A fine essay by Henry Giroux (though the line, above, comes from Umberto Eco); an excerpt:
"One of the more significant marks of an authoritarian society is its willingness to distort the truth while simultaneously suppressing dissent. For instance, Umberto Eco argues that one element of proto-fascism is the rise of an Orwellian version of Newspeak, or what he labels as the language of 'eternal fascism,' whose purpose is to produce 'an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax [whose consequence is] to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.' Under the Bush administration, especially since the horrible events of September 11th, we have witnessed an extension of the concept of war to include not only traditional, strategic, defense-oriented objectives, but also to discipline civil society, reproduce all aspects of public life in the image of official power, and inject the ideology of militarism as the very foundation of politics. Accompanying this increasing form of discursive and material repression is an attempt to refashion the tools of language, sound, and image in an effort to diminish the capacity of the American public to think critically. As the critical power of language is reduced in official discourse to the simulacra of communication, it becomes more difficult for the American public to engage in critical debates, translate private considerations into public concerns, and recognize the distortions and lies that underlie much of the current government policies. What happens to critical language under the emergence of official Newspeak can be seen in the various ways in which the Bush administration and its official supporters both misrepresent by mis-naming government policies and simply engage in lying to cover up their own regressive politics and policies.
"Many people have pointed to Bush himself as a mangler of the English language, but this charge simply repeats the obvious while privatizing a much more important issue connecting language to power. Bush’s discursive ineptness may be fodder for late night comics, but such analyses miss the more strategic issue of how the Bush administration actually manipulates discourse. For instance, Bush describes himself as a 'reformer' while he promotes policies that expand corporate welfare, give tax benefits to the rich, and 'erode the financial capacity of the state to undertake any but the most minimal welfare functions....'
"Official Newspeak also trades in the rhetoric of fear in order to manipulate the public into state of servile political dependency and unquestioning ideological support. Fear and its attendant use of moral panics create not only a rhetorical umbrella to promote other agendas, but also a sense of helplessness and cynicism throughout the body politic. Hence, Bush’s increased dependency upon issuing terror and security alerts and panic-inducing references to 9/11 is almost always framed in Manichean language of absolute good and evil. Bush’s doublespeak also employs the discourse of evangelicalism, and its attendant suggestion that whatever wisdom Bush has results from his direct communion with God--a position not unlike that of Moses on Mount Sinai, and which, of course, cannot be challenged by mere mortals....
"While all governments sometimes resort to misrepresentations and lies, Bush’s doublespeak makes such action central to its maintenance of political power and its manipulation of the media and the public. Language is used in this context to say one thing, but to actually mean its opposite. This type of discourse mimics George Orwell’s dystopian world of 1984 where the Ministry of Truth actually produces lies and the Ministry of Love is actually used to torture people. Ruth Rosen points out that the Bush administration engages in a kind of doublespeak right out of Orwell’s novel. For instance, Bush’s Healthy Forest Initiative 'allows increased logging of protected wilderness. The ‘Clear Skies’ initiative permits greater industrial air pollution....'"
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