Sunday, May 17, 2009

Newspeak, Crimethink, and LGF

An excellent analysis of the power of Political Correctness was given today in a slightly obscure publication out of Arkansas, the Northwest Arkansas News. Bradley R. Gitz, a local freelance journalist, points out that so long as the Left can silence people through labeling, ostracism and shunning, it maintains control.

Money grafs:
It is easy to ridicule political correctness, but it is the most powerful mechanism available for discrediting political views, not by refutation but by social ostracism. Express reservations about global warming theory and you become a global-warming denier; criticize racial preferences and you become a racist; indicate support for traditional conceptions of marriage and you become a homophobe.

The left dominates because it dominates the culture, and by dominating the culture it gets to decide what views are and aren't acceptable and how terms like "moderate" and "extremist" are applied. ....

As things trundle along in this direction, it won't be long before the ideas that America (as well as classical liberalism) was founded upon, and which contemporary conservatives still hold dear-limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty-are reclassified as "hate speech."

This recalls Orwell's essay on Newspeak: "It would have been quite impossible to render ["We Hold These Truths to be Self Evident"] into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink."

So how does this relate to Little Green STFUtballs? Simple. He's shunning people just like the leftists do: naming them as members of some nefarious member of a designated target of Two Minute's Hate, then shoving them into the disintegration chamber (If I can mix Classic Trek metaphors with 1984). One "Anonymous" on Defending the Defensible, an LGF sock puppet site apparently run by Charles himself, has defined the LGF MO as follows:

The methodology being used to generate a fanatical loyalty on the LGF board is well known. Saddam Hussein was wont to use similar techniques – at one meeting, reading out individually the names of half of the members of his inner circle and staff, who were then immediately dragged outside and summarily shot. The remaining survivors would clap and cheer at each reading of a name, becoming more and more heated in their hysterical enthusiasm as the process continued, in the hopes that their own names would not be shouted out.

In short, Charles Johnson is an intellectual thug: he silences his own people by publicly shooting some to educate the rest. Finding he can't educate them fast enough, he bans more and more. Eventually there will be nobody yet but a pile of sock puppets and asskissers.

ADDENDUM 3:00 PM EST

One "Sarge" on that same web site states:

“If I am to follow your line of reasoning about being banned, all those bannees must be jerks, fascists, right wing kooks, left wing kooks, creationists, Pastafarians, Rastafarians, vocal Christians, Mormons, Druids, Ron Paul supporters, Glenn Beck listeners, Pam Geller/Atlas Shrugs readers, Ron Popeil fanatics, secret illuminati sock puppets, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists… or other undesirables, right? It ain’t so . . . and it shouldn’t matter if they are.”

Exactamundo. However, "Sarge" forgot to mention mother rapers, father stabbers, father rapers, those convicted of littering, and everyone else sitting on the Group W bench.

LGF used to be worth reading for something other than as a bad example. A shame, really.

1 comment:

  1. I find this piece of crap and all who are his suck ups contemptible. Actually,I find Kos and Huffington in better status. At least they make no pretense. Moreover, I think it is a mental illness on the parts of THE chuckie boy and his cult.
    The best thing is, he has no effect on anything.He is a waste of time. And ps the only reason he used to be worth reading is because he was never there.

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