Brave New Words

I have said it before: the West is unlikely to turn into Orwell's 1984, but it is moving toward Huxley's Brave New World, where people are being conditioned and manipulated. Both Orwell and Huxley clearly saw the enormous manipulative power of language. People can be conditioned to accept or reject a concept depending on whether the word describing it has been made lovable or dirty.

In the energy field, this is obvious. Few expressions are as dirty as oil company or energy corporation, but some are even dirtier: nuclear and radioactive, for example. The latter two have no lovable equivalents yet; but when the professional bamboozlers find out about nuclear medicine, they will rename it ("kernel medicine"?) and give it an image associating it with happily smiling babies; when they find out about the health-enhancing effects of low-level radiation, they may start calling "that type of" radioactivity health radiance.

That, at least, is what they have been doing in all other fields. The terrorists fighting the elected government of San Salvador are always leftist guerrillas; the guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan totalitarians are Contras. Why? Because guerilla has been made into a romantic, heroic, freedom-yearning word; so you can have dry water, cold fire, or a massive vacuum, but never a rightist guerilla.

Even the PLO, which places bombs in school buses, does not qualify as terrorist; on the other hand, it would be a little ridiculous to romanticize them as guerrillas, so they became PLO fighters when they fought the right-wing Christians. Why right-wing? Were there any "left-wing" Christians? Or was it to mark them as followers of that right-wing extremist, Jesus of Nazareth? Neither, of course: the idea was to manipulate the dupes and parrots into knowing which side they were supposed to be on.

In any case, the "right-wing" Christians are now once more Christians pure and simple, for the Israeli invasion is over. Indeed, in Lebanon, invasion and withdrawal are words reserved exclusively for the Israelis; the Syrians appeared there by growing out of the ground like mushrooms, and any talk about their withdrawal would increase tensions in the area.

The list of selective synonyms is endless: it would be foolish to raise taxes; the prudent step is to enhance revenues. Defense spending must be cut so as not to endanger social programs. Such as the programs to enforce affirmative action in hiring by race, sex and even surname. Such racist discrimination is generally known as civil rights.

The power of language is also illustrated by its absence in disastrous terms like Strategic Defense Initiative, which makes the derisive Star Wars preferable even to its supporters. In World War II, the British Minister of Food, trying to encourage people to waste less food by utilizing mass production, was about to open "Communal Feeding Centers" serving unrationed meals; but Winston Churchill found time to fire off one of his memoranda. "The name," he thundered, "is reminiscent of Communism and the Poor House. Why not call them British Restaurants?" (And why not call the Strategic Defense Initiative Star Shield?)

Quite similarly, an issue as critical as South Africa has been befuddled by bureaucratic slime like constructive engagement. One thing the Reagan administration must be granted: it employs no linguistic mind manipulators.