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1/4
All those years ago, Orwell had already noticed how the far left uses abstract language to shield itself from facing the actual human suffering their regimes provoke.
Politics and the English Language is a masterclass on this topic.
orwell.ru/library/essays… …
All those years ago, Orwell had already noticed how the far left uses abstract language to shield itself from facing the actual human suffering their regimes provoke.
Politics and the English Language is a masterclass on this topic.
orwell.ru/library/essays… …
2/4
When you're defending the indefensible, he said, your priority is "to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." And you do that through abstraction.
When you're defending the indefensible, he said, your priority is "to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." And you do that through abstraction.
3/4
You can't defend a government that lets starving political prisoners die of treatable infections covered in their own shit and blood.
Instead, you'll talk about "standing firm against U.S. imperial aggression" or "fighting attempts to destabilize the workers' government."
You can't defend a government that lets starving political prisoners die of treatable infections covered in their own shit and blood.
Instead, you'll talk about "standing firm against U.S. imperial aggression" or "fighting attempts to destabilize the workers' government."
4/4
To fight the propagandist's flight to abstraction, you have to be concrete.
Militantly concrete.
Concrete enough to evoke the actual, physical reality of the atrocities abstraction covers up.
This concrete, if need be:
caracaschronicles.com/2019/02/09/the…
To fight the propagandist's flight to abstraction, you have to be concrete.
Militantly concrete.
Concrete enough to evoke the actual, physical reality of the atrocities abstraction covers up.
This concrete, if need be:
caracaschronicles.com/2019/02/09/the…
