“Debunked” this and “false” that – and “deniers”

 No doubt all you news junkies have noticed that the MSM has taken to putting modifiers such as “debunked” and “false” in front of any statement they don’t like. It’s so commonplace it’s become a sort of bitter joke on the right, like “Republicans pounce!” when the Democrats mess up and the right criticizes them.

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It certainly is a form of editorializing, but it differs in that it masquerades as a hard cold fact. “Debunked” doesn’t mean “I don’t believe it” – and in fact it’s an open question as to whether those making the “election fraud in 2020 has been totally debunked” claim believe what they are saying or just don’t care or actively would support election fraud by Democrats if it had occurred because it was all in the worthy cause of getting rid of Trump. The “debunked” claim about election fraud claims to be relying on absolute empirical knowledge when of course the way the election was designed there is no way to know for sure, and the court cases that dealt with it simply decreed that lack of standing and then later laches barred any real inquiry into the question, or that it simply was unanswerable.

So it’s not editorializing in a supposedly factual piece, it’s more than that and worse than that. And it works, whatever you call it.....

At another site (can’t remember where) I saw not only the phrase “election deniers” for the right but also “pro-democracy” for the left. The free, fair, perfect 2020 election has become a Truth that cannot be challenged without heretical apostasy, and in contrast its defenders are holding up the pillars of democracy itself. But of course, if fraud was indeed committed by the Democrats in 2020, then this nomenclature becomes especially Orwellian.

At Last, a Hill to Die On

 

So now the mask has dropped and, for the first time, the American people can see the modern Left in all its hateful, unadorned, vituperative, spiteful glory. Case in point: the announcement last week that the Department of Homeland Security—one of the excrescences of the Bush administration, cobbled together in its panic over 9/11—has created the "Disinformation Governance Board" in order to combat what it has, via its hitherto little-known Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, already dubbed "mis-, dis-, and mal-information." Otherwise known as alternative points of view, but shut up, citizen. 

Read the whole thing.

THE LEFT GOES FULL ORWELL

 In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth is decorated with party slogans that include, “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.” The organization was based on the actual British Ministry of Information which Orwell had a great deal of experience with while working for the wartime BBC even while his wife worked for the Ministry’s censorship division.

Orwell would not have been in the least surprised by state media trotting out an academic who regularly appears on state media (including that of totalitarian nations such as Qatar) to explain that freedom is really a very naughty thing even as the state crushes a “Freedom Convoy” using emergency powers that were meant to deal with wartime emergencies, not peaceful protests.

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 Long before the Freedom Convoy, media in this country had begun vocally insisting that Gov. Ron DeSantis was an “authoritarian” for refusing to impose onerous regulations on Floridians.

“Ron DeSantis is creating a paradise of authoritarianism,” a Washington Post column argued.

An authoritarian paradise, like a place where tyranny is the right not to be told what to do, is a contradiction in terms, but in a backward world where freedom is a threat, elected officials who don’t force people to do things are authoritarians, while politicians who take away rights are liberators. The greatest tyranny is making your own choices and the ultimate freedom comes from government regulation. Only by giving up freedom to the government can we be free.

"Freedom"'s Just Another Word for ...er, "White Supremacism"

 

This is the CBC Canadian Broadcasting Company):

Why the word 'freedom' is such a useful rallying cry for protesters

The word has become common among far-right groups, experts say

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength: Just "follow the science"

Aldous Huxley, in a 1946 preface to Brave New World (1932), wrote of a people of slaves who would love their enslavement: 'A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude'.

Freedom is servitude: just ask the CBC.

People who wear masks driving alone in their cars or walking in the park love their servitude; they are exhibiting their goodness, their virtue, and their loyalty to the State.

The ACLU morphs into the Ministry of Truth

 

The word ‘Orwellian’ gets bandied about a little too much in the 2020s. But really, no other word will do to describe the ACLU’s latest antics. The American Civil Liberties Union, once the firmest of freedom’s defenders, has put out a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but not before erasing a certain word from it. What foul language did RBG use that forced even the liberal behemoth that is the ACLU to take the scissors of censorship to what she said? She said ‘woman’. That’s it. For that, one of America’s most celebrated justices has been given the Ministry of Truth treatment by one of America’s most celebrated defenders of constitutional rights. What is going on here?

The ACLU did its bizarre impersonation of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Ministry of Truth on Twitter. Just as that dystopian ministry exists to rewrite history to ensure that it corresponds with the Party’s current view of the world, so the ACLU now seems to think its job is to mangle old quotations so that they don’t offend 21st-century woke sensibilities. This is what the ACLU has Ginsburg saying in its tweet: ‘The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] wellbeing and dignity… When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.’

Person? People? They? Ginsburg didn’t use those words. She said woman, women, she. In two short sentences, the ACLU has carried out five acts of censure. It has corrected what it clearly believes was wrongthink on the part of Ginsburg. Ginsburg, who was a justice of the Supreme Court from 1993 until her death in 2020, may have been a much-honoured warrior for women’s rights, but she is guilty of having used incorrect speech in the eyes of the woke scolds who appear to have taken over the ACLU. She said ‘woman’, when as every good and obedient PC person now knows, we don’t use that word. It is potentially offensive to trans women or men who identify as women or non-binary people or whatever other group we are currently elevating above women and their right to talk about themselves and their lives.

Out have gone the genuine libertines of the Sixties and Seventies who defended free-speech rights even for those they loathed – the KKK, Nation of Islam, actual Nazis – and in their place are younger, woker, more intolerant campaigners who won’t even defend the right of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to say ‘woman’. 

With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, we lost a champion for abortion and gender equality. And on the anniversary of her death, the fight to protect abortion access is more urgent than ever. pic.twitter.com/vIKadIHouN

— ACLU (@ACLU) September 18, 2021

No, MSM, "1984" is not a how-to manual.

Orwell's "Two Plus Two equals Five" demands you assert and beleive.

Why did Ilhan Omar post an audio that disproved the claim she was trying to make?

It may be that the “Orwellian” nature of what Omar did goes much deeper. She may simply have not cared whether the audio proved her point or not. It was offered as “proof,” she stated that it constituted proof, and perhaps she was expecting its truth to be taken for granted by those on her side without their checking it by listening in an objective fashion.

In fact, does objectivity even exist as a principle to be followed on the left? Isn’t truth what the Party says it is? And isn’t that the deeper Orwellian nature of the left?

I’ve noticed this quite a bit: the left’s lie can be quite flagrant, and yet the person making it is confident that he or she won’t be called on it by anyone who matters. The person isn’t addressing the skeptical; the person is addressing followers, admirers, and/or true believers on the left.

Omar may have been operating in this way. She may have gotten away with it most of the time in the past. She’s used to those who support her and would-be supporters not bothering to follow through and check her out. She’s used to people (Nancy Pelosi being the latest) making excuses for everything wrong that Omar may do or say.

She’s used to people forgetting. She’s used to not facing any consequences for bold lies. She’s used to being admired nevertheless, and to going from strength to strength.

This is “Orwellian” in the sense of “Two plus two equals five, if I say so. And if you ever believed otherwise, then forget it and move on.”