The Language of Totalitarianism
This week immigration has once again taken centre stage in British politics, triggered in the most part by an article by Conservative MP Nigel Hastilow, naturally this has been followed by some fierce rhetoric but what I have found interesting about all this is the language which has been employed by the supporters of immigration from both sides of the house, particularly from the left.
For starters, in examining Mr Hatilow’s article it would seem apparent that he is reporting on what he has identified as a common feeling amongst his constituents. Right or wrong this is how ordinary people are feeling about immigration and despite the political manoeuvring that it has spawned they will view his sacking as an arrogant dismissal of their fears, after all aren’t democratically elected ministers supposed to represent the wishes or voice the views of their constituents in a democratic country?
Principal amongst those fears are the numbers that are coming and the competition for resources that this spawns in the communities but the knee-jerk reaction of the media and the politicians to label those presenting, what is in essence a logical case surrounding supply and demand as racists in an effort to silence and humiliate those raising those concerns. It seems to me that this has become not about race or immigration at all but about a new political language of totalitarianism where everything is reduced into a vapid and meaningless discourse in a narrow political grammar with the slightest deviation from the script resulting in political ruination or humiliation. Like some mindless marketing seminar fundamental issues are reduced to empty slogans such as “stakeholder”, “community”, “diversity” and “multiculturalism”.
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect, and is intended to.”
Theodore Dalrymple
I was watching some of this empty rhetoric on “Question Time” this week with representatives from each of the main parties doing nothing more than compete against each other as to who was the most “diverse” when elder statesman Michael Heseltine chimed in that “Hitler rose to power in a democracy” which I took to be an astounding accusation levelled against the ordinary people of Britain, particularly considering the number of times in history that this country has stood firm against European totalitarianism. What Mr Heseltine was neglecting was that what sowed the seeds for Hitler’s rise was humiliation at allied hands with post WW1 reparations, fear of communism and economic despair. With economic collapse, peak oil, climate change and the neglect of honest political discourse stalking western democracies his fears could well be realised, just not for the reasons he states. If the politicians continue to ignore the fears of the common man then sadly they may just take matters into their own hands, a tragedy that could be averted today by action rather than suppressing all discussion with the linguistics of “thought crime”.
Chapter 7, 1984 - George Orwell
If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within….But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it?
Just a short com(pli)ment: Chapeau.
Coincidence?
The security word to prove I am not a spam script is / was fantasy.
of course, how you normally deal with the proles in these kind of situations is to convince them that other proles, preferably foreign ones, are responsible for the mess
it virtually never fails…
Re “knee-jerk reaction of the media and the politicians to label those presenting, what is in essence a logical case surrounding supply and demand as racists”
This is such an old trick that there is a Latin term for it; Ad hominem, that is attempting to counter someone’s argument, or conclusion, by attacking them in some way, rather than honestly addressing the argument itself.
Re Theodore Dalrymple’s quotation. He has a point. It is interesting to consider the way totalitarians use language, it does indeed seem to be a close cousin modern political correctness:
New vocabulary is coined (newspeak), applying special new meanings to well-known words (Community, diversity, etc.), making them into trite clichés. These then become either semantically loaded as either good, or bad. Thought-terminating clichés develop - Controlling the words people use helps to channel people’s thoughts.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.
Confess I’d never read this when I made the comment about wishing to be with the proles instead of the elite. IMHO, cleverness eventually destroys itself.
Just because we have never had a revolution in the UK in the past is no gaurantee that we will not have one in the future.
It seems to me that this has become not about race or immigration at all but about a new political language of totalitarianism where everything is reduced into a vapid and meaningless discourse in a narrow political grammar with the slightest deviation from the script resulting in political ruination or humiliation. Like some mindless marketing seminar fundamental issues are reduced to empty slogans such as “stakeholder”, “community”, “diversity” and “multiculturalism”.
Precisely.
Stef,
Agreed but I don’t think such cynicism is part of the government plan, but its part of someone’s plan and its only a matter of time.
