The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act: A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak

“Political language has to consist largely of euphemisms . . . and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
- George Orwell -

H.R 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 recently passed by the House—a companion bill is in the Senate—is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment:

It begins, “AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.”

Those whose pulse did not quicken at “other purposes” have probably not read George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” or they voted for the other George both times.
Orwell’s jeremiad on the corruption of the English language and its corrosive effect on a democracy was written two years before his novel 1984 spelled out in chilling detail the danger of Newspeak, which renders citizens incapable of independent thought by depriving them of the words necessary to form ideas other than those promulgated by the state.

After its opening “tribute” to Orwell, H.R 1955 is strategically peppered with Newspeak regarding the establishment of a National Commission and university-based Centers of Excellence to “examine and report upon the fact and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States” and to make legislative recommendations for combating it.

Click here for full Daily Scare Article

Doublethink in action!

"Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength. War is peace."

George Orwell 1984

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

George W Bush, June 18, 2002

Is this really what we are? Eh yes.

Pressed to pick just five books to explain Britain, an expert panel chose Orwell’s 1984 above all – are we so besotted by Big Brother? How about Amis or an Ikea catalogue?

Click here for Times report

War, fear and truth

Orwell reminds us that the fear produced by war and terrorism allows those in power to create their own truth.
Perhaps it would have surprised George Orwell, poet laureate of the Cold War, to find himself so much in our thoughts in this second decade of the post-Cold War age. The Soviet Union is 15 years dead, its imperium in the East long since ended. China has entered into a peculiar economic symbiosis with the American capitalist juggernaut. And yet, in this new post-ideological world, no writer is more vital than Orwell, not least because he helps us see how deeply that earlier struggle has marked us, helps us read the signs it has inscribed on the body of our politics.

Click here for full LA Times article

Americans have proven susceptible to manipulations of the truth

In his novel "1984," George Orwell chillingly described a totalitarian regime in which all communication is controlled by a Ministry of Truth and dissidents are persecuted by political police. The United States remains a democracy governed by a constitution and the rule of law, with pluralistic media, yet there are disturbing signs that the propaganda methods Orwell described have taken root here.

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I Quote

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell -

Eric Arthur Blair

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."

"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious."

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)
1903-1950