The Origins and Meaning of Doublespeak and Fake News

The first time I read 1984, I was just an inexperienced junior in high school. The year was -- you guessed it -- 1984, and our AP English teacher that term had decided to have us read and discuss dystopian literature, in honor of Mr. Orwell's groundbreaking and ominous novel. I am forever grateful for his choice, as I was thus introduced at a tender age to Animal Farm, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, and a few others I may have forgotten. Nevertheless, they left an imprint on me which could never be erased throughout all the years since then. From those works of literature, I learned one major life lesson: to always question authority.

Though Orwell never actually uses the term Doublespeak in the narrative, he coined two terms -- Doublethink and Newspeak -- from which it may logically be deduced that Doublespeak was derived. Newspeak is basically what we know nowadays as propaganda, or possibly fake news or alternative facts -- news propagated by state-owned or state-controlled "information" centers, whose purpose is to obscure the past failures of the government and to whip up unwavering devotion to its policies, laws, and regulations -- as well as to fictional leaders, fighting fictional enemies. Doublethink is the resulting chaotic state of mind of the citizens (more like cattle), who are effectively brainwashed into swallowing even the precept that 2 + 2 = 5.

Doublespeak was first used in published material in 1957, a full 8 years after Orwell released his novel. Of course, Freud's famous nephew, Edward Bernays, had already developed the whole theory of propaganda in the years leading up to WWII, and only changed the term to PR when Hitler and Goebbels's policies began to fall into distaste in polite society.

Fast forward 120 years or so, and fake news is all over the Internet, all over the airwaves, in our conversations, and certainly on our minds. The following are three examples of how Doublespeak has already modified, or is still modifying, our thoughts, attitudes, and thus our behaviors.

First, for those of you who may not know, a conspiracy theorist is no longer one who constructs and tests theories about conspiracies. Oh, no -- the CIA made sure of that. Nowadays, a conspiracy theorist is some fool in a basement who believes the world is flat because of his or her "Can't you use your own eyes?" argumentation. And, yes, I did say the CIA. Look it up -- I dare you.

So, now, even those who are highly skeptical of government and authority in general get tripped up into saying things like "It's not a conspiracy," when they mean something more along the lines of "It's not just a theory; it's been proven true." The word conspiracy, which has a historical and documented meaning, is now unfortunately used to mean crazy idea. That is an example of Newspeak affecting our Doublethink.

The second has to do with the social phenomenon known as PC or Politically Correct language. Now, the fact that PC language had quite a bit to do with my own wish to "escape" California at a time when it was one of the most desired immigration destinations in the world 26 years ago (and still is) has little need of exposition here, so I will save it for another time, perhaps. But, honestly, even back then, PC was so influential it meant that I could not have a heart-felt, meaningful conversation with many of my friends and classmates -- simply because they were "forbidden" to have personal opinions about any controversial topic. I still have problems with this today, though Bulgarians have always been much more open to other points of view.

The odd thing is that, in many cases, the "highly educated" are even better brainwashed than the average mechanic or plumber. I recently had an exchange, for example, in which a white male was trying to convince me that only white males could be racist. Again, we see the same trend: racism, which had a perfectly acceptable meaning several decades back -- a form of collectivism based on the concept of various races, in which a member of one so-called race denigrates or by other means tries to pretend superiority to all the members of a supposed "other race" -- no longer can be used to describe the actions a person of color takes to denigrate or otherwise pretend superiority to whites. Sexism, Transphobism, Ableism, Homophobia, and Xenophobia have all been put under much the same restriction.

The final example I will discuss in this article is that of self-identity and gender-fluidity. In all scientific literature throughout the last several aeons, at least, there have been two genders: male and female. But this is no longer the case, my friends. Now, for whatever reason I don't want to get into here, there are (at last count) 58 or 64 genders, and they are increasing at every step of the way -- not only that, but there are adult males identifying as little girls, little boys identifying as trans-gender transvestites, and people of all ages identifying as cats, vampires, and even sloths -- for all I know or care.

Fine, let people identify as what they want as long as they take full responsibility for their actions. But please don't tell me -- or society at large -- that we have to respect their choices or to use specific imaginary pronouns to refer to them. I will not change my thought patterns or language just to try to make a tiny percentage of the overall population feel less "triggered."

For once, I wish people would use fewer under-handed methods of propaganda, PR, and yes, "Doublespeak" to somehow shape society into a utopia. Because that's what usually happens in dictatorships and other dystopias. Words have definitions, and the power to confuse -- or enlighten -- so let's get our terminology straight, shall we?

Sources used: etymonline.com and wikipedia.com