In a picture-perfect example of psychological projection, this young man with one name succinctly and brilliantly accused the right of employing the politically-correct left's favorite tactic: Marginalize your ideological opponents, putting them beyond the societal pale, so you do not have to engage them in debate.
That's what a charge of racism is all about. Rightwing tea partiers are all racists, so their ideas can all be ignored. They're not worthy of a response. It's a convenient dodge employed by the ideologically indoctrinated and the intellectually bereft.
"Those who control the language control the debate."
Imposing speech codes, placing certain words off-limits, and declaring as "hate speech" the legitimate criticism of certain protected groups and programs are common contemporary versions of the age-old tactics Orwell warned us of so many years ago.
He expounded upon Oceania's peculiar language, Newspeak, in a short essay, The Principles of Newspeak:
The purpose of Newspeak was [...] to make all other modes of thought impossible.This involved "stripping" words of "unorthodox meanings," "eliminating undesirable words" and reducing the vocabulary.
Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought.In our own day, "racist" is a lazy epithet to be flung only at white conservatives. Employ it in any other fashion not authorized by the cognoscenti, and the author will be met with either puzzlement or scorn. You may as well call a cockroach a house slipper. People of color (and the guilty white liberals who encourage such dangerous linguistic abuse) cannot. Be. Racist. Period.
In the same vein, the word fascism cannot be used without causing an indignant uproar, even if the one using it can provide ten reasons and examples showing why the word is apt. And God forbid you should criticize the collapsing panoply of federally-funded social services that have ushered us to the brink of bankruptcy. That would make you a hater of minorities, the poor, and old people.
Thought corrupts language, language corrupts thought
In his essay, Politics and the English Language, Orwell observes...
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
[...] But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.Successful speech codes create a self-censoring feedback loop. Taking away words is the removal of the building blocks of thought, impoverishing it, which in turn further impoverishes our speech, which further impoverishes our thoughts...
We can break this cycle of language abuse by refusing to obey speech codes and fighting their implementation at every level. Laughing in the faces of hollow ideologues spouting the latest liberal meme won't stop it, but it will break the spell and attract critical attention that is the antidote to pseudo-intellectual claptrap designed to quash critical thought and free speech.
* - I found the "control the debate" quote in Google Books - Disciplining Dissent - Bruneau & Turk
