Name________________________Date________ Period Score____/100
Week 22 World Literature (HONORS)
HOMEWORK As you read the article,use the margins to write down at least 5
statements that reveal your thinking and define 5 unfamilair words.
Orwell, Hitler And Trump
Robert Kuttner Co-founder and co-editor, ‘The American Prospect’
Hitler was the first to describe the technique of telling a
lie so often that people believed it. He called it the “Big
Lie.”

Last week, I reached for my Philip Roth ― his splendid novel, The Plot Against
America. This week, I reached for my George Orwell. In 1946, as Europe was digging
out from the ruin of World War II ― a genuine case of mass carnage as opposed to
President Donald Trump’s fantasy carnage ― Orwell wrote the classic essay on the
seductions of propaganda, “Politics and the English Language.”
Much of the essay, widely assigned in English classes, warns how stale writing leads
to sloppy thinking. But the most original part is Orwell’s evisceration of propaganda.
Combined with his great novel 1984, written in 1949 as a dystopian warning about
the way totalitarian practice becomes internalized in totalitarian thinking, these two
great works gave us the adjective, “Orwellian.”
In 1984, we learned the official slogans of the party: “War is Peace. Freedom is
Slavery. Ignorance is Strength,” only slight parodies of communism and Nazism.
“Freedom is Slavery” was not far from the infamous greeting at the gates of
Auschwitz, “Arbeit Macht Frei.”
And “Ignorance is Strength” seems to be Donald Trump’s credo and operating
premise — ignorance for both himself and his public.
Orwell’s target was the prettified euphemism, used mostly by extreme left-wing and
right-wing parties and governments. If people could be persuaded to accept the reframing, they might well alter their conception of reality.
In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell made great sport of pretentious
writing and mixed metaphors, such as “The capitalist octopus has sung its swan
song.” But he was dead serious about the political point. He wrote:
Defenseless villages are bombed from the air, their inhabitants driven out into the
countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts sent on fire with incendiary bullets:
this is called ‘pacification.’ Millions of peasants are robbed of their land and sent
trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called ‘transfer of
population’…
Note that Orwell was writing two full decades before the Vietnam War. Even before
the advent of Donald Trump, the misuse of language in our own day has been in
many respects more insidious and more corrosive than the plague against which
Orwell was warning.
Orwell’s examples came from either totalitarian governments or far-left and far-right
parties in the democracies. In America, a democracy, both major parties have
increasingly used Orwellian language ― Republicans far more than Democrats.
Trump has taken the maneuver to a whole new low. But the earlier Orwellian efforts
softened the ground.
There was a time when most laws had descriptive or technical names, such as the
Glass-Steagall Act, the National Labor Relations Act or the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act. Since former President George W. Bush, pieces of
legislation have been treated as branding and marketing opportunities.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration hastily assembled a
wish list of every overzealous prosecutor and surveillance agent. The initials of the
legislation were tortured until they spelled out the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act, or the
Patriot Act for short. What patriot could be against the Patriot Act?
And speaking of torture, that activity, prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, was
rebranded as “enhanced interrogation.” Sending American captives off to prisons in
allied nations where there were no limits on torture was called a “rendition.” If a
document was censored, that was now termed “redacted.” Even the mainstream
press, shamefully, has succumbed to that usage.
As Orwell would have appreciated, “censored” is plain English. Censorship sounds
like something we might want to oppose or at least suspect. “Redacted” is a bland,
unfamiliar and bureaucratic word that suggests a neutral and presumably defensible
process. And the Obama administration found the word just as convenient as Dick
Cheney, Bush and company did.
After the Patriot Act, it became standard procedure for both parties to give laws
propagandistic names, though the Republicans were the repeat offenders. One of
the worst pieces of bipartisan education legislation ever, later repudiated by both
parties because of its overreliance on teach-to-the-test, was called “The No Child
Left Behind Act.” Who could be against that?
Republican advocates of school vouchers, mindful of the well-established support for
public schools, began rebranding them as the more sinister sounding “government
schools.” When President George W. Bush sponsored a tax-subsidized drug
insurance program run by private insurance companies, he made sure to brand it
“Medicare Part D,” since Medicare was a broadly supported public program ― even
though his drug program was pure windfall to the drug industry and had nothing
whatever to do with Medicare.
This may seem like small beer, but it is one of several trends on the use of language
that has misled and cheapened public discourse ― and laid the ground for
Trumpism. At the extreme, the trend feeds the ability of demagogues to persuade
citizens that up is down, or black is white.
Fox News, the most flagrantly biased of the cable channels, pioneered the trend with
its slogan, “Fair and Balanced.” As any serious person knows, Fox is a propaganda
organ, while the reputable news organs, from The New York Times to NPR, really do
make an effort to separate fact from opinion.
Long before Trump, the “mainstream” Republican Party made lies a staple of its
arsenal, from its lies about Obamacare to its bogus budget numbers to its false
contentions of fraudulent voting.
Trump has embellished this technique by lying, then accusing his critics of lying,
until the debate is hopelessly scrambled. Trump manufactures phony stories, then
accuses the media of “fake news.”
Adolf Hitler was the first to describe the technique of repeating a lie so often that
people would come to believe it. He called it the “Big Lie.”
From his denial of climate change to his denial that Obama was born in Hawaii,
Trump has dusted off the Big Lie. But then he goes classic Big Liars one better ― by
denying the denial.
As Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it,
so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late.” A version misattributed to
Mark Twain has it that “a lie is halfway around the world while the truth is putting
its boots on.” You get the point.
Trump’s strategy is to flood the zone — to proliferate so many lies that by the time
one lie is rebutted, he has put out several more, and he seems to believe even the
lies that contradict previous lies. Ignorance really is Trump’s strength.
In his Inaugural Address, Trump claimed that America is succumbing to a horrible
crime wave, when if fact serious crime is at a 30-year low. Republican demonizers of
the Affordable Care Act bemoan the high out-of-pocket expenses, when in fact all
the Republican replacements would raise deductibles and co-pays. And so on.
Trump has resurrected the Big Lie. But, pathetically, he also resorts to the Little Lie.
On his first full day in office, Trump’s main concern was whether his was bigger ―
his inaugural crowd. Though it was easily verified that Obama’s inaugural had a
larger crowd, as did the women’s march the next day after Trump’s show, a livid
Trump sent out his press secretary to rail at the press for understating Trump’s size.
The press spokesman, Sean Spicer, himself told at least seven easily verifiable lies.
I am feeling a little better than I did on Inauguration Day, in part because of the
good cheer and political resolve modeled at the several women’s marches ― but
also because you can sense the wheels starting to come off the Trump bus.
Call it the New Separation of Powers. Trump’s inner circle is a snake pit of intrigue
between the likes of Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner. Trump is at odds with senior members of his own cabinet, who are at odds
with each other. Trump’s ad libs, like his abrupt support for universal health
coverage, regularly cut the legs out from under his Republican Congress.
Trump may wish he were a total dictator, but this is still a democracy. Lies can work
during campaigns but at some point, when you try to govern, reality has a way of
intruding. Eventually, the truth does get its boots on.