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#purposely vague because it happens with literally every online leftist ever
evilelitest2 · 7 years
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100 Days of Trump Day 60: 1984
     Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump, where we try to sum up WTF happened in 2016 in 100 recommendations.  Today we are going to talk to the ganddaddy of them all, 1984....and let me just get this out of the way.  Orwell was a Socialist, he was extremely left wing, his criticism of communism (and it is more than just communism he is critical of) wasn’t coming from a right wing place.  Now one of Orwells main theory was actually disproved, if you don’t have a word for something it doesn't keep you from articulating it, usually by making a new word via language drift.  When Mao Zedong created Simplified Chinese he deliberately tried to remove certain phases and concepts from the language...but very quickly that failed, the Chinese just used new terms or loan words.  But what I do want to talk about with 1984 is the co-option of language, yes I am banging that drum again.  
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    See the regime Ingoc is specifically said to lack any real ideology, its most defining traits is its inconsistency, “We have always been at war with east asia”  But a political regime must have ideological rhetoric, even if it has no ideology itself, and so lacking any core beliefs, they instead latch upon other ideas and concepts and co-opt them for their own purpose.  And the Far Right (though not necessarily the more ‘moderate’ right) doesn’t really have a coherent political ideology beyond vague “I oppose these things” when you leave them alone to make their own theories it just turns into absolute shit.  And the greatest irony is that if you look at their writings, not only do they all sound like each other with no discernible difference, they all use the same phases over and over again, like cuck.  But the thing I find interesting is...almost all of those phases are leftist terms they just stop (not cuck obviously).  Here let me give a list of their mindlessly parroted phases that the Neoreactionary Right just can’t get enough of
Politically Correct
This was originally a socialist/communist term used by people like Orwell and Troskey against Stalinist style communists, politically correct mean that they followed the party line mindlessly without questioning.  If you used the word in its originally meaning, then you’d be using it against republicans who put aside previous objections in order to work with Trump.  Then it came to mean basically “Corporate works trying to pretend to be progressive without actually being progressive” a decidedly left wing charge.  But the right got it so not it just kinda means “Giving a shit about social justice”   Speaking of which
Social Justice Warrior 
This was actually a left wing term, I’m serious, I remember when it was first spreading around left wing internet and I was like “god damn this is a useful term”  And holy crap did that get co-opted fast.  SJW originally was a word to use for leftists who advocated a much more militant and “Us vs. them” mentality, basically for the modern day Marat or Robespierre.  This time of liberal disagreement goes back for quite a long way, the question of reform vs. revolution, and its not necessarily an ideological difference as it is a practical one, and it was nice to have a term to those people who fetishize the idea of violent revolution utterly ignorant of its results (spoiler warning, it doesn’t end well).  But not it is just a blanket term to mean “people I don’t like”
White Knight
Man i remember when this was a feminist term, it was a great term, it basically referred to men who try to defend women out of a desire for sex, which is a creepy thing that happens all the time.  Problem now is that any man who like...doesn’t think that Anita Sarkeesian is trying to take over the world is a white knight by default.  
Virtue Signalling
Basically this is when somebody obstains from doing something horrible and then calls attention to it so that everybody will value and respect them, social justices entirely for the praise.  Good term, we have all met that one guy who does that.  Problem is now that anybody who is like “Man, it is really awful the way women are consistently harassed on the internet” and the immediate response is “well you are just virtue signalling”.  
MLK
MLK’s entire existence has become one giant use of Rightists misusing him to support their argument, and then in response leftist pretending he was somehow  a violent revolutionary cause that makes sense. 
Regressive Leftist 
This one originally means to people who are supposedly left wing but actually seem to hold really non left wing views 
Ethics in Game Journalism
This might shock you but long before Gamergate was the glimmer in Ejoni’s empty souless eyes there were a lot of people talking about how corrupt games journalism is, because it fucking is but guess what? Most of them didn’t join up with GG, in fact many like Jim Sterling actually opposed GG and none of them were talking about indie devs interacting with games journalist for good reviews, they were instead talking about giant corporations buying adds on gaming journalist sites to get good reviews, the giant corporations that GG didn’t spend its time talking about in favor of how an indie game developer and a youtube feminist are somehow responsible for everything wrong in a multi billion dollar industry.  
Orwell himself
And of course, Orwell himself suffered this, despite being, I will say this again, a socialist, you see the term orwellian used to refer to the very same ideology Orwell held, its fucking maddening.  You have folks online like RedbloodedAmerican who literally say “Socialism has never produced anything of value ever” and then use the term Orwellian without any bat of irony.  
