By Gary Saul Morson | The Wall Street Journal
Back when there were still two Germanys, one a parliamentary democracy aligned with the West and one a Soviet satellite surveillance state, I had trouble remembering which was the Federal Republic and which the Democratic Republic—until I realized that the one calling itself democratic wasn’t. Even today, North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The least democratic regimes in the world pretend to be the most democratic.
Then as now, Marxists and those who have learned from them often justify abuse of language by redefining the key term. Words come to mean their opposite.
To the Soviets, “true” democracy wasn’t a matter of voting for one of two indistinguishable parties, but of justice. So used, the word “true” means “false.”
On paper, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was the most liberal in the world. It granted universal suffrage, direct elections, the right to work and equal status to all ethnicities. It also established freedom of conscience, religion and speech.
In practice, of course, none of it was true. The Soviets persecuted religious believers and arrested people for the mildest criticisms—even for supposedly anti-Soviet thoughts. The right to work meant the obligation to work, often in appalling conditions and with lateness punishable by exile to Siberia.
Other examples come to mind. Think of some “peace” movements.
My Russian history teacher, Firuz Kazemzadeh, recalled that after World War II ardent pacifists in Western European cities asked people to sign petitions demanding unilateral disarmament. Kazemzadeh was well aware that the Soviets, who were rebuilding their military and surreptitiously solidifying control of Eastern European countries, sponsored European peace movements. If you had expansionist aims, wouldn’t you want your enemy to disarm?
The Marxist impulse is always to accuse your opponent of what you are doing or plan to do.
It resembles what Freudians call “projection,” except that in Freudian theory projection happens outside the person’s awareness and is governed by an unconscious desire not to recognize one’s own intentions. For the leaders of Marxist and quasi-Marxist movements, the technique of accusing others of one’s own aggressive plans is entirely conscious. Call it “the political projection principle.”
This principle is easiest to apply when the target really does seem unsavory, like Donald Trump. When he makes outrageous comments, spoils for a fight with his childish name-calling, or attracts attention by offensive suggestions and obnoxious exaggerations, Mr. Trump provokes people to approve of unprecedented tactics they never approved of before.
The test of whether a person really believes in freedom is the readiness to protect the freedom of opponents. It’s easy to do when the opponent is mild and honorable, but what Democrat will rise to defend Mr. Trump? They accuse him of harboring authoritarian designs as they prosecute him in several courts so that he can’t campaign, must spend his money defending himself, and may find himself in prison before the voting starts.
Arresting potential challengers is what former KGB operative Vladimir Putin routinely does. In Maine and Colorado, Democrats tried to keep the presumptive Republican nominee off the ballot entirely. Who exactly is undermining democracy?
Mr. Trump was charged with planning to curtail democratic freedoms, but the Biden administration pressured social-media platforms to censor even true information about Covid and other sensitive topics.
On campuses and in businesses, “equity,” like “true democracy,” has taken the place of its opposite, equality.
Rights are for those who accept the new definition of rights; everyone is equal, except those who aren’t.
George Orwell grasped this way of thinking perfectly. “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,” goes the slogan of “1984.”
Today diversity often means uniformity; equity, inequality; and inclusion, exclusion of those who think differently.
The Hamas charter explicitly calls for killing all Jews, but the terror group’s campus supporters, who often harass Jews, accuse Israel of genocide. They call President Biden “Genocide Joe.”
No one uses hate speech more often than those who constantly accuse others of using hate speech.
If the illiberal elements of the Democratic Party win out over the traditional liberals, expect them to make sure they never lose power.
It’s easy: Expand the Supreme Court, as some have already proposed, and appoint new justices who define equality, freedom and democracy as their opposites. Adjust how voting takes place and who counts the votes, as Mr. Putin did. Then extend a full-scale authoritarian regime (or worse) to all corners of life. With technology already or soon to be available, authorities pursuing true justice will make 20th century communist leaders look like amateurs.
Do those accusing the Jews of genocide do so to justify killing them? Will traditional Christians find themselves worshiping underground? How far will the principle of political projection extend? I don’t know, and I hope never to find out.
Mr. Morson is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University.
First published in the Wall Street Journal
See also “Abuse of Language; Abuse of Power” by Josef Pieper
“One of the great Catholic philosophers of our day reflects on the way language has been abused so that, instead of being a means of communicating the truth and entering more deeply into it, and of the acquisition of wisdom, it is being used to control people and manipulate them to achieve practical ends. Reality becomes intelligible through words. Man speaks so that through naming things, what is real may become intelligible. This mediating character of language, however, is being increasingly corrupted. Tyranny, propaganda, mass-media destroy and distort words. They offer us apparent realities whose fictive character threatens to become opaque. Josef Pieper shows with energetic zeal, but also with ascetical restraint, the path out of this dangerous situation. We are constrained to see things again as they are and from the truth thus grasped, to live and to work.”
“Public discourse, the moment it becomes basically neutralized with regard to a strict standard of truth, stands by its nature ready to serve as an instrument in the hands of any ruler to pursue all kinds of power schemes.”
― Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language—Abuse of Power
https://archive.org/details/abuse-of-language-abuse-of-power-josef-pieper
Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (Catholic Insight)
Having lived through the terrorism and boot-in-your-face of the Nazis, Josef Pieper warned four decades ago of the evil warping of words used by totalitarian regimes, to twist the minds of the populace to their nefarious ends – the ‘transvaluation of all values’, as Nietzsche put it….
. . . . By so altering the terms of our language, the powers of darkness have proved themselves wiser than the children of light. By co-opting the common and customary meaning of our words, with shrewd epistemology, they have altered our thoughts and concepts, which connect us with how things really are, or are not, which in turn is how Saint Thomas defined truth, adequatio rei et intellectus: a conformity between the mind and reality, a relationship that is forged, built up and maintained by what we mean by the words we use.
Josef Pieper argues that it is in changing our use of language that totalitarian regimes change our notion of truth. We are enslaved not with guns and tanks, but by the ignorance resulting from the warping of our words and thoughts. We, and by that I mean especially our young people attending modern state-controlled educational establishments, are being turned into a nation of mind-controlled zombies. . . .
Narrated 1947 Essay from German Catholic Philosopher Josef Pieper on the subject of the intentional distortion of language as a means of manipulation and domination through the construction of pseudo-realities.
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