Excellent post. As someone who cares about words and writing I have one more objection to Wokespeak: it's boring. Try this. Make a list of supposedly outdated words and their modern progressive replacements. The old words have color and personality while the new words are just blah. Who wants to read a crime novel that features a "formerly incarcerated person"? Who wants to read a romance about a "person who menstruates"? Not me. Give me your trannies, your gangbangers, your old ladies. No offense...
Another example is how somebody who was "homeless" is now "experiencing homelessness" and "drug addicts" are "experiencing addiction" -- passive language that stresses the victim mentality.
Yes, it sound as if the experiencers were walking along one day, minding their own business, when the named experiences fell on them, like a piano suspended above going into/out of a building and the hoists broke.
I saw this happening decades ago like a slow moving train wreck coming. It started during the second term of the W presidency. What infuriates me is that the same Ivy League managerial class that opened the door for this with their recklessness and costly wars, and reckless looting the economy to a catastrophic mess that they then bail themselves out of… are pushing this divisive woke toxicity through the media that they own, to deflect from the public from TRULY WAKING UP to the fact that almost everything broken today is their doing.
It is not surprise that the radical man-hating 3rd wave feminists are jumping into this social justice language power trip; but rank and file liberal progressives are all in too. I debate our standard older crunchy coastal liberal progressive on these topics, and there is barely a hair’s width disagreement between them and the radical leftists. Just jump on Heather Cox Richardson Substack and read the comments. These are generally older liberals and they have all ingested the woke sickness. I think I know why. The Democrats noted they were not very popular in the 2010 election after they danced in the street believing they had turned the corner from the 2008 election. Their blue domination was wiped out by a red wave. And this caused a sort of panic in the liberal progressive community in that nobody feeling they were the accepted power likes being told they were wrong.
So the libs embraced the left radicals for the needed demographic power to win elections. It has just ramped up from there. The Democrat party is the party of left radicals because otherwise the left radicals would form their own political party and the Democrats would be toast.
Old liberal progressives shouldn’t be supportive of this radical language tyranny and destruction of 1A rights, but they hold their political wins and ideological relevancy as bigger psychological needs. And THIS is why we have such a problem today seeing this toxic, anti-American woke garbage shoved down our throats. Because if rank and file Democrats would behave as normal, moral and rational… they too would reject the radical language tyranny and it would die on the vine.
Language matters. English has more words, with more subtleties of meaning, than other Western languages. It’s not an accident that the Anglosphere came to dominate the civilized world.
The leftist perversion of language is a blatant attempt at restricting and perverting thought. I’m grateful for eloquent writers who fight this most important battle. Thanks to you and others here on Substack for effectively using our English language to help preserve our freedom. If we allow them to control language, all will be lost.
Leftists have been using their control of media and academia to conflate and distort the meanings of words at least since Woodrow Wilson took the word 'progressive', which had been an adjective used mostly by Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt, and turned it into a misleading political label.
"liberal Adj. a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."
Oxford English Dictionary
In the U.S., a 'liberal' was a person who believed in free enterprise and limited government (a meaning it retained in the rest of the English-speaking world until recently, as per the OED). But FDR simply reversed the meaning in a famous speech in 1941 (by which time Americans had begun to realize that 'Progressivism was just socialism), and the U.S. media dutifully obeyed and made the lie a linguistic reality in America.
U.S. Leftists need to frequently change the term used to refer to them, to hide what they really are.
I think there are two root causes here, which might be one now that the global-corporate state has merged with the New Left to form Social Justice Inc.:
First is the post-WW2 consensus, which in this regard boils down to: CROWD CONTROL. The government-corporate-bureaucratic nexus that runs the West believes that the populace needs a firm hand to keep them from plotting any further genocides, and thus view themselves as shepherds of the benighted masses who need to be molded and penned by media, cultural and educational training to have all the proper beliefs—such as xenophilia replacing xenophobia, cosmopolitanism replacing nationalism, and aversion to minorities replaced by deep concern for their welfare.
Second is the the failure of 20th-century Communism and how its priesthood regrouped in the face of the proletariat refusing to play its appointed role in their ideological/eschatological fantasies. Once the Left abandoned materialism for emotionalism and the working class for disaffected bourgeois children and a "coalition of the marginalized", they suddenly discovered—quelle coincidence!—that oppression wasn't located in wages and living conditions but in language and books (or as they would call them "texts"). This allowed our Left clerisy to stay in the library and faculty lounge, still get tenure and book deals, yet pursue their revolutionary program (aka Animal Farm).
Their project is essentially the Sovietization of our entire discourse, building word by word and idea by idea, with of course the ultimate goal being to control what we do and think by controlling what we say. And it's easy to see the end goal they aspire to by just reading any Social Justice text: dour scolding moralism deep-fried in resentment, masquerading as "transgressive liberation".
