A recurring theme in George Orwell's essays and books is his commitment to facing facts head-on, without flinching. It's appropriate that the kind of sterilizing political language Orwell opposed--exemplified in extreme form in 1984--has come to be called "Orwellian" (a more subtle contemporary example is the phrase "collateral damage"). What Orwell advocated for political discourse is essentially the style of argument used in scientific / scholarly discourse: use plain language which does not distort the facts in your favor.
The student of Orwell carries with her a toolkit of critical-thinking skills to avoid slipping into Orwellian abuses of language in the service of political ideology. I'd like to add a tool to this toolkit: keeping track of who's who.
In the William F. Buckley essay I blogged about a few days ago, there is a colossal Orwellian distortion of who's who. The phrase "the South" does not mean the people who live in the South. It actually means the white community in the South. The black community in the South, however, is arbitrarily excluded from "the South". This linguistic sleight-of-hand serves the author's ideological purposes, but at the expense of plain language and respecting the demographic facts: blacks are as much a part of the South as whites.
The same who's who violation occurs in Western newspaper articles about the conflict in Afghanistan. I have seen the term "Afghan forces" abused to mean the NATO-backed forces of the central Kabul government. It is sometimes said that a certain number of "Afghans" were killed by insurgents--including such-and-such number of civilians, and such-and-such number of soldiers. But when Taliban insurgents are killed by government forces, they are never "Afghans" or even "Afghan forces". They may as well be invaders from Mars as inhabitants of Afghanistan.
Should the who's who tool be added to the critical thinking toolkit? Or am I making a fuss over nothing?
Should the who's who tool be added to the critical thinking toolkit? Or am I making a fuss over nothing?
Freyguy,
ReplyDeleteI don’t know if the problem is truly Orwellian. It could be a matter of context or lack of having the properly descriptive English words/expressions or just one of values. For instance in the case of the South, if one is talking about excluding African Americans, obviously the culture being referred to is a White Southern Culture – nothing else makes sense. Certainly challenge Buckley’s convictions, but his use of language…
With regard to the dead and collaterally damaged, if a suicide bomber goes into a marketplace and kills ten people himself included, for me that is nine plus one. More specific to the example you gave about the Taliban, identification may also be an issue. Are the terrorists/Taliban/insurgents necessarily Afghans or could they be Pakistanis or Iranians or maybe some combination thereof? One can wait for more exact details before reporting the story or one can just lump the insurgents into any convenient category and be happy they are dead and no longer able to terrorize.
And before you groan at my insensitivity let me say that I purposely do not give moral equivalence to those trying to destroy values I cherish. Some say one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, but I say bullshit. Evil is as evil does (see: Forest Gump) whether it is the Taliban seeking to impose their primitive form of justice on women, Pol Pot populating the killing fields of Cambodia or Gestapo agents diligently seeking to rid the world of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Yeah, sometimes you just have to be willing to conclude that your values are superior to the other guy’s.
Okay, now you can groan... or put away your toolkit.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteFirst, let me say thank you for once again providing your duly considered feedback! I'm both shocked and grateful that my naive ramblings have not yet bored you enough to discourage you from sharing your opinion ... then again, you simply wouldn't be Fred if anything discouraged you from sharing your opinion.
I won't nitpick your basically valid points, but I should clarify two things.
First of all, I don't envision Orwellian language as intentional, generally. To the contrary, I believe the conscious, deliberate use of deceptive political language is the exception, rather than the rule. The more common use of Orwellian language -- even when taken to the extreme, as in Orwell's 1984 -- is for a person to repeat it thoughtlessly, and self-deceptively. For what it's worth, I have no reason to believe Buckley realized what he was doing when he equated "the South" with the white part of the South. By my lights, that makes it all the more Orwellian.
Secondly, let me assure you I have no love for the Taliban. After 9/11 I went to a U.S. Marines recruitment office and if I had not been medically disqualified, I would have joined as soon as possible. (I may well be intellectually, physically and morally disqualified to be a jarhead, too; but the medical disqualification comes first.) My purpose in talking about the Taliban was simply to illustrate by way of example my overall point about keeping track of who's who. It was not my intention to advocate sensitivity towards the Taliban, but rather sensitivity towards the truth -- in this case, the truth that we are supporting one side in an Afghan civil war. Orwell faced up to the problems with socialism *even though* he was a committed socialist. It is in the spirit of Orwell that I advocate facing up to inconvenient facts about the Taliban (for example) *even though* they are fanatical barbarians.
Freyguy,
ReplyDeleteYour patriotism is noted, your courage is admirable, your preferred choice of action is jarring.
I particularly wanted to make the point that even in our multicultural morally equivalent world it is okay for civilized individuals to conclude that their values are superior and worth fighting (killing) for. Apparently in your case it was unnecessary for me to do so.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteSomehow your comment reminds me of something I heard Christopher Hitchens say in response to Jesus' command to "love your enemy". Hitchens said: "I don't love my enemies. I hate them, and I want to kill them." Then he raised his voice in his characteristic drunken way, saying: "Go love your own fucking enemies, because I don't want you loving mine." He was a friend of the Kurds, Salman Rushdie, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, so I guess he had some serious enemies.
I'm also reminded of Orwell's memoir of the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia. He was brutally honest about the democrat-communist people's army he fought in against Franco's forces, and the injustices of the Western capitalist system. This is remarkable, considering he killed people and was eventually shot in the throat on behalf of those same democrat-communist, Western capitalist powers. What I admire about Orwell is his ability to recognize that (1) human conflict is not as simple as good vs. evil, and (2) it's not as simple as neutral vs. neutral, either.