Newspeak dilemma

Don't worry, doublethink will solve it

Fat is evil... Calling people overweight bad... Fat  ungood... Overweight ungood... Must condemn... Must not offend... Class enemy... Victim group... No viable alternatives... Paradigm shifting... No clutch....  Alert... Alert...

Down the memory whole

The European Empire declares that henceforth, the Second World War will be known as the European Civil War.  But that occurred before the Year Zero, so it doesn't matter.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Au revoir, mademoiselle? Non!

A radical left-wing council running a small town in Britanny with a population of a miserable 15,000 decides to ban the word "mademoiselle" and the BBC runs an article that, with a perfectly straight face, reads as though the word is now a relic of history that no one in the francophone world will ever utter again.

I can't decide which I find more risible; the moral blindness of the Beeb that can't see the evil totalitarianism of the state trying to control thought through controlling language, the argument from inevitability that sounds like every bit of Marxist rot I've ever heard or the blithering Canute-like arrogance of imagining that an official edict can abolish a perfectly inoffensive everyday word.  I predict that long after the Commissars of Cesson-Sévigné are dust, the people there will still be greeting one another with "madame" and "mademoiselle" (If they aren't salaaming on their way to the mosque, that is).

As for the BBC's idiotic bit about Germany; sorry, but that '70s ban was a farce and in my experience most Germans I talk to still use "Fraulein" without a glance for the Thoughtpolice.  And as for "thee" and "thou",  it's still used i' uz corna o' Yorksha, bai gum.

Bloody namby pamby jessies!

God down the memory hole

James Delingpole looks at the BBC's decision to abandon using AD and BC for dates in favour of CE and BCE.  I particularly like this point:

But the BBC isn't doing this because it has been flooded with complaints, you understand. Nor is it responding to public demand. No, as it primly explains on the Q&A page on the section of its website bbc.co.uk/religion, it is doing it to be 'in line with modern practice'.

'Whose modern practice?' you might well ask. Do you know anyone outside the BBC or the fields of Left-wing academe who has even heard of CE and BCE? Or anyone who seriously finds them preferable to the perfectly innocuous term 'AD'? 

Almost certainly not. And this is what gives the lie to the BBC's weaselly, passive-aggressive excuse. The implication of 'in line with modern practice' is that anyone who disagrees with the change must be reactionary, backward, fuddy duddy. Note, too, how the phrase is careful to evade responsibility for the decision. Nothing to do with us, it's 'modern practice'.

As an archaeologist, I see that this imposition of CE and BCE on the world is Newspeak in its most dishonest, repellent form.  It isn't being done for any reason other than to shove Christianity off the board and the culture it supports with it.  It seeks to change the basis of the modern calendar away from the year of the Incarnation, or as close as our ancestors could determine it, to some arbitrary "common" date that merely hangs in history.  And this only because proclaiming a Year Zero isn't practical while people still remember all the other Year Zeros from the French Revolution to Pol Pot and the charnel houses they all ended up creating.  It is nothing but intellectual thuggery and totalitarianism masquerading as "tolerance" when its real purpose is base intolerance of Western culture and Christianity in particular.  As Mr Delingpole points out, this is one small example (Actually, it's a major example), but it's by this steady drip that Civilisation is eroded.

The only solace in this is that the BBC makes the same mistake as academia made.   They think that people respect ideas because of the institutions they come from and that those ideas can be issued like proclamations from the Elite on high that the Outer Party will meekly obey.  What they forget is that institutions are respected and true elites made by the ideas they present and defend. When those ideas are false, self-serving and oppressive, all that happens is that the institutions and their members are abandoned.

When the BBC is finally reformed and returns to being the objective body it was intended to be, that day will be noted as 201* AD.

Update: "Someone needs to get out down the corridor and find the individual who passed this edict and give him or her a figurative kick in the pants."

I agree except for the "figurative" part.  An edict is exactly what this is.

Disability becomes ungood?

Sir Philip Craven hopes that the 2012 Paralympics will consign the word "disability" to the memory hole.

Please, Sir Philip, don't give the Inner Party any ideas.

