In a telling tale of how my priorities have shifted, the main thing I took away from 1984 this time around was not a rousing round of 'woo fuck the system', but a serious gnawing horror about the very idea of Newspeak. For those who aren't aware, in 1984 'Newspeak' is what the ruling party call the new language they are building, a severely reduced version of English that serves to reduce the population's ability to form contrary opinions by taking away their ability to vocalise them. In Newspeak, the word 'free' does not include the definition 'able to consider opinions other than those that the ruling class beams into your head'; the only meaning that the party allows it in the sense in which we might say 'this cat is free of fleas'. Semantically, we can argue for a similarity, but the characters of 1984 can't, because the alternative meaning has already been crushed out of existence.
Y'all probably know already that I'm a massive fanboy for the sheer capability of language, for the infinite amount of expression that it allows, so you can probably imagine my reaction to the idea of taking a purposefully reductionist approach to it, of chopping off bits you don't like, shaping it into form that benefits you and you alone. It makes me goddamn mad, all the more so because it isn't just a fictional conceit; this shit happens all the time. I've been especially aware of it of late because of the recent UK Labour party's leadership election, because of poor Jeremy Corbyn, who suffered through a deluge of shit from pretty much the entirety of the UK media in order to get elected nonetheless; for the past month or two it has been pretty much impossible to swing a cat round in journalistspace without whacking it against someone who was lining up a shot at Corbyn. The spin is everywhere.
Check this out:
Notice how 'I've no interest in being part of a cabinet and have held this position for decades' becomes, with but a deft revision, 'this man would not take a job from Jeremy Corbyn'. I mean both things are ostensibly true, but one is a neutral fact that only speaks of Skinner's character, and the other is positioned to be an attack of Corbyn's legitimacy as a leader. And even that is build on the false dichotomy that there's a difference between 'working' for Corbyn, and being an MP in the Labour party. The two are one and the same, unless they can be used to make an anti-Corbyn point: then, words can only mean one thing. Newspeak, bitches.
I mean good grief. Now I'm not an out-and-out Corbyn fanboy, but the more of this sort of crap I see, the more I want him to carry on upending this system - as Skinner quite cathartically does above. It's not just the right-wing media that's on with this either; even institutions like the BBC, which I previously considered to be fairly even handed, and which you wouldn't expect to have much love for a Tory government, are getting in on this action. Even the Guardian, one of the few left-leaning media institutions I thought I could trust, was full of pieces from 'big' names like David Miliband doomsaying the prospect of a Corbyn government, for reasons that I can only assume are borne from fear of him being too liberal to win anything. And yet, as these articles were appearing, it was becoming increasingly apparent that he was going to win the shit out of that election.
And that's what gives me hope. For all the endless spin and bullshit that the media tries to pour into our ears, there are increasingly things happening that give me hope that we're not going to go the Newspeak route, that the people of the world are getting increasingly pissed off by this nonsense. There are smart people out there who won't stand for it any longer, like Dennis Skinner above, and like this dude:
Both this video and the proceeding one came from, you may be surprised to hear, my Facebook feed. Judging from some folks who I've spoken to, there's been a marked increase in recent months of reposted bullshit - namely niche, Britain First-esque nonsense like repurposed nationalist images accompanied by completely fabricated anti-immigration, anti-feminist, anti-whatever messages designed to provoke defensive, xenophobic responses. I don't know if that's true of your Facebook, but, actually, it isn't of mine! Instead, my Facebook trades in the exact opposite of this: mostly informative, progressive stuff that either satirises the aforementioned content or condemns it, pleading with the kind of people who post it to please, please, think for yourselves. Add that to stuff like the tidal wave of amusing memes that have arisen from David Cameron's pig-gate scandal, refreshingly transferring the shoe to the other foot for a change, and, well, it's good for the soul.
Of course, this isn't Facebook's own doing. But it provided the platform for all of the excellent people I know to object to all the crap that self-serving idiots would have us believe. The poor doomed characters of 1984 didn't have that. They'd lost all means by which they could object to the bullshit they were being spoon-fed; their only rebellions were petty, individualistic acts that meant nothing, and in the end they lost that too, lost the ability to do anything other than just accept it. But we don't have to do that: we have the power to look at these endless reams of bullshit and say no. We've got our language, we've got our heart, and it warms mine to see people using theirs. That, in the end, is the point of this whole post: a shout out to those who won't be having with this gentle-into-that-good-night fatalism, a big internet hug to everyone who dares to give a shit. Keep being awesome.
