritance tax, “tax relief ” instead of “tax cut,” “pro-life” instead of “antiabortion,” and so on...

...Here, to take one of countless examples, is the fi rst paragraph of a recent column by John Naughton in the Observer, Britain’s left-wing Sunday paper: “Political language,” observed George Orwell in his great essay on “Politics and the English Language,” “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind...

...Leave aside, if you can, the loathsome prose (hijacking proves pernicious when offi cials deodorize programs...

...The reason for this has to do with the double standard we apply to political pronouncements...

...What he certainly did believe, however, was that clever people could control an entire population by means of linguistic trickery...

...It would be easy to update Orwell’s famous observation that “Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifi es ‘something not desirable.’” We can all think of terms used so promiscuously for political ends that their meanings have become too fl exible to be useful...

...That belief is evident in Animal Farm and, most conspicuously, in 1984...

...Any literate person who follows politics with even cursory attention will have experienced the nausea brought on by hearing vacuous or obviously false statements made in such a way as to disguise rather than express what the speaker knows to be true...

...One writer, he says, “knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink...

...Does Okrent remember the Violence Against Women Act or the Educational Excellence for All Children Act...

...Although a bold and original pronouncement may persuade its hearers, a tawdry one (of the kind bemoaned by Orwell) merely boosts morale among the committed...

...That is, the person who uses them has his own private defi nition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different...

...That people in such societies wearily acquiesce to lies doesn’t mean they believe them...

...In their view, politicians—or at least those politicians of whom they disapprove—are apt to “hijack the language,” to use Okrent’s phrase...

...Mind you, Okrent and Naughton aren’t themselves fooled by the semiotic tricks of the powerful...

...namely, that a large part of the general population can be manipulated by the clever or cynical use of words— turned this way and that as a drayhorse responds to “gee” and “haw...

...The point is that those, like Orwell, who believe politicians are manipulating great numbers of people by means of shrewdly concocted rhetoric are missing a basic truth about democratic culture...

...His failure in that regard is at least partly the result of his constitutional gloominess (“the most hopeless person I ever met and probably the most unhappy,” one friend said of him...

...And should the Civil Rights Act have been given a more impartial title?] Even the most committed Republicans must recognize that such phrases could apply to measures guaranteeing the opposite of what they claim to accomplish...

...in which the state exercises, or attempts to exercise, total control over what can be said and published...

...Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way...

...empty rhetoric doesn’t alter, and certainly doesn’t dictate, political opinion...

...In this, he had more in common with the intellectuals he despised than he thought...

...However, I expect absolute clarity and precision from the politician with whom I have little or no sympathy, and if he says something vague or illogical, I will interpret it as vague or illogical, and think poorly of those who excuse its vagueness or illogic on political grounds...

...Here is Daniel Okrent of the New York Times: Hijacking the language proves especially pernicious when government offi cials deodorize their programs with near-Orwellian euphemism...

...The Bush administration has been especially good at this...

...And of course, there are huge numbers of intellectuals who believe the phrase “war on terrorism” is a magnifi cent hoax perpetrated on an imbecilic electorate...

...It’s other people they’re worried about...

...People whose job it is to put words together—journalists, intellectuals— will never believe this...

...Whatever his reasons, he couldn’t reconcile himself to the possibility that average people weren’t gullible boobs...

...Political opinion follows empty rhetoric...

...Similarly the British political writer Robert Fisk thinks American politicians have managed to sell what he, Fisk, thinks are obviously inhumane policies in the Middle East by the judicious use of a single word, “terrorism...

...BY BARTON SWAIM George Orwell was the greatest political essayist since William Hazlitt, and like Hazlitt’s, his essays delight even when they’re wrong...

...If Orwell were writing “Politics and the English Language” today, he’d need a telephone book to contain his “catalog of swindles and perversions...

...Okrent seems sincerely to believe that the preemptive titles legislators give their bills are able somehow to coax people into supporting or thinking favorably of them...

...just count the number of times self-anointing phrases like “Patriot Act,” “Clear Skies Act” or “No Child Left Behind Act” appear in The Times, at each appearance sounding as wholesome as a hymn...

...They can’t...

...Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality...

...Now, it’s easy to sympathize with Orwell’s outrage...

...Much the same applies to the output of the public relations industry...

...And this is true even in societies Barton Swaim is author of the forthcoming Scottish Men of Letters and the New Public Sphere...

...Or take Naughton’s high-minded description of journalism’s function: “One of the most important public services that mainstream journalism can provide,” he thinks, is that of “translating” the “half-truths, unsupported assertions and evasions” of “PRspeak...

...It’s a form of disdain that lurks behind “Politics and the English Language,” too...

...I am prepared to tolerate an element of ambiguity or logical sloppiness in a statement made by a politician with whom I have great sympathy for the simple reason that I already think he’s right...

...One of the most important public services that mainstream journalism can provide, therefore, consists of decoding PRspeak: translating its half-truths, unsupported assertions and evasions into plain English...

...But the real trouble with “Politics and the English Language” is attitudinal rather than philosophical or factual...

...Orwell enjoyed overstating himself, and likely didn’t literally believe that “all political parties” were in the business of making “murder respectable...

...Just look at the sentence quoted by Naughton—incompletely quoted, I should say, for it reads in full: “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind...

...The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another...

...The disdain apparent in that remark is spectacular...

...Probably Orwell’s most famous essay is “Politics and the English Language” (1946), a rambling and deliciously witty attack on writers who allow political clich?s and other varieties of formulaic balderdash to do their thinking for them...

...This is untrue, of course, except in the technical sense that more things were written and published in 1946 than 50 or 100 years before, and so more of it was nonsense...

...More often journalists summon Orwell’s essay to make objectionable politicians look sinister or ridiculous...

...It’s essential to remember, though, that this kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand, the deliberate separation of words and phrases from their meanings, doesn’t convince people who don’t already agree...

...Statements like Marshal P?tain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive...

...It’s too gratifying for them to believe that wordsmiths are ultimately in charge...

...That is, to some degree, why he hated the leftwing intelligentsia of which he was so uncomfortable a part: He felt that they used their talent for words to mislead decent and patriotic people with the empty verbiage of moral equivalence...