Newspeak dictionary
Eduardo Galeano - 01.03.2002 16:22
A short "political Newpseak" dictionary, by Eduardo Galeano
Here´s a language lesson in Newspeak which I´ve excerpted from Eduardo Galeano´s "Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World".
Today, there are certain things one can´t say in the face of public opinion:
* capitalism wears the stage name "market economy".
* imperialism is called "globalization".
* the victims of imperialism are called "developing countries", much as a dwarf might be called a "child".
* opportunism is called "pragmatism".
* treason is called "realism".
* poor people are called "low-income people".
* the right of bosses to lay off workers with neither severance nor explanation is called "a flexible labour market".
* official rhetoric acknowledges women´s rights among those of "minorities," as if the masculine half of humanity were the majority.
* torture is called "illegal compulsion" or "physical and psychological pressure".
* people annihiliated in military operations aren´t dead: those killed in battle are "casualties," and civilians who get it are "collateral damage".
* in 1995, when France set off nuclear tests in the South Pacific, the French Ambassador to New Zealand declared, "I dont like that word "bomb". They aren´t bombs. They´re exploding artifacts".
* "Dignity" is what the Chilean dictatorship called one of its concentration camps, while "Liberty" was the largest jail of the Uruguayan dictatorship.
* "Peace and Justice" is the name of the paramilitary group that in 1997 shot forty-five peasants, nearly all of them women and children, in the back as they prayed in the town church in Acteal, Chiapas, Mexico.
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