Language As Cudgel: What Would Orwell Think?
When I read or hear the word “woke“ I’m immediately on the alert for politics and mudslinging. The term has been taken over to refer to ideas and opinions that seem to threaten certain conservative worldviews.
Words have a way of being manipulated like that as frequently addressed by George Orwell in various essays about the relationship between art, literature, politics, and propaganda. An example is Orwell‘s essay, “Tolstoy and Shakespeare.” Written in 1941 and reprinted in Volume 2 of The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Harcourt Brace & World, 1968. In the essay he addressed Leo Tolstoy’s late-career dismissal of Shakespeare as:
“…not the great man he was claimed to be, but that he was a writer entirely without merit, one of the worst and most contemptible writers the world has ever seen.“
Orwell goes on in his essay to list the negatives said by Tolstoy about Shakespeare’s plays including their inconsistencies, their unreality, their occasional bawdiness, and their frequently slipshod construction.
And yet, Orwell wites, even if we admit that much of Tolstoy‘s criticism of Shakespeare is technically true, we are still left with the undeniable fact of Shakespeare’s continued popularity. Why is that, Orwell wonders?
His answer: even if Shakespeare may be fairly criticized as being a poor “thinker and teacher” we’re left with the simple fact of his being a great artist. It’s Shakespeare’s artistry that has proven to be so popular over the years in so many different languages.
So what does that have to do with the use of terms like “woke“ as bludgeons against leftist thinking?
Quite a bit, I think. Orwell frequently wrote about the interdependency among art, literature, language, propaganda, and politics. He labored mightily to distinguish among these as we know from published works such as ANIMAL FARM and 1984.
This is one of the reasons I enjoy reading works by or about Orwell: he makes an effort to be honest in his writing -- including attempts to admit his own prejudices. He may not always succeed but I still find much of his writing, even his short pieces, to be models of honesty and clear thinking.
Which brings me to the present day and what now passes for a political writing. The besmirching of terms like “woke“ and “fake news“ are just tips of the iceberg.
Orwell would have a field day were he to write about how such terms are used and might possibly make references to similar manipulation of language by Nazi and Communist Russia propagandists. (Lest the readers of this immediately bring up “left-wing” examples of language manipulation by sources such as Rachel Maddow and Morning Joe, my response would be, “So you agree with Orwell, too?”)
One takeaway from all this is that we must always approach our interpretation of art, politics, literature, and news with a critical mind. This means endeavoring to distinguish between fact and fiction especially when sources such as art and propaganda appeal to our emotions.
This is one of the reasons I usually find the writing of Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post so frustrating. Much of what he writes can be easily dismissed objectively through a simple appeal to logic or fact.
It is especially frustrating that the Post regularly provides him with a forum. On one hand you could say the Post is performing a service by exposing Post readers – who may infrequently avail themselves of the Fox News worldview – to his particular version of reality.
On the other hand, even if we admit the value of understanding the thinking of one’s political opponents, the factual selectivity and occasional outright lies promoted by writers like Thiessen are extremely frustrating, and not just because they differ from the “left’s” version of reality. (I also find it sad that Thiessen is published in the same paper with the brilliant Alexandra Petri, but that’s another story.)
We now live in a world here in the U.S. where a sizable portion of our population actively opposes fundamental tenets of democracy such as the sanctity of voting and fair elections. Such opposition to democracy goes far beyond simple differences of opinion and forces us to reckon the seriousness of threat now faced by democracy from within the U.S.
That so much of this threat is founded on control of language and education -- as current examples in Texas (control over how racism is discussed in public schools) and Florida (proposed surveys of faculty politics) demonstrate. Orwell might also recognize the similarities between “conservative” attempts to exert state control over classroom teaching with Chinese Communist authoritarianism.
Orwell would understand all of this despite today’s more technologically advanced communication media. And I’m sure that because of this he would be dismissed by the right as “woke” and “liberal” — even if he accused MSNBC of the same sins as Fox.
Copyright (c) 2021 by Dennis D. McDonald
