Seriously, though, my attitude to "neutral language" is about the same as Gandhi's quib about Western Civilisation: "That sounds like a good idea."
I wrote an essay on newspeak here. The general thrust of it is that doing politics today - in the presence of the hard right, represented by Friedmaniacs, neocons, etc. - is like playing poker with a pathological cheater who uses marked cards. Except that you can't call a referee and you can't leave the table.
Now, if you're going to institute a referee, I wish you good luck with that. But in the meantime, I prefer to promote our own brand of newspeak, so we at least don't lose money to an obvious cheater while we wait for the referee.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
You can use your own brand of newspeak for your own pleasure but it will leave the pathological cheater unimpressed. Meanwhile, others watching the scene might get the impression that the cheater's the righteous one and that you are not, based on the language you use.
So, is your own newspeak serving any purpose? It won't help to get the marked cards on the table. There is no referee. All you/one can do IMO is use decent language to name "the obvious".
As an aside, the objection that the appearance of neutrality is essential to promoting newspeak is already covered in the comment thread over there. Briefly, my response is that most successful newspeak did not sound neutral when it was introduced - it is, in fact, a feature of newspeak that it makes concepts that are highly disputed sound like matters of course by endlessly repeating highly contentious assertions as if they were neutral matters of course. See, e.g., "activist judges," "liberal media," "war on terror," "Washington Consensus." None of these terms is even remotely neutral. That does not seem to prevent them from being effective.
I'm looking to defeat him, to ruin him, and to run him out of town on a rail, covered in tar and feathers. The point of newspeak is to win, not to play nice.
Now this sounds more like revolution of the violent variety.
You mention notions (I haven't been to your link, yet) that were accepted though they weren't neutral. They were effective due to the combination of two important elements: First, it was assessed what people wanted to hear, and newspeak was adapted to satisfy the interest of a large audience. Second, the media adopted the new notions and spread the word.
In your case - the voice of the minority, of the opposition, it is not intelligent to try to uncritically copy what was successful in a different context. You cannot buy the media but you can find out what the audience wants to hear, you can listen and adapt the message to their ears.
Meh. The New Deal was an attempt to compromise and let the fuckers stay at the table if they promised not to cheat. We saw how well that worked out.
Different fora, different audiences, different approaches. When I write LTEs, I tone down on the ET newspeak. When I write for ET, however, I assume that the audience is at least sufficiently interested to challenge my newspeak and hear the explanation. After all, it worked for you and Valentin - both of you read and responded to my argument that taking away civil servants' pensions is little more than theft. As I understand it, at least one of you even accepted that there was a case to be made, even if you didn't necessarily agree with me on it.
While I don't expect you to accept my newspeak - particularly when I admit in so many words that it's a propaganda effort :-P - I hope it at least challenges you to think about the terms people normally use to describe the same things.
