First I want to slightly touch on something before I begin to answer the question that is the title of this blog post. Right-wing people love the word "Orwellian", so much so that there are actual memes online making fun of how often they use it. This article from the Washington Post summed it up best, explaining how conservatives ironically use the phrase "Orwellian" while actually doing actions that would be called "Orwellian". Whenever someone, usually a white supremacist nazi, gets removed from a social media platform (which the company has full rights to do, I mean you sign terms of service when you join) they cry out "Orwellian" without realizing that their philosophy is full of "doublespeak" and perpetuates lies. So whenever I hear "Orwellian" I am instantly worried and thrown off.
For another example, let's look at this tweet and the response to it:
Now, having read 1984, does this really seem like a case of removing words in order to take over a population? Not really. It seems like a school pushing for more inclusive vocabulary from its faculty. No one has banned the usage of mom and dad, they are still used constantly around the world. No one is banning Christmas, but to assume that is the only holiday that is celebrated during Winter Break is just wrong. Why is giving kids a better understanding of other peoples' lives a bad idea? Do you think that when Orwell wrote his novel, he was talking about being more inclusive of other people?
Anyways, now that I'm done ranting, what do we take away from this? Why did I even mention it? Well, I think the first step towards not heading towards an Orwellian nightmare is to fully understand what that nightmare was. It was not saying "people" instead of "women and men", it was literally removing words from dictionaries so that people could not rebel with the vocabulary available to them.
I also believe that Orwell was more so critiquing an oppressive totalitarian government, rather than a specific political belief. So... what side has historically had these oppressive totalitarian governments... fascists perhaps? Just a thought.
How else do we avoid a 1984 dystopia? Perhaps we could by doing something as mundane as reading several different news stations to get the full picture of a situation, rather than just tuning into one station. Or we could be more vigilant when it comes to NOT LETTING FASCISTS BECOME PRESIDENT. But honestly, this is such a deep issue that I don't think individuals can be the only ones involved. For example, I say, well don't vote a fascist into power, but because of redlining in many states, it makes voting super unfair. So it's the system at fault. I honestly don't know what else to do- comment down below I guess!
Comments
Post a Comment