Part of this is that when these terms of defined, they are usually only defined in what they are, not what they aren’t, which makes them very easy to co-opt, after all the original definition didn’t not mean this right? Good hint for future leftist term makings, when you make something up, very specifically say what it isn’t.  Orwell would have done better I feel if he had very specifically made it clear what his regime was not as much as what it was.  
but we don’t just see this in a political context, I mean take the term 
Mary Sue
It is suppose to mean a character who is way too powerful for the narrative and around whom the narrative revolves because they are always correct, and now kinda means “thing I don’t like” 
But the right doesn’t just always co-opt the left, they have lots of neat little terms that instead exist to sort of hide to themselves and others how utterly abhorrent the whole lot of them are.  I mean when you say 
Family Values
When being homophobic or anti feminist, it basically doesn’t mean anything, I mean....what do families as a collective unit produce universal values?  All of them?  I mean the Judeo Claudians were a family should I take advice from them?  What defines a family? What if a family disagrees?  How does that mean anything at all?
Intelligent Design
This literally exists to make creationism sound less stupid than creationism, but of course every single person who believes in Intelligent Design is of course a creationist. 
White Nationalist 
Rather than just saying ‘I’m a nazi” they use this cute little term instead, because their beliefs are basically the same as the nazis except Pan European rather than just German.  
Spengler
This one honestly confuses me, because Spengler was right wing I mean did any of them actually read Decline of the West
The point is that we just see words used not for a method of communication, but instead as a way to create a larger point 
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    The list goes on and on but I want to get to my main point, I want to talk about the psychology going on with this constant revisionist of language, it isn’t because they are stupid (I mean it is but that isn’t the main point) its about keeping people angry, about creating a constant sense of anger and embittered paranoia.  Because here is the dirty little secret of the Far Right, if you actually calm them the fuck down and don’t have an enemy to oppose....they don’t really have all that much in common.  IN fact a lot of them have beliefs that are actually really left wing.  Again and again we have found that if you poll Americans based on specific issues like “Should healthcare be affordable”and “Does this country have too much of a wealth gap” and “Do the rich not pay enough in taxes” and a lot of hardcore republican suddenly sound like socialists.  CGP Grey noted that if you abstract enough and talk to people about the electoral college they will almost uniformly come out and say “Wow, that is awful” but the moment they realize that they benefit from it, they will instantly start to change their tune.  Because to a lot of Republican voters, it isn’t actually about the issues, its about fucking over “The enemy” which in this case is the democrats, and as long as people are fucking pissed, they don’t really fully listen to the whole platform of the guy they supported.  I had this issue with Obama/Clinton supporters where their supporters just stopped listening when they got to things they didn't’ like about the candidate, because it isn’t actually about the core issues, its about fear and hatred of the other side.  But maintaining that level of hatred is actually pretty difficult, because the moment people calm down a tad and go home, watch TV and find out the world hasn’t ended, they start to realize that you are kinda hyperbolic and most importantly, might become vulnerable to leftists pointing out that they actually agree on most issues.  So you need to keep them mad, constantly perpetually mad, just endlessly angry, so that they never really have that moment of calming the fuck down and actually thinking about the issues.  And Angry people aren’t famous for rational decisions
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Yet again reminder of why Hitchens is an utterly worthless pseudo intellectual who reminds me a lot of Alex Jones, who is basically the result of a human being who has been angry for decades and has never calmed down.
  This is also why these buzzwords are so important, they distract from the issue as a whole, because family values...I has family, and I don’t wants family to change gah.  Rather than sitting them down and talking to them about what a changing modern society actually means for a family they just kind of vaguely panic because they aren’t in a head-space where they are ready to reason (This is worse for single issue voters).  Like i’ve spoken to people about the Iraq War and once I get to “So how do you win a war on terror” they suddenly kinda stop and go “Huh....wait”  or “How do you win a war on drugs” if they aren’t viewing in from the lenses of a culture war, they  become more receptive.  So the point of the right (who i remind you, have interests which most of the country doesn’t like, as Trump’s supporters are finding out right now).  I mean literally at this moment, we are seeing people go “Well I like the ACA I just don’t like Obamacare” when they are the SAME FUCKING THING  
And that is where the Right wing Media empire comes in and by that I mean the two min of hate, where you can take all of your collective insecurities anger and frustrations in life and everything around you and blame it on one nebulous force of “Them”.  Huh where have I seen that before?
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If you watch folks like THunderfoot, Sargon or other anti feminists, they fixate a fucking tone of attention on this extremely standard video series, it is notably shocking how much time they spend talking about really basic theory level stuff and then you realize....Anita, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu and Hillary Clinton are literally the whole feminists they know.  Like they haven’t read any of the material, they don’t know any of these people, they don’t even know what feminism is other than a vague “bad thing” that that they don’t like and blame for all their problems.  This is why so called “Free speech” advocates” are totally ok with GSM folks having videos put down, why devout Christians vote for a man who admitted to sexual assault, why people who hate the Eastern Elites are always getting in bed with Goldman sachs or why the working class voted for Trump, it isn’t actually about the issues, its about screwing the other guy.  
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It is into this environment that Trump thrives, because pointing to a vague, undefinable, conspiratorial other is where he thrives and he serves as the culminate conductor of rage (that should be a title of a book on this subject honestly)
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