Orwell worried about authoritarian treatment of language — about warmongers' calling bombardment "pacification," for example.
George Orwell's novel 1984 is more than 60 years old ― but in the days following President Donald Trump's inauguration, the classic tale of a dystopian society, where an authoritarian government uses language to control the masses, is in high demand.
While Erdoğan and his allies have amplified the sense of an authoritarian crackdown by using language such as "purge" and "cleansing" to describe their backlash, Turkish officials on Monday said the government was not guilty of mission creep.
When adults are proportionally fewer in relation to the number of children, caregivers tend to interact less with the children and to use more authoritarian and restrictive speech that does not stimulate language development and learning [19], [32].
And what I would say is this: a President who regards some of the most ambitious and rigorous media outlets as "enemies of the American people" is speaking an ominous language the language of the authoritarian.
For Cristi, this is an ironic moral defeat — his best, truest, most generous impulses about justice are crushed by authoritarian habits that, embedded in language, remain as strong in the new Romania as they were in the old.
In my column last week, I wrote: "One defining aspect of alt-right white supremacy is that it vehemently denies its own existence … This erosion of language is an authoritarian tactic designed to stifle dissent.
While Erdoğan and his allies have amplified the sense of an authoritarian crackdown by publicly using language such as "purge" and "cleansing" to describe the government reaction, Turkish officials on Monday expressed frustration at western criticism.
To reach it, he relies on a body of thought devised long ago to explain the rise of totalitarianism in the middle of the previous century — ideas about how alienation, economic dislocation, the deformation of language and exploitative authoritarian leaders become both the necessary and the sufficient cause for imminent purgative violence.
More to the point, Trump's authoritarian and narcissistic impulses, fascistic language and lack of empathy should be a warning that any group could be next on his list, falling out of favor at a moment's notice.