Phil,
Precisely.
City,
Doesn’t the Cromwellian revolution count? The interesting thing about that war was that eventually the Monarchy was restored and Cromwell died vilified. I think people right now would also like to see more balance in our power structures but its going to have to get a lot worse before it gets to that.
James,
I don’t think its true to say that cleverness destroys itself, I think the problem is that cleverness gets complacent and forgets how destructive and avaricious ignorance is. Every empire neglected the growing cancer within prior to their fall, when the next challenge presented itself it was already too late. Getting a sense of “end of Empire” around here?
Wolfie, If I recall correctly Cromwell didn’t die vilified. He died in full power and control.
The reigns of power passed briefly to his son who couldn’t hack it. So the movers and shakers thought “We need a Proterctor/King” - and what do you know. Ta-Dah A Kingdom again.
Then Cromwell was vilified, dug up and beheaded.
Well done Phil, I stand corrected. You’re absolutely right, I forgot about that.
Well argued, Wolfie. You are right: what should be a debate about “supply and demand” cannot get off the ground because people are immediately labelled. That seems an extraordinary thing for Heseltine to have said.
I see immigration from underdeveloped countries to developped ones as a continuum of an earlier one that happened in western countries, immigration from rural areas to urban areas. In a globalised and economically open world, the reasons are all the same. The problem will be a challenge and need to be adressed seriously by all parties but it shouldn’t be used to score politcal goals against opponents, either to gather votes from people who are scraed from immigration or from so-called liberals, and that’s we have been witnessing. I realised that socialism failed because it did not adress the needs of people living in urban areas in terms of infrastructure and freedom of movement. But I witnessed Cuban socialism at its best in rural areas where people lived in a sort of equilibrium with nature and depended only on themselves and little on everybody else. It is the same for Neoliberalism, it needs big concentrations of people living in urban centers in order to open the way for more needs and enlarge indefinitely the market. However, this scheme also has its limits and they are the limits of Neoliberalism itself. Immigrants in the system are nothing else than a tool, deprived in their own underdevelopped countries froim basic needs by multinational corporations ( most African countries are full of natural goods and resources but in some way their citizens never get to benefit from this thanks to their corrupt leaders and multinational corporations), they are drawn into urban centers of developed countries in order to feed the same system that robbed them and robbed its own citizens.
True Sophia, but the migrations which happened during the industrial revolutions occurred to supply the factories of economies growing sharply due to new technology. This time around the economies that they are fleeing to are contracting, and there lies a serious problem.
Wolfie,
I agree. But there is another problem: the underground economy in our developped countries. My brother was telling me last days that in his own sector, which is house supplies and decoration, millions are exchanged outside government supervision every week-end in the local market where, among other places, he sells his products, but the government is happy with it as long as the money stays in the country, profits the economy and boosts job figures. I guess it is the same for the industry who employs cheap labour from immigration. Look at France for example, with all his big manners and DNA tests introduced in the legislation for family regroupements, Sarkozy is still short on his objectives to crack down on immigration, and I bet he will never meet them.
Actually O Brien was right: the proles would never rise up. They were systematically excluded from political society by a self-selecting elite and were fed a diet of cheap pornography, crap housing and gambling. and the government convinced them they were at war with invisible, but deadly enemies.
so no change there, then.
I agree, there is little hope of the proletariat ever rising in the near future. Their aspirations have been managed far too closely, even the supposedly politically active have no idea of the degree of control which they are subject to.
Sophia, the issue of labour exploitation is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This rabbit hole goes far deeper than that.
I agree, there is little hope of the proletariat ever rising in the near future. Their aspirations have been managed far too closely, even the supposedly politically active have no idea of the degree of control which they are subject to.
Amen to that, except that we are all the proles: remember that the inner party was c5% and the outer, c10% or something - leaving everyone else as proles. That’s us, whether we work in the City or on the bins.
Pornosec, anyone?