The Ministry of Truth and 1984 Newspeak
FAQ
TLDR
Daily updates from today's Ministry of Truth exposing their agenda via satire, their own words, candid observations, and humor.
Purpose
The goal is to expose the dangerous modern practice of Newspeak. As in George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, today's political leaders and media (Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth, respectively) use authoritarian control, and even a mutable new language with the intent to influence public opinions and perceptions of their social and political agendas. By waking people up to this modern Newspeak, we hope to resist their efforts to change our language and preserve meaningful dialog.
This Newspeak consists of the progressive left either redefining existing words, or inventing new ones, which have new and radically different meanings that diverge greatly from the common understanding. In this way, they shape the conversation and try to win the moral and cultural arguments by defining the terms of the debate and subliminally affecting the minds of the masses. We want to bring to light these deceptive words and distortions by pointing them out, by using satire, and by discussing why objective truth and words actually matter.
This Newspeak consists of the progressive left either redefining existing words, or inventing new ones, which have new and radically different meanings that diverge greatly from the common understanding. In this way, they shape the conversation and try to win the moral and cultural arguments by defining the terms of the debate and subliminally affecting the minds of the masses. We want to bring to light these deceptive words and distortions by pointing them out, by using satire, and by discussing why objective truth and words actually matter.
This is all framed as "daily updates" from the official Ministry of Truth and the administration of Big Brother, who is always watching you.
Background
George Orwell wrote the book, 1984, as a warning to the world of his time of dangers that he saw coming. He wrote of a world government run by Big Brother which strictly controlled the people in all areas, as represented by the four Ministries, which are:
- The Ministry of Truth - primarily concerned with lies and propaganda, and which regulates all forms of media, entertainment, and arts
- The Ministry of Peace - which is concerned about war and international relations
- The Ministry of Love - ruthlessly maintains the peace and administers justice
- The Ministry of Plenty - which regulates the economy and public services
By controlling all aspects of society, they supposedly had a perfect, utopian society with no crime, dissention, or want. In reality, it was a socialist disaster that only the brave could even think about escaping or resisting, upon pain of "re-education" or "vaporization" (i.e. elimination from society).
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
While these ministries all have some correlations to today, the Ministry of Truth is the most alarming. The power of our biased modern media to influence, censor, propagandize, gas light, and flat out lie to us is terrifying.
Relevance
Our world has changed greatly in the last decade alone. Instead of newspapers, trusted nightly radio and TV news, and unscripted interviews, we now have virtually unlimited on-demand access to all sorts of content. More information than ever before is available at the touch of a screen on our personal Multivacs (as Asimov predicted), which it seems that we can't live without. The biggest challenge is finding unbiased and objectively true information, and even then it is still hard to find what we actually need.
The danger is obvious. Whoever controls this information stream, controls the minds and hearts of the people. As has been widely documented and observed, the modern media is very biased toward one end of the social and political spectrum. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has not helped, since they tend to be just as biased as the information they are trained on. The media has the power
- to ignore issues and people
- to define agendas and words
- to lead people to believe that what they see with their own eyes is not true
- to claim consensus on a topic, and thereby shut down debate
In addition,
- They claim that to oppose their view is somehow misinformation, "hate speech", or even calls to violence.
- They call what has been traditionally believed for centuries (or longer) as harmful or disrespectful.
- They call evil good, and good evil, and intolerantly reject "intolerant" religions.
- They retcon history by deleting it, rewriting it, or casting it into a "new" light.
- They redefine our language to be distorted beyond the original intent to support their progressive agendas.
By using their own modern Newspeak words, or speaking in the voice of "The Ministry of Truth", we hope to open eyes to the changes that are happening in our homes, our communities, our nation, and our world. We do this sometimes with satire, sometimes with direct references, and sometimes by taking the roof off of their ideas and taking them to their logical conclusion.
No comments:
Post a Comment