The English writer George Orwell (1903-1950) is best known for his political satires “1984” and “Animal Farm.” In both books, Mr. Orwell condemned the spread of totalitarianism and its demand of orthodoxy in thought and conformity in action. The rise of the Soviet bloc was his target. But he also indicted Western democracies for their use of some of the same tactics the Soviets used in manipulating public thought. In particular, he railed against political leaders using — and abusing — language to endorse a certain view, or worse, to delude.
One of Mr. Orwell’s most powerful pieces of writing is a short essay he composed in 1946, “Politics and the English Language.” Any time a new government regulation is labeled as socialism, an elected official is compared to a Nazi, or someone is condemned as unpatriotic, it’s time to dust off Mr. Orwell’s essay.
Consider the criticism of the Obama administration and the cries of socialism, which the president’s detractors want to attach to everything from the stimulus package to health care reform. Socialism generally means a system in which the government controls industry and business and provides fixed benefits to the populace. The bailout of the banking and auto industries certainly can be seen as a new front on which government is engaging with private enterprise. But neither act is unprecedented, and neither require substantive changes to our governmental system.
After World War II, the most stinging political insult was to label someone a fascist. Orwell wrote: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’ The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. … Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. … Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.”
Mr. Orwell wrote that when villages are bombed, huts burned and cattle machine-gunned, the military term for it is “pacification.” U.S. officials used the term during the Vietnam War. That war also inspired the infamous and frighteningly absurd phrase, “destroying a village to save it.”
A recent BDN story about the Bangor City Council generated heat for referring to some councilors as progressive and others as conservative. Orwell might ask, Do those words have meaning upon which we can agree? Is there any value judgment in the words? What happens when “progressive” is replaced with “activist”? When “conservative” is replaced with “cautious”?
Labels are useful as shorthand; more accurate descriptions are complex, and require more words, and, Orwell would argue, more thought. In the essay, Orwell advises simplicity, fresh images, precision. In short, say what you mean. It’s still good advice.