“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
– George Orwell, Animal Farm
“Napoleon is always right.”
– George Orwell, Animal Farm
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” ~ George Orwell
George Orwell observed that “Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Conservatives may accuse the left of the mangling of meanings, and liberals can accuse the right of the same thing. What they don’t acknowledge, but Orwell did, is that such contortion of language is inherent in political speech. It’s implicit in the nature of speech crafted for the masses that concepts be kept ambiguous and rudimentary. Since the object of political discourse is to garner support for the speaker (or program, or party), critical discussion of its substance is generally an unwelcome response.