Actually, I have some sympathy for his position, though not his goal.  At least he's not claiming that disability is an identity or that if the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, or the deaf hear it's a violation of their human rights.  I've always loathed Newspeak euphemisms in general and "disabled"  is particularly bad.  It's not only inaccurate, but it's doomed to become a pejorative in its own right–a bit like using "mental retardation" to replace "idiocy" only to have the new term become synonymous with the old one.  Personally, I'd prefer reviving "handicapped".  It's perfectly honourable term from sports to refer to someone or something operating under a disadvantage so they have to work harder, such as a handicapped horse having to carry weights in its saddle.

Euphemism march

First it was "euthanasia", then it was "assisted suicide", now it's "assisted dying", but  at the end of the day, it's still "murder".

I don't mind when activists indulge in rampant euphemisms (or newspeak, to be honest) but when the news media pick it up without a blink, that's when I get worried.

Questions

The Telegraph has an article about the capabilities of the Typhoon fighter plane, which they refer to as a "one-crew" aircraft.

On a fairly obvious point, though, they are a bit remiss about telling you how big that one crew is.

The dictionary: weapon of freedom

Bruce Walker looks at the Left and how their attempts to manipulate language is a blow at the very foundations of freedom. I don't agree with some of his conclusions, but his general assessment on the threat of Newspeak is spot on.

Remember, the first books that real tyrants ban are dictionaries.

Huperoffspringkind

As I've always said, language "reform" is censorship and was meant to be so from the start.

New Labour Chapter 13 Verse 3

And Mrs Harriet Harman said unto the people of Airstrip One Britain, "Thou shalt not mock Vegans, for that is an abomination unto me."

And the people of Airstrip One Britain said unto Mrs Harman, "If we didn't mock Vegans we wouldn't have anything to say to the hypocritical, self-righteous, little nut burgers."

Poverty is doubleplus ungood

Washington State Senator Rosa Franklin wants poor disdvantaged at-risk children to henceforth be called "at-hope".

Why she doesn't just go whole hog and declare them "fluffy, cuddly, pink bunny" children remains a mystery.

War is Peace, Freedom is...

Mr Barack Hussein Obama has won, wait for it, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Let that sink in for a moment like the tea I spilled in my lap. I can only assume this means the Nobel Committee will be giving Peace Prizes away in breakfast cereal packets next.

The astonishing thing is that not only has The One been given the prize despite the inconvenient fact that he's achieved absolutely nothing during his brief term in office, but that by gratuitously insulting and shafting America's allies, gutting Western defences, apologising for his country's existence, embracing dictators, literally bowing to tyrants, treating human rights as a "distraction", green lighting a Third World nuclear arms race, and dithering on the Afghanistan campaign while indulging in a Macarthuresque feud with his own hand-picked military commander, I can only assume that "Peace" is being used in the Orwellian sense.

Of course, I may be unfair in this view. After all, the nomination deadline for the prize was February first, which was a mere eleven days after Mr Obama took office. So maybe the new criteria for the prize is excellent penmanship while signing his W2 form.

Update: Quote of the day from Mataconis:

How can Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize on the same day that he’s becoming the first POTUS to bomb the Moon?

Update: Biggest laugh line of the day:

Nobel prize win 'humbles' Obama

No longer funny

This is reason enough to abolish quangos.

Tyrants hate proper language and prefer to obscure meaning at every turn. That's why the first books to be censored are always dictionaries.

War? What War?

Now that terrorism has been redefined as "man-caused disaster" it shouldn't be surprising that the Barrack Hussein Obama administration is changing the "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation".

With their heads jammed so deep in the sand, I'd say that the only thing that's keeping the Jihadists from carrying out another 9/11 is the hope that Mr Obama will stay out of the military's way so they can keep mauling the bastards.

De Nile Is Not Just In Egypt

In a move more worthy of the British Home Secretary, Janet Napolitano, the American Secretary of Homeland Security, has announced that terrorist attacks will no longer occur. Instead, they will be called, wait for it, "man-caused disasters".

Aside from being unacceptably sexist and heteronormative, this idea that is so blinkered that it doesn't even regard terrorists as criminals. Now they're just something that just sort of happens like a piano landing on your car. In other words, save your breath, Bin Laden; the Messiah & Co. are sticking their fingers in their ears and humming as loud as they can.

Newspeak Update

"Mum" and "dad" have been removed from the latest edition of the Dictionary of Newspeak because it is wildly improbable that children are not being raised by homosexuals.

PC Translation Service

BBC Newspeak: Europe mulls human launch system.

Translation: Europe mulls manned spacecraft.