![]() ![]() All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. In our age there is no such thing as keeping out of politics. Orwell wrote 'Politics and the English Language' to argue that the abuse of language is dangerous because it is connected to the abuse of political power and to lay out principles of clear writing. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. ![]() Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. ![]() Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. ![]() In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |