The meaning of words

One of the weapons of propaganda is a continuous effort to influence the language itself. As Orwell said in "1984", the goal is to change the language to the point when no "wrong" thoughts can be expressed. Since Obama's take over in 2009, the nation could see a number of rather peculiar attempts of the White House at newspeak. Terrorist attacks became "man-caused disaster". A terror attack by a deranged Islamist were characterized as "workplace violence", while Time magazine speculated if major Hasan contracted the Post-Tramautic Stress Disorder from the returning soldiers. American were told that the worst tragedy of the Fort Hood attack could be "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." Apparently, the need to hire supporters of Islamic terrorism is what constitutes diversity in the eyes of the Obama administration, and "not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength" which should we cannot afford to lose.

Obama administration seemed to decided that it was a great idea to test how far they can push the absurd in our everyday life. Charles Bolden, the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, listed Obama's priorities for NASA: "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering — science, math and engineering." A careful observer would notice that space exploration was not in the top 3 goals of NASA - but making Moslems feel better about themselves was.

The mainstream media obviously is trying to follow the lead of their leader. As a political gesture, AP (a media monopoly) outlawed the term "illegal immigrant". Apparently, some people (i.e. liberals) did not like the term, and it only made sense that AP had to follow orders from the crowd. 

Recently, my attention was caught by the CNN's article (other news outlets are no better). In the wake of the Moslem Boston bombing, CNN published an article on terrorism. Here is the offending passage:

Of the 380 individuals indicted for acts of political violence or for conspiring to carry out such attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, 77 were able to obtain explosives or the components necessary to build a bomb, according to a count by the New America Foundation.

Of those, 48 were right-wing extremists, 23 were militants inspired by al Qaeda's ideology, five have been described as anarchists and one was an environmentalist terrorist.

There are a few interesting notes here. Firstly, White racists, anti-semites and nut-cases are arbitrarily called "right-wing" - even though there is little ideological correlation between most of these people except their support for terrorism.

On the other side, Moslem terrorists, united in their Moslem faith are claimed to be "inspired by al Qaeda's ideology". Left-wing, progressive terrorists are assigned a misnomer of "anarchists", as if those people were extreme followers of Bakunin. Any objective person would see a bias in CNN's reporting - and a more careful observer would note that this is clearly an attempt of influencing the nation's mind through changes in vocabulary.


It's also interesting to note that Scott Roeder,  a schizophrenic, and a member of the pseudo-anarchist group "Sovereign Citizen Movement" who killed an abortionist is also characterized as "right-wing". In general, any anti-abortion group is claimed to be right-wing - and this highlights a rather peculiar dichotomy. Doctor Kermit Gosnell, an infamous abortionist is personally responsible for murdering hundreds if not thousands of babies through so-called "abortions". Many of the children were murdered outside the womb (although it is left unexplained what is the major difference between killing a 24 week viable baby inside the woman or beheading it later). Dozens of people from Gosnell's medical personal, Planned Parenthood, government officials,  and numerous of his patients covered up his crimes. And yet, all these people, clear supporters of abortion without limits, are never classified as "liberal", "left-wing" or "progressive". Common sense would dictate that if freedom of abortion is a dividing line between right-wing and left-wing, then Doctor Gosnell would clearly fall in the category of a hard-core progressive individual. A media outlet which seeks the truth would also note that Barack Obama, then an Illinois senator, objected to the proposed law that would have made Gosnell's behavior illegal.

I have little doubt that my readers will find other numerous examples of the left-wing attempt to change our vocabulary. A few additional examples would include "kinetic military action" as a substitute for "war", as well as "diversity" and "affirmative action" as code words for "discrimination based on race".

The article will not be complete if I did not share the euphemism that I invented - "reverse reverse discrimination" to denote the reaction of White Americans to "affirmative action".