Voices from Russia

Monday, 9 August 2010

A Short Lexicon of Newspeak… DO Think of the Tea Party and of Certain Orthodox Parties as You Read It

Editor’s Foreword:

If you read nothing else, look at the entry for “Memory Hole”… that says it all. It also shows you why I’m a fullwise doubleplusungood crimethinking ownlifer in some quarters…

BMD

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Bellyfeel:

An emotional, instinctual, and non-intellectual understanding of a topic; it can also mean a blind and enthusiastic acceptance of a concept. In a negative sense, you see it in teabaggers and Orthodox konvertsy alike. The jury is out whether one can use this in a positive context… I would say YES… “Orthodoxy can’t be explained… one must bellyfeel it”… or, “You know the Tea Party’s wrong… your bellyfeel tells you so”.

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Crimestop:

The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to the party line, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought that is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short… “protective stupidity”. For instance, one sees protective stupidity in the OCA fanatics when you mention the links of Nashotah House with the TEC or the teabaggers look blank when you mention the exorbitant cost of America’s foreign adventures in global hegemony.

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Crimethink:

To consider any thought not in line with the principles of the party line or doubting any of its principles. All crimes begin with a thought. Therefore, if you control thought, you can control crime. “Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime doesn’t entail death; thoughtcrime IS death… it’s the essential crime that contains all others in itself”. The ultimate “crimethink” for the OCA fanatics is to question Aleksandr Dmitrievich Schmemann (he’s their real deity; Christ sucks hind tit for them); for the Tea Party, the equivalent is to question the pre-eminent position of America in the world as a given right.

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Crimethinker:

One who engages in crimethink, that is, someone like me who doesn’t swallow the party line uncritically and regurgitate it on command. I’m a crimethinker on two levels… I don’t accept the Gospel according to Paffhausen or the Tale of the Tea Party… nasty sort, no?

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Doubleplus:

A prefix used to create the superlative form of an adjective or adverb, as in, “Vara’s a doubleplusungood crimethinker who won’t bow down in front of The Metropolitan and repeat His Doubleplusgood Goodthink”… “doubleplusungood crimethinker” means “very bad heretical dissident”, with the “boon” of using no “negative” words, according to the tenets of New Age Affirmation (as taught by Guru Paffhausen et al).

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Doublespeak:

Strictly speaking, it’s not Newspeak, but it’s a very useful neologism, no? Its definition as “deliberately ambiguous or evasive language or any language that pretends to communicate but actually doesn’t” applies to oca.org or to any Tea Party pronouncement directly.

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“You can send your money now. Everything’s changed… it’s all over now”… a classical example of “doublethink”… it’s for your own good, after all (Pay up! Bobby needs the dough!)…

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Doublethink:

The attempt on the part of an individual, group, or state to “control reality”. It’s the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. Excellent examples of doublethink in modern society are “the War on Drugs” and “the War on Terror”… neither has achieved its object, both have led to an exacerbation of the “problem” involved, and both feed massive corruption and governmental sclerosis and hypocrisy. The USA’s become an armed camp in many ways (a guard demanded that I remove a mulitool from my keychain at a Federal building, for instance), but the USA is the “Land of the Free”… the Tea Party says so!

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Fullwise:

This is a replacement for “fully” and all of its cognates. One of the rules of newspeak is that you can turn any word into an adverb by adding the suffix “wise”. This allows the removal of repetitive words such as completely and totally from the language. Note that this neologism’s very common today amongst users of jargonese; it is usually a reliable indication that you’re dealing with a total and shameless BSer who is trying to put one over on you.

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Goodthinker:

One who strongly adheres to all of the principles of the party line (Goodthinked, Goodthink, Goodthinked, Goodthinking, Goodthinkful, Goodthinking, Goodthinkful, Goodthinkwise, Goodthinker). One sees this at SVS and New Skete, and in many who post on the Orthodox Forum (and some corners of the ROCOR as well, sadly) in the case of Orthodoxy; and at Fox News, the American Enterprise Institute, and Pat Robertson’s CBN in the case of the Tea Party (Robertson is the Ron Popiel (with apologies to Ron… Ron’s only a harmless TV salesman) of that movement… his network is nothing but an endless infomercial for his political ideas, with only the slightest religious veneer).

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“In the process of bringing democracy to this Third World country, there was unfortunate collateral damage to property and to the civilian population…”

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Joycamp:

Forced-labour camp. In both New Agers and teabaggers, always look for “inverted meanings”… it’s one of their favourite techniques. Here’s an example, The Metropolitan said, “It’s all over. Everything’s changed. You can send your money now”. Oh, yes… I shall be a doubleplusungood crimethinker and point up to you that Lyonyo Kishkovsky was smiling lupinely at his side… those “in the know” know what I mean.

