On Name-calling

In his analysis of “Newspeak” in 1984, George Orwell called attention to the important issue of having the courage to call things by their right names. Newspeak was a Satanic mill designed to grind into dust the semantic links that tether us to reality. Preserving freedom requires the ability to speak the truth freely. If the state can enforce the fiction that 2 + 2 = 5, all bets are off, which is to say individual liberty is at an end. Big Brother has won.

Naming has long been recognized as something more than an epistemic activity. It is also a political force par excellence. In the second book of Genesis, God creates “every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air.” He then brings the lot before Adam “to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.”

Mark Twain offered an amusing extension of Genesis in “Extracts from Adam’s Diary.” There, it is Eve who does the naming. “This new creature with the long hair,” says Adam, follows him about and “names everything that comes along.” The great waterfall she names “Niagara Falls,” for example. Why? Because “it LOOKS like Niagara Falls.” Always “that same pretext is offered — it LOOKS like the thing. There is a dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it ‘looks like a dodo.’”

Twain’s comic situation assumes a great truth. That we can recognize and acknowledge the furniture of reality. Newspeak short-circuits that capability. At the World Economic Forum recently, former Secretary of State John Kerry railed against the First Amendment because it impeded the government’s ability to police the expression of opinions of which the people in power disapprove. Such opinions they call “disinformation.”  “Our First Amendment,” Kerry said with his botox-straight face,  stands as “a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win…the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.”

Kerry’s performance was treated to some small portion of the contempt it deserves. But it stands as a warning. Censorship is the name of our would-be masters’ desire. Their rhetoric is full of talk about “threats to ‘our democracy’,” the dangers of “disinformation,” etc. But, as JD Vance noted in his debate with Tim Walz, what they offer is “censorship at an industrial scale.”

Instead of calling things by their real names, they indulge in creepy talk about “the politics of joy,” ever the dismal recourse of aspiring totalitarians. Recall the campaign slogan “strength through joy.” It sounds stronger in the original, Kraft durch Freude. For us, the “joy” on offer would have us pretend that calling a man a “man,” a woman a “woman” or an illegal immigrant an “illegal immigrant” is somehow a sin against the god of diversity. In fact, accurately naming such quotidian realities is only common sense — one of the things their “joy” cannot abide. 2 + 2 = 5.  

Naturally, unless and until their dissemination of Newspeak is complete, our would-be masters will respond with obfuscation whenever elements of their semantic/political sabotage are revealed. Brian Lozenski, Tim Walz’s chief education advisor, proudly said that the purpose of ethnic studies was to “overthrow the United States” and “destroy” America. On that occasion, he said the quiet part out loud. Lozenski’s purpose is Walz’s purpose is destructive Kamala Harris’s purpose. It may sound hyperbolic, but  that is their aim: to destroy the United States. They do not usually, not yet, put it so plainly. Euphemism, distraction, circumlocution are still the order of the day, usually. So when you mount an extensive government-sponsored censorship campaign and wheel out superannuated mannequins like John Kerry to shill for it, you always pack ammunition with which to respond if you are found out.  

Destructive Kerry, Walz, Harris talk about battling “disinformation.” JD Vance and others point out they are are attacking the First Amendment and the right of free speech. The destructive Kamalites then start screaming about “January 6” and threats to “our democracy.”

There are times, Orwell noted, when speaking the plain truth is considered a revolutionary act. This is one of those times. Destructive Kamalism means a state-sponsored attack on liberty that would destroy America. If you even notice that, call attention to it; you are violating the prescriptions of Big Brother. Noticing things, as Steve Sailer has pointed out, is a forbidden activity. You must be suppressed. Which is why it is essential that we make a habit of underscoring the true goal of destructive Kamalism. It is a destructive ideology whose goal, as one former community organizer put it, is the  “fundamental transformation” of the United States of America. 

That project is now far advanced. In order to stop it we must call things by their true names. As Mark Twain’s Eve might put it, destructive Kamalism “looks like” destruction. Sometimes appearances are not deceiving. We must speak accordingly and call it by its true name.