http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/A-lesson-in-Newspeak-8050
JANUARY 2015
A lesson in Newspeak
by Daniel Hannan
A damaging semantic shift
(uddrag)
A glossary will give some indication of how loaded the linguistics are against conservatives.
RIGHT-WING: Baddie. Vladimir Putin, a lifelong KGB man who regrets the break-up of the USSR, is invading neighboring countries. This is a bad thing, so he must be “right-wing.” The mullahs in Iran abolished the monarchy, nationalized industry, and drove most of the middle classes into exile. But they’re also nasty, so they, too, must be “right-wing.” A crazed gunman goes into a school and . . . oh, you get the picture.
DIVERSITY: People who look different but think the same way. Diversity applies to race, sex, disability, and sexual orientation. It emphatically does not apply to opinion. Indeed, when it comes to political views, it has taken on more or less the opposite of its Oldspeak meaning.
GREED: Wanting to keep your own money.
NEED: Wanting to be given someone else’s.
COMPASSION: A politician arranging the transfer.
FAIRNESS: State-enforced equality. It absolutely doesn’t mean reciprocity, proportionate reward, or just deserts.
INVESTMENT: Government spending. Any lingering trace of the original meaning—that is, of assets producing some kind of return—was obliterated by the spending splurge that preceded the 2008 crash. The beauty of the word, from the Left’s point of view, is its flexibility. Almost any financial settlement can be described as “underinvestment,” in the sense of being a smaller settlement than someone, somewhere would ideally have liked.
Discrimination: Being unpleasant to women or black people. Literally, of course, discrimination simply means discernment. It is something we practice every time we decide between alternatives. But its political undertones have spilled over into every usage of the word, so that discrimination, in any context, becomes discreditable. A firm that discriminates in favor of properly qualified applicants, or a university that insists on good exam results, cannot wholly escape the sense that it is doing something shameful.
COMMUNITY: The state—or, more precisely, the state’s bureaucracy. The one thing it emphatically doesn’t mean is a voluntary association of individuals. When people talk of “involving the community,” they invariably want more legislation.
FAMILY VALUES: Hilarious escapade involving a conservative politician. In fact, even the phrase “conservative politician” is taking on comical connotations. Mention it in front of a hip talk-show crowd and you’re guaranteed an appreciative titter.
XENOPHOBIA: Opposition to the European Union. By a curious inversion, you demonstrate your broadmindedness by continuing to support the Brussels racket, however illiberal or undemocratic it becomes, but condemn yourself as a bigot if you value the independence of other countries. Xenophobia (or “Europhobia”) has nothing to do with whether you feel comfortable with other cultures. Neil Kinnock, a former European Commissioner, has helpfully explained that skeptics don’t stop being xenophobes “just because they happen to speak fluent Catalan or whatever.” The only way to escape the charge is to proclaim your support for the Brussels institutions.
PROFIT: Wickedness. Always a bad thing, but the severity of the term varies according to context. When talking about a supermarket, it simply means greed (q.v.) and exploitation. When discussing trains or hospitals, it means homicidal tendencies, and is thus used as an antonym to safety—which, of course, means more regulation.
POVERTY: Inequality. Poverty is officially defined in the U.K. as having an income less than 60 percent of the mean. A few people get rich and, even if you’re better off in absolute terms, you’re suddenly “poor.” Funnily enough, the recent recession, which saw incomes drop at every level, caused a fall in “poverty” by this definition, but Lefties were more upset than ever. There really is no pleasing some people.
DOGMATIC: Believing in free markets, as in “the Republicans have a dogmatic attachment to the private sector.” Here is another example of a word taking on the converse of its previous meaning. Being dogmatic used to mean believing in something against the evidence. Yet free enterprise is counterintuitive: You would think that a planned economy would be much more efficient than one where people were left to do their own thing higgledy-piggledy. Nonetheless, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the market works in practice. The truth, as Matt Ridley has put it, is that privatization is not a dogma but a pragma.............................
