If George Orwell understood anything, he understood the dangerous power available to those who can shape public opinions, values, and language. In Orwell’s famous “1984”, the State used a mixture of propaganda and pressure tactics to keep the public in line.
(Today, we have bowed the knee to such tactics for so long that we can no longer give straight answers to simple questions. And, as you will see, our own “radical tolerance” is being used as a weapon against us.)
In the novel, there were strict controls on language. Words meant what Big Brother decided they meant. They were twisted into hideous parodies of themselves. In the novel, the “Ministry of Truth” was the propaganda machine that scrubbed history to make it conform to the modern narrative. The “Ministry of Love” — the home of infamous Room 101 — is the home of the much-feared Thought Police. And an institution founded by a racist eugenicist specifically for reducing unwanted populations is lovingly called “Planned Parenthood”.
(Sorry, I’m pretty sure one of those example wasn’t in the book.)
What Orwell predicted really wasn’t far off the mark. He said the public would eventually come to a point where claiming “2+2=5” would be met with a bland indifference. It really wouldn’t matter if 2+2 equalled “five”, “four”, or even “blue”. If Big Brother (whatever form he might take) tells us the answer, that becomes the answer that must be accepted.
As I keep saying, the novel really was intended to be a warning, not a blueprint. But look around. Isn’t this unfolding all around us?
Last year’s winner for “Woman of the Year” won the men’s Decathlon in 1976… and can still pee standing up. “2+2 = 5”. “X + Y = XX”.
Someone caught hopping the White House fence is grabbed by security and dragged away in handcuffs, but someone caught hopping America’s southern border is celebrated, called a “DREAMer”, offered legal protections must never, ever, be called Illegal immigrants. ”2+2=5”
When it suits the media to cast someone in the role of villain, the “white” aspects of that person are played up. George Zimmerman, for example, with one white parent and one Peruvian parent was called a “white hispanic”.
By contrast, Black Lives Matter celebrity Shaun King (natural parents are both white) identifies as black, and claims his mother must have been unfaithful to his father. He is generally accepted as being “black”. And even the President himself, although bi-racial is identified almost exclusively with his father’s ethnicity.
I could go on and on. The woman, “Neo,” who identifies as a cat. The father of 7 in his 50’s has left wife and kids because he decided he now identifies as a 6 year-old girl. In a case of extreme body sculpting, a man became a woman and then became a dragon. Increasingly, these stories defy parody. Really, where can you even go, in satire, beyond attempting to become a real-deal “dragon-lady”?
And here’s where our enemies use this against us. We have become “radically tolerant”. We have already crossed the Rubicon. It is now offensive (!) to say grown men should not be permitted to enter the bathrooms with women and young girls vulnerable in a partial state of undress. It’s now offensive to tell a woman she isn’t a cat, or to even wonder if body dysmorphia (a clinical diagnosis) is driving someone’s desire for these radical changes.
People use our “tolerance” against us. To bully us. To silence us even before we have any chance to speak up. This is nothing new. We’ve seen it in early stages, when they called their opponents racist, sexist, or bigot. When they create double-standards for themselves to protect them from criticism. Minorities can’t be accused of racism, for example. Later, when their Social Justice crusade marched into new territory, they added “homophobe”, “Islamophobe” and more recently “transphobe”.
These are deliberate conversation-stoppers. Bully tactics to label, cow and shame their opponents, so their side needn’t bother defending their positions on issues. Standard Alinsky playbook.
Someone else has started using these same tactics. They’ve learned the game well: cloak yourself in the invulnerable armour of the protected or victim class so that when you say horrible things, nobody is allowed to criticize it.
ISIS Sympathizers!
Yes, the group best known for beheading helpless victims, selling young girls as sex slaves, burning prisoners alive, and flinging homosexuals off tall buildings have groupies.
But those of us who criticize these groupies are insensitive. We only call out these sympathisers because we, ourselves are bigots. (Naturally! That card never gets old!)
You see, these Islamist sympathizers (regardless of their actual race) are actually “politically black” in the precisely the same way that the dragon-lady isn’t actually a human male.
The rules of the game turn this into a Leftist trump card. Everything they might say must be perfectly valid. Because we must not criticize other ethnic people. Criticism is illegitimate. We must honor them, not by treating them as equals and scrutinizing their ideas on their inherent strengths or weakness. We honor them, apparently, by patronizing them and allowing them to live in their own reality… whatever harmful consequences may come of them.
Congrats Progressives on your … what do you call this again… progress?
You must be so proud of yourselves.
