Anyone who’s studied the George Orwell novel 1984 want to explain to me what the fucking point of “newspeak” is and why it’s not a strawman “we’re gonna make the commies seem like supervillains and do random stupid shit for no reason” type trope? Because when has any prominent figure in socialism or communism ever suggested dumbing down language? Give me an example of a commie language reinvention please, 1984 is supposed to be the definitive manual on what happened under communism isn’t it?
Also detecting a hint of racism in that plotpoint because there really are real languages that evolved naturally where the positive and negative expressions are indeed structured as good, not good, very good, very not good, etc. Is it trying to say that people speaking those languages are bad at expressing their thoughts because it’s not how English does it?
Actually, Chinese is kind of like this with its use of pre/suffixes. Chinese is also one of the best languages for poetry and literature. Source: Native Mandarin speaker.
While obviously an anticommunist book, Newspeak is still a useful metaphor for the way states control the accepted dialogue and thought process of a population. Look at how in Western headlines and political education, complex geopolitical situations with complex processes and unique material conditions driving them are distilled into fantasy concepts like “good vs evil” or “freedom vs authoritarianism,” or even “big government vs small government.” It’s childish. Look how distracting garbage pop media and social media bots compare empire-friendly leaders like Zelensky to MCU and Star Wars heroes, obfuscating their actual function to fulfilling the agenda of ruling class oligarchs. Look how social media algorithms essentially censor news or opinions that run counter to empire controlled narratives and how Texas high school history books aggressively lie and fabricate events. Look how most liberals have been gaslighted their entire lives to not critically entertain any political idea or proposed solution to a problem that is outside the ever-shrinking and rightward Overton window. Look how Westerners have been gaslighted into thinking that anyone who comes out of a ruling class, elitist instution must be more qualified than a person coming through a working class institution, by default. Look how so many people in the West seem to have been trained to see ridicule on late-night comedy shows as the full extent of proper activism.
The thing with Newspeak, is that it very much exists outside of Orwell’s metaphor. It’s just that it’s much more prevalent and successful in imperialist countries.
Because when has any prominent figure in socialism or communism ever suggested dumbing down language? Give me an example of a commie language reinvention please
Okay so it’s not actually dumbing down or reinvention, but you asked and someone is bound to bring it up, so it’s better to hear from a friendly comrade.
After the socialist revolution in Russia, the new government did in fact have a language reform. Alphabet was streamlined and standardized, famously removing excessive letters (that made learning the language a pain), etc. They also had a bit of a thing for acronyms, which apparently caused quite a lot of butthurt among “lovers of traditional culture”, such as Solzhenitsyn.
Otherwise I agree with comrade Beat, it’s largely a projection of processes that’s been going on in capitalism
Sounds similar to simplified Chinese. Which was intended to, get this Orwell, increase literacy in a country where the vast majority of the population at the time was totally illiterate, and to, shocker of shockers, increase access to information by the common citizen. The exact opposite of Newspeak.
And of course the Chinese supremacists (yes those exist, I’ve interacted with them as a Chinese person myself) hate Simplified Chinese because it’s “destroying culture”, it’s not, and I shit you not this is a real argument I’ve heard at least once: “The Chinese script we know now was historically for the royalty and nobility. The commoners had their own scripts similar to how hieroglyphics was only for the Pharoh in Ancient Egypt. It’s disrespectful to the history and culture of China to mess with this.” Might be why HK and Taiwan didn’t adopt it?
Sounds eerily similar to the Russian empire simps. But I suppose such things are to be expected.
Also you’re on point about increasing literacy, since prior to the socialist revolution, Russian empire didn’t exactly have high literacy rate. Or electricity for that matter - that was also dem ebil commies, destroying muh traditional culture
Give me an example of a commie language reinvention please… Actually, Chinese is kind of like this with its use of pre/suffixes. Chinese is also one of the best languages for poetry and literature. Source: Native Mandarin speaker.
Didn’t the CPC simplify the Chinese characters so that they’re easier to write and learn? Although I’m not sure if Orwell was alive at the time that happened or if that change is really comparable to what IngSoc did. Either way, if burgerland is proof of anything, dumbing down the people is a lot easier than dumbing down the language.
@ArtBot@lemmygrad.ml literally 1984.
Here are images for the prompt: literally 1984.
Images
As always, it is projection. Newspeak absolutely do exist but you can see it half of the day in commercials in TV and such.
Are they still trying to make “alternative facts” happen?
Basically entire western media now is alternative facts. In some cases like Ukraine War or US economy just mere alternative facts would be improvement over their current density of copium and outright lies.
I’ve seen it mostly as a criticism of constructed ubiquitous language within the bureaucracies, but as an example I can only see shortening of “identity politics” to “idpol”
1984 doubleplusungood tripleplusbagofshit