I would say more here but I'm late for a date with a "cisgender sex worker" LOL.
"soft totalitarianism depends on people being afraid of losing comfort, status, and employment to force conformity"
What happens when people have no comfort to lose...or no employment to gain? And when status is only earned through abject sycophancy/servitude to the state?
I would imagine it could become HARD totalitarianism.
Excellent. The first ten pages of Hayakawa's "Language in Thought and Action" (going from memory, I think that was the book, from the late 1940s), a masterpiece, described the lack of acceptance by members of a fictional society of those on the dole when the dole was called "welfare," vs. the acceptance by members of a competing society of those on the dole when the dole was called "unemployment." Ever since, I've simply said, "Words are crucial. They shape our thinking."
"Language-policing Leftists are getting upset with white people for failing to do “a little research, understanding the history and the different semantic valences of a particular term” in order to gauge the “appropriateness of a use in a particular context.”
Wait just a minute, now we are supposed to do our own research???!!!
I suspect that the term “political correctness” derived from the term “politically correct” which I first encountered in 1970 during a demonstration. I suspect it goes back to usage by American Communists in the twenties or thirties. Prior to that it probably goes back to Stalin’s Russia or even Lenin , in transition of course!
"And the penalties for violating the new taboos are extreme, including losing your livelihood and having your reputation permanently ruined. … It’s incumbent on all of us to push back."
By coincidence, I just finished reading the lead item in the September 3, 2023 newsletter of the Free Speech Union:
I love your writing. You have a way of putting things bluntly, succinctly in a way that seems so OBVIOUS, which of course it is, which is why no one is really saying it.
As a theatre artist, I often bemoan what has become of the art form due to what you’ve explained here. No more common humanity. No more human nature to be discovered developed or explored. Only tedious sententious shibboleths about “positionality” or “matrices of oppression”. All things good and true, fascinating and human, wonder, joy, awe, humor, all have been leveled and stripped away.
Excellent post. As someone who cares about words and writing I have one more objection to Wokespeak: it's boring. Try this. Make a list of supposedly outdated words and their modern progressive replacements. The old words have color and personality while the new words are just blah. Who wants to read a crime novel that features a "formerly incarcerated person"? Who wants to read a romance about a "person who menstruates"? Not me. Give me your trannies, your gangbangers, your old ladies. No offense...
Another example is how somebody who was "homeless" is now "experiencing homelessness" and "drug addicts" are "experiencing addiction" -- passive language that stresses the victim mentality.
Yes, it sound as if the experiencers were walking along one day, minding their own business, when the named experiences fell on them, like a piano suspended above going into/out of a building and the hoists broke.
Haha exactly! 🤪
I'm experiencing nausea. 🤢😉
Ha!
“I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.
” John Wayne
Another home run article.
I saw this happening decades ago like a slow moving train wreck coming. It started during the second term of the W presidency. What infuriates me is that the same Ivy League managerial class that opened the door for this with their recklessness and costly wars, and reckless looting the economy to a catastrophic mess that they then bail themselves out of… are pushing this divisive woke toxicity through the media that they own, to deflect from the public from TRULY WAKING UP to the fact that almost everything broken today is their doing.
It is not surprise that the radical man-hating 3rd wave feminists are jumping into this social justice language power trip; but rank and file liberal progressives are all in too. I debate our standard older crunchy coastal liberal progressive on these topics, and there is barely a hair’s width disagreement between them and the radical leftists. Just jump on Heather Cox Richardson Substack and read the comments. These are generally older liberals and they have all ingested the woke sickness. I think I know why. The Democrats noted they were not very popular in the 2010 election after they danced in the street believing they had turned the corner from the 2008 election. Their blue domination was wiped out by a red wave. And this caused a sort of panic in the liberal progressive community in that nobody feeling they were the accepted power likes being told they were wrong.
So the libs embraced the left radicals for the needed demographic power to win elections. It has just ramped up from there. The Democrat party is the party of left radicals because otherwise the left radicals would form their own political party and the Democrats would be toast.
Old liberal progressives shouldn’t be supportive of this radical language tyranny and destruction of 1A rights, but they hold their political wins and ideological relevancy as bigger psychological needs. And THIS is why we have such a problem today seeing this toxic, anti-American woke garbage shoved down our throats. Because if rank and file Democrats would behave as normal, moral and rational… they too would reject the radical language tyranny and it would die on the vine.
Language matters. English has more words, with more subtleties of meaning, than other Western languages. It’s not an accident that the Anglosphere came to dominate the civilized world.
