I grew up with George Orwell's 1984 as one of the central books in my intellectual library. We read the book for the first time in 1984, when the delirium over the Ronald Reagan counterrevolution was at its height, and I saw the resemblance immediately. When it came to accepting the implicit truth in concepts like "Newspeak" and "doublethink", I didn't need much convincing; I could see real-life examples all round me.
Hence I've not feared to use "doublethink" and other Orwellian terms in my own rhetoric, though I'm taken with the feeling that I've been wasting my time. The sad truth of the matter is that reactionary propagandists have successfully claimed Orwell for their rhetorical territory. They love pretending that any terminology pertaining to social problems is like Newspeak, and they love pretending that "trans ideology" is a clear example of doublethink, and there's not much to be gained from pointing out that they're using Orwellian jargon in a doublethinkful fashion. They've successfully trivialized Orwell and reduced his ideas to memetic clichés, and how exactly do you fight that?
In general, the reactionary politicians and pundits have been depressingly successful in capturing important concepts for themselves and turning them into memetic nonsense, making discourse on numerous subjects practically impossible. Take an obvious example, racism. Reactionaries have been spectacularly successful in playing doublethinkful games with the concept of racism: "Racism is fake" and "Leftists are the real racists" coexist happily in their discourse, and nobody important seems to notice or care. Just about every politician in the United States seems to accept that opposing the political activities of the state of Israel is antisemitic; the contradiction's in plain sight, and yet pointing it out achieves nothing. It's like the fascists have hit upon a deep but pervasive substratum of cynicism and nihilism throughout Western society—an undertow of contempt for the difficult business of trying to sort out the proper sense and meanings of things. The people who actually care about these things meet with jeers and harassment, and accused of being mere ideologues.
But what is doublethink, anyway? If the reactionaries have grabbed Orwell for themselves, then it would be wise to analyze Orwell, figure out whether his terminology is meaningful, and devise some Orwell-free reformulation of his ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if this hasn't already been done in academic work, although I fear that any such academic analysis of Orwell is likely to be couched in just the sort of academic language that reactionaries have very successfully castigated as nonsensical. (Heck, let's face it—even talking about the parts of speech is likely to get you laughed at.) Is there any possible approach to talking about doublethink in a way that won't be immediately thrown out of consideration as gibberish from Commie college professors?
cw: blithering about memetics and doublethink
I suggest tentatively that memetics might furnish a method. I'm still a bit nervous about leaning on "memetic theory" as a concept because of how speculative it is, but it's just the sort of faux-scientific philosophical idea that "Dark Academia" people are fond of playing with—so much of "Dark Academia" seems to consist of devising halfassed "scientific" substitutes for philosophical concepts—and maybe it's useful here. My tentative idea is that a state of doublethink may be the expected result of a process of memetic evolution, by which objectively harmful actions acquire a protective shell of rationalizations about them, eventually coalescing into a definite pattern of doublethinkful behavior.
Consider this stark example. Person P, in the presence of Person Q, suddenly whips out a gun to murder Person R down the street. Q cries out, "Why did you do that??" Let's assume that Person P wishes to justify the murder. Person P could shout out any number of excuses in this situation, and some of them might hit a chord with Person Q. That is to say, P may learn (possibly through trial and error) that there are certain excuses for the wanton murder that Q is actually inclined to accept, depending upon who Person Q is and what they might be inclined to think about the victim, Person R. Now repeat this process many many times—which is roughly what social media is about. It's a whole audience full of Persons Q, reacting to crimes done by many different Persons P at the expense of other Persons R. Through thousands of trials, Person P learns which excuses for their crime are likely to be regarded as credible with different onlookers. P is likely to learn that certain excuses work with one cohort of onlookers Q, whereas different and contradictory excuses work with a different cohort. The state of doublethink begins to emerge from this process: P learns, through trial and error and much repetition, how to speak out of both sides of their mouth, depending upon circumstances.
They can even engage in this process in one conversation with one person. Anyone who's attempted to engage a reactionary in argument has seen it for themselves: right in the open, they try out multiple contradictory arguments, not caring whether they're making no logical sense, because they're not really trying to persuade; instead they're looking for an emotional effect. They're looking for the words that make their opponent become suddenly befuddled or silent (or even sympathetic). Bigots learn to fish around for signs of latent bigotry in the people who argue with them, and they often find them, too.
Anyway, I feel like maybe I'm saying anything original here, but it helps me to write this stuff out.
~Chara
