LANGUAGE WARS AND GENESIS

In contemplating the general demise of language in our day and in particular the attack on language by ‘Post-modern academics’ (oxymoron!) one thing is clear. 

This is not a new development. 

History repeats itself over and over and over.

Santayana said it well; “if you do not know your history then you are doomed to repeat it.”

The assault on language is something that is historically common and features predominantly in times of trouble and/or as a developmental stage towards the conquering of something or someone.

I have a small book by George Orwell entitled: “Politics and the English Language’ and it addresses these issues. Incidentally it was written before his classic dystopian novel 1984 and foreshadows the ideas he put forth in ‘fictional’ terms in the thesis of the book.

Consider for example some comfortable English Professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and ones declared aims, one turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

There is so much more that I would like to quote from this book, particularly given his marvellous control of metaphor and pictorial illustration ("like a cuttlefish squirting ink"; what a marvellously imaginative metaphor for clouding the mental water), but it is probably better to purchase it rather inexpensively via Amazon.

This little volume is also chock full of insight, wisdom and observation about how those in power or those seeking power subvert the language to achieve their own agendas. This was most probably the grounding for his coinage of the term ‘Newspeak’ which is defined by Wikipedia as:

Newspeak is a controlled language, of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, a linguistic design meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that ideologically threatens the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who thus criminalized such concepts as thoughtcrime, contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy.

The subversion of the language is what is happening on a grand scale in the political and academic worlds of the West today. It is in part an attack on Western orthodoxy, a form of cultural Marxism which has morphed from the classic Marxist theory of a clash of class warfare into a clash of victims via the pathway of Gramscian ideology. It could also be the result of a metaphysical exhaustion with relativity and the rise of a will to meaning where some are wanting to believe in something, anything as long as it is not the Judaeo-Christian worldview. Hence the rise in outrageous philosophy's of  identity politics. The denigration of science and the rise of science fiction; i.e that we can choose our sex, race or even species. 

At the centre of it all is the use and abuse of language and it is onto this battlefield that a mild mannered Canadian professor of psychology strolls into You Tube notoriety by declaring unashamedly that he will not bow to the cultural Marxists corruption of the English language regarding preferred pronouns for the transgendered minority on the universities campus.

I wholeheartedly applaud his bold stand. He knows that to control language is to control thought (aka thoughtcrime) and that if these demonic manipulations are allowed to be accepted into the wider community, then we have virtually taken the first step in surrendering our freedoms, freedoms won at so great a cost by the ‘greatest generation’.

Peterson has courageously exhibited the way forward and we the ordinary, everyday ‘normal's’ in society must follow suit. We cannot allow these tiny, unrepresentative minorities to dominate and oppress (in the name of freedom and peace…1984 anyone?) us or our children. 

Remember most of history's murdering maniacs took control with tiny minorities....and then the axe fell. 

Education is one way that we can counteract the leaven of the beast, use any means necessary. The net, Facebook, your phone, vote at every opportunity, get involved in politics local and national, if you have money contribute to conservative causes...stand up and be counted for this is what we have been called to do. The very first mandate given in Genesis was that of the cultural imperative. Do it!