The leftist perversion of language is a blatant attempt at restricting and perverting thought. I’m grateful for eloquent writers who fight this most important battle. Thanks to you and others here on Substack for effectively using our English language to help preserve our freedom. If we allow them to control language, all will be lost.
Leftists have been using their control of media and academia to conflate and distort the meanings of words at least since Woodrow Wilson took the word 'progressive', which had been an adjective used mostly by Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt, and turned it into a misleading political label.
"liberal Adj. a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise."
Oxford English Dictionary
In the U.S., a 'liberal' was a person who believed in free enterprise and limited government (a meaning it retained in the rest of the English-speaking world until recently, as per the OED). But FDR simply reversed the meaning in a famous speech in 1941 (by which time Americans had begun to realize that 'Progressivism was just socialism), and the U.S. media dutifully obeyed and made the lie a linguistic reality in America.
U.S. Leftists need to frequently change the term used to refer to them, to hide what they really are.
I think there are two root causes here, which might be one now that the global-corporate state has merged with the New Left to form Social Justice Inc.:
First is the post-WW2 consensus, which in this regard boils down to: CROWD CONTROL. The government-corporate-bureaucratic nexus that runs the West believes that the populace needs a firm hand to keep them from plotting any further genocides, and thus view themselves as shepherds of the benighted masses who need to be molded and penned by media, cultural and educational training to have all the proper beliefs—such as xenophilia replacing xenophobia, cosmopolitanism replacing nationalism, and aversion to minorities replaced by deep concern for their welfare.
Second is the the failure of 20th-century Communism and how its priesthood regrouped in the face of the proletariat refusing to play its appointed role in their ideological/eschatological fantasies. Once the Left abandoned materialism for emotionalism and the working class for disaffected bourgeois children and a "coalition of the marginalized", they suddenly discovered—quelle coincidence!—that oppression wasn't located in wages and living conditions but in language and books (or as they would call them "texts"). This allowed our Left clerisy to stay in the library and faculty lounge, still get tenure and book deals, yet pursue their revolutionary program (aka Animal Farm).
Their project is essentially the Sovietization of our entire discourse, building word by word and idea by idea, with of course the ultimate goal being to control what we do and think by controlling what we say. And it's easy to see the end goal they aspire to by just reading any Social Justice text: dour scolding moralism deep-fried in resentment, masquerading as "transgressive liberation".
I would say more here but I'm late for a date with a "cisgender sex worker" LOL.
"soft totalitarianism depends on people being afraid of losing comfort, status, and employment to force conformity"
What happens when people have no comfort to lose...or no employment to gain? And when status is only earned through abject sycophancy/servitude to the state?
I would imagine it could become HARD totalitarianism.
Excellent. The first ten pages of Hayakawa's "Language in Thought and Action" (going from memory, I think that was the book, from the late 1940s), a masterpiece, described the lack of acceptance by members of a fictional society of those on the dole when the dole was called "welfare," vs. the acceptance by members of a competing society of those on the dole when the dole was called "unemployment." Ever since, I've simply said, "Words are crucial. They shape our thinking."
And the propagandists know this all-too-well.
Thank you. Well written.
As the quip goes: 1984 is a novel; it was NOT meant to be a manual.
Edited to say, I am sharing this with several people!
Edited to correct the "quip" - TY Timothy!
Was that supposed to read, “…it was NOT meant to be a manual…”?
Oops!
TY!
"Language-policing Leftists are getting upset with white people for failing to do “a little research, understanding the history and the different semantic valences of a particular term” in order to gauge the “appropriateness of a use in a particular context.”
Wait just a minute, now we are supposed to do our own research???!!!
I suspect that the term “political correctness” derived from the term “politically correct” which I first encountered in 1970 during a demonstration. I suspect it goes back to usage by American Communists in the twenties or thirties. Prior to that it probably goes back to Stalin’s Russia or even Lenin , in transition of course!
Terrific piece!
"And the penalties for violating the new taboos are extreme, including losing your livelihood and having your reputation permanently ruined. … It’s incumbent on all of us to push back."
By coincidence, I just finished reading the lead item in the September 3, 2023 newsletter of the Free Speech Union:
https://freespeechunion.org/newsletters/
So well said. Thank you!
I love your writing. You have a way of putting things bluntly, succinctly in a way that seems so OBVIOUS, which of course it is, which is why no one is really saying it.
As a theatre artist, I often bemoan what has become of the art form due to what you’ve explained here. No more common humanity. No more human nature to be discovered developed or explored. Only tedious sententious shibboleths about “positionality” or “matrices of oppression”. All things good and true, fascinating and human, wonder, joy, awe, humor, all have been leveled and stripped away.
Orwell was so much smarter than any of us.
I thought semantic valence’s went across the top of a window with DEI drapes.
😂