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Malreported:

It describes the situation when the Times reported a fact that the government later deemed untrue. You see, the government is never “wrong”, the paper merely reported the facts incorrectly. One uses this term to describe newspaper articles that contained references to unpersons, unfulfilled economic projections, or altered government policies (also known as Malquoted). For instance, “The recession actually started in December 2007, the government pronouncements that there wasn’t a recession prior to the November 2008 presidential election were malquotes of the officials involved; the Mainstream Media malreported it”.

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Memory Hole:

A system of pipes, similar to pneumatic tubes, used to destroy documents. A document stuffed in the memory hole would be conveniently whisked away to the furnaces below…  quickly and easily wiping it from history. Let me give you a real-world example that I know… a priest left the ROCOR during the nasty years of the Ustinovshchyna. The specious little fib at the heart of it all was “the communists are still in power”. The parish ceased to mention him and removed all traces of his presence. I wonder what they’ve done now that the party line has changed? Since all too many of them are doubleplusgoodthinkers, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that they’ve flipped, and, dontcha know, “We were always for reconciliation, and wasn’t Fr X a prophet of it all?” THIS is the most dangerous of the Newspeak concepts… we’ve all seen it and we all know that Satan’s hand is in it. NEVER argue with such sorts, for they’ll deny the past… and here’s the scary part… when you look in their faces, you see that they BELIEVE it. It’s prelest personified…

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Oldthink:

Holding on to old ideas and patterns of thought not consistent with the current party line; maintaining a belief that’s no longer acceptable, but was normal just a few years prior. For instance, some years ago, it was official policy of the ROCOR to be hostile to the MP… today, that policy is opposite that of the past, to the point that the ROCOR is now part of the MP, and, most probably, it’ll lose its separate legal identity and be subsumed into the main body of the MP in due course. Therefore, “The people who left us after the reconciliation were oldthinkers… they’re living in the past”. Please, note that I’m NOT sitting in judgement of those who left… I’m only using this situation as an example of the usage of the language.

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“Ownlifers of the World… Beware!”

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Ownlife:

Refers to all kinds of Individualism and eccentricity. It’s a desire to do something merely because it pleases you or benefits you, such as a hobby, owning property, love, or any other thoughtcrime. Remember, one of the marks of a cult is that you’ll see Stepford Wives conformity and that the cultists spare nothing to chase out those perceived as “ownlifers”. You see this trend most strongly in the HOOMie element in the OCA, Mormons amongst the teabaggers (the Pentecostalists and American Sectarians are NOT far behind them, alas), and in some isolated parts of the ROCOR (again, sadly enough… but I must report what I see).

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Ungood:

Bad. One of the rules of newspeak is that you can turn any word into its antonym by adding the prefix “un-“. This allows the removal of repetitive words such as horrible, terrible, great, fantastic, and fabulous from the language. That is, “doubleplusungood” is Heretical Unbelief and “doubleplusgood” is the Received Truth (that is, at present… it could change at any time).

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Unperson:

A person erased from existence for transgressing the party line in some way, they suffer complete erasure from history. There’s a complete removal of all records of their existence, and all party members must remove them from their memories. To mention their name is a thoughtcrime. This eliminates any possibility of martyrdom. Of course, this is like unto the memory hole. The priest I mentioned in that definition became an “unperson” (at least for the period that Vitaly Ustinov’s senile maunderings were goodthink for the ROCOR). Hell… I’m an unperson in some circles; so, don’t say that I didn’t warn you…

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Vaporise:

The act of being “shunned” and having all records of your existence erased, the action involved in becoming an unperson. To wit, “Fr X didn’t agree with Metropolitan Vitaly’s doubleplusgood goodthink, so they had to vaporise him…”, or, “We had to vaporise X because they’re an oldthinker, they kept pointing up bin Laden’s ties with the neocons”.

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Youth League:

Mandatory youth group under control of the Thought Police, similar to the Hitler Youth or Komsomol. Their primary task is to monitor the activities of their parents. You find this tendency not only in the PC/Therapeutic movements (“children’s rights”), you also see it in the Tea Party… what’ll happen to parents who don’t buy the BS that the USA is a Special City on the Hill? Why, their kids will turn ‘em in and get praised for exposing crimethinkers. Remember, we’re talking about people who oppose mosques in their neighbourhood because they believe that Islam isn’t a religion. Be wary of mandatory ANYTHING…

Adapted from:

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html

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