Newspeak/Quotes

Do not allow others to dictate the debate by injecting their own politically correct language like: higher order thinking skills, site-based management or gender norming. It's a smokescreen. Insist on using plain English in your debates. If your school is producing stupid children -- say so.

—Tom DeWeese, American education activist.

Old habits, unrelated to sustainable development, can be eradicated only if replaced with something else. Therefore, real social and civil consciousness must be replaced by “civic competence”; authentic relations between sexes by sustainable equality; educated society by “knowledge-based society”, etc. The popular consent is affirmed by accepting the new rules and, above all, new language. If you find yourself irritated by obligation to apply exclusively female gender pronouns in academic texts or by replacing history by “herstory”, rest assured that your sentiment is well founded and in fact deadly serious.

— Kali Tribune English, Agenda 21: An Introduction

The utilitarians have constructed an artificial language in which it is impossible to express such concepts “the rule of law”, “natural rights”, or any idea or fact that would reject the limitless, absolute, lawless and capricious power of the state, and they seek to impose that language on the world.
Utilitarians usually argue in the same way that Marxists and behaviorists argue. They translate any statement you make into utilitarian speak, and then state their translation: “What you are really saying is...”. Since utilitarian speak is incapable of expressing any statement that would contradict the limitless and absolute power of the state, your statements are turned into nonsense, and they then contemptuously point out that what you are saying is nonsense.
How could one express in utilitarian speak the idea that the condemnation orders issued by the government against home owners in Dade county September 1992 were unlawful, that the home owners had the right and the duty to resist attempts to evict them with all force necessary, that their effective and successful resistance was lawful regardless of what pieces of paper the government manufactured? If I attempted to say this in utilitarian speak I would end up saying that the government had not done its paper work correctly, or that government reallocation of land would be suboptimal!

—James A. Donald, Natural Law and Natural Rights

Generally speaking, words like 'agent of,' 'Democracy,' 'Freedom,' etc. meant something quite different in Party usage from what they meant in general usage; and as, furthermore, even their Party meaning changed with each shift of the line, our polemical methods became rather like the croquet game of the Queen of Hearts, in which the hoops moved about the field and the balls were live hedgehogs. With this difference, that when a player missed his turn and the Queen shouted 'Off with his head,' the order was executed in earnest. To survive, we all had to become virtuosos of Wonderland croquet.

—The God That Failed by Arthur Koestler

The key to power in the Fourth Republic is that no one who has power wants anyone to think of them as having power. For example, in the traditional iron triangle, legislators do not have power. They are just expressing the will of the people. Civil servants do not have power. They are just making public policy. Lobbyists do not have power. They are just communicating their concerns.
This is a profoundly Orwellian situation. The root of the problem is that the modern English language has no word which means "power," but carries only positive associations. […]
A good way to find the most powerful people in the US is to find the most responsible people. No one in the US is scheming for power. A lot of them seem to be working for change. No one in the US is brainwashing the masses. A lot of them seem to be educating the public. No one in the US is ruling the world. A lot of them seem to be making global policies.

—The iron polygon: power in the United States by Mencius Moldbug

In the case of Zimbabwe, however, this word seems to have changed strangely and taken on an almost opposite meaning. [...] So, strangely enough, the country now known as Zimbabwe declared independence in 1965, much as the US declared independence in 1776. The former, however, was not genuine independence, but rather illegal independence. In order to gain genuine, legal independence, the country now known as Zimbabwe had to first revert to British control, i.e., surrender its illegal independence. Are you feeling confused yet?

—An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives by Mencius Moldbug

The first thing we notice about Rawls is the title of his famous book, A Theory of Justice. As I’ve mentioned before, this is not just hubristic, but actively Orwellian. For about the last 2500 years, the word justice and its various Indo-European predecessors have meant “the accurate execution of the law.” Rawls is no more interested in law than I am in dressage, and when he redefines the word justice to mean, effectively, righteousness, one notes with some dismay that he is confiscating a noun with no existing synonyms. But perhaps this was the publisher’s decision—maybe A Theory of Righteousness just wouldn’t have moved as well.

—The Rawlsian god: cryptocalvinism in action by Mencius Moldbug