The Degradation of Language and the Decline of Political Thought.

In April 1946, George Orwell (born Eric A. Blair) published a short essay entitled "Politics and the English Language," in which he described the decline of language in politics and society of his time.

His intent was not to lecture as a purist of good style, but rather arose from concern about the consequences of corrupt language eventually corrupting thought: thought and language mutually influence each other, as psychologists well know.

 And indeed, language, which could serve to convey reality and faithfully describe facts, helping listeners or readers understand the connections between different events and their causes, is increasingly generating opinions that, rather than being the result of reasoning about the facts, become labels to be applied to events, thus imposing, as a final result, opinions based not on reasoning but on propaganda.

One of the most obvious and worrying aspects of this decline is highlighted by the ease with which new terms are coined as derogatory labels for those who oppose the dominant narratives (remember: "in all ages, the dominant opinions are always those of the ruling classes," as Marx/Engels wrote in The German Ideology, 1848).

 Thus, we have the term "conspiracy theorist" which could not be more vague and undefined: does it perhaps indicate a conspirator, a conspiracy, or a plot? Evidently not, since conspirators or plotters are opponents who secretly organize to overthrow a government or eliminate a head of government or figure in power, such as Brutus's conspiracy to assassinate Caesar or the Catiline conspiracy, and other similar ones.

But since 2020, the term "conspiracy theorist" has been a derogatory and defamatory label, used to marginalize those who refuse to believe the official narratives of various governments without seeing the evidence. 

A similar and even more treacherous term was that of "denier": those who refuse to believe and demand proof or demonstration, in other times in democratic and civilized societies, had always been considered prudent and intelligent (from intelligere, meaning to understand, not simply to believe without understanding). However, since the aforementioned date, they have become outcasts, enemies of the common good, exposed to ridicule as foolish and unreasonable.

 The same phenomenon has been witnessed in other nations and languages: in Germany, for example, the label was "Verschwörungstheoretiker," the height of ridicule, as it was applied to those who demanded proof and demonstration for all government decisions (which later proved to be completely unfounded).

Now, "Verschwörung" means conspiracy, evidently the secret activity of groups of conspirators, but in the case cited, they were instead free citizens who simply demanded to know data, motivations, and evidence. But it wouldn't be German style to leave the term unfinished, and so the addition of "theoretical" makes the label even more ridiculous in its apparent but empty expressive force: every theory is based on at least one axiom, that is, an indisputably proven fact, such as the unchanged and constant speed of light, on which Einstein based his theory of relativity.

 But in this specific case, which I won't even mention (the reference to the year is enough!), so well known is it, what was the axiom? An unfounded statement that later proved false because it was based on lies and data manipulation. So exactly the opposite was true: the theorists (and practical profiteers) of the lie were not those opposed to the existing powers, but rather the holders of power themselves, the rulers serving interests that would be precisely defined as conspiratorial because they were kept secret (like certain never-released emails in which billions were blithely given away to companies supplying their so-called life-saving product).

 The degradation and falsification of language highlighted in this example is certainly not unique: the same applies in another context: climate change is a fact as old as the hills. Never in any past century has the climate been immutable, and the causes of these gigantic changes (periodic glaciations) were certainly not due to human activity, nor to the reckless use of fossil fuels (there is no evidence that dinosaurs emitted CO2 in quantities sufficient to alter the climate).

 Yet even in this case, anyone who refuses to believe the data on the supposed anthropogenic causes of climate change is labeled a "denialist," and if they hold a university chair as a scientist, they are subjected to investigation by political authorities (not academics!), as happened, for example, at the University of Konstanz in Germany, but this is certainly not an isolated case.

And it's not a matter of denying obvious facts: no one denies that consuming in two or three centuries the fossil fuels stored by the Earth over millions of years is appalling folly. The question, however, is the extent of this impact on the climate. And here, the data are rather arbitrary; they should be discussed and proven. But even when the facts reveal that those who blindly refused to believe were right, the labels are not removed: a denier is always a denier.

 Rather, inconvenient evidence is hidden: for example, catastrophic predictions about climate change have recently been significantly revised downwards, but all quietly and with extreme discretion, thanks to the complicit silence of the media that have drawn a merciful veil over the painful reversal.(2) .

 We had a further example of the degradation of language in political use in February 2022: it was enough to impose with the well-known methods of propaganda well illustrated by their most famous theorist (Eduard Bernais, grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud) (1) .

Reducing a fact to a specific opposition (in the case of "there is an attacker and an attacker") without investigating the causes and precedents is the most crass and dishonest denial of the truth. And if we add that alternative explanations were immediately censored for safety's sake, we find ourselves in the same situation as those who arrogate to themselves the right to judge a film of which they have only seen the last five minutes.

 No honest judge would ever agree to issue a sentence if he were forbidden from hearing witnesses and evaluating the evidence of both sides in a trial: but this is precisely the situation of the vast majority, if not almost all, of European citizens subjected to the censorship imposed by the European Commissioner on the media of one of the two sides in the conflict.

 This censorship has been made possible by the subservience of the press and television to the political and economic-financial powers, which are not so dangerous when they lie (even if they do so regularly) but are much more pernicious when they conceal facts that contradict the narratives imposed by the powers that control them.

Formally, therefore, in Europe at least, governments act as in fascist dictatorships, with the only difference for the moment that they do not use squad-style violence to intimidate or eliminate their adversaries: they defame and sanction them, for example, by forcing banks to close their accounts, as happened, for example, against the Swiss journalist and writer Jacques Baud, one of the 80 so affected by EU sanctions (3).

Countless other examples of the degradation of language and of political discourse in general could be added, but this article does not want to and cannot be a treatise on the subject: I will therefore limit myself to these few examples, which those interested can easily extend to other cases.

 But it is perhaps worth adding a further, very frequent type of degradation/falsification of language: the use of euphemisms to divert attention from the facts.

When in 2008 the failure of the US banks (Lemann & Brothers) caused the Western financial system (China and the Russian Federation) to stagger, (The Russians were only slightly affected) the term coined to deceive citizens, what was it? "Banking crisis" or "subprime" and not, as in reality, an obvious scam. In fact, essentially the mechanism that gave rise to the "crisis" was the "brilliant" idea of ​​placing on the bond market packages of securities that included guaranteed loans and other uncertain and speculative, not to say illusory, ones. In crude terms, it would be like mixing honey and dung hoping that the honey flavor prevails. Investors instead found themselves digesting the other substance and here then the intervention of the states called with another euphemism "bank bailout": instead, the speculators who had the brilliant idea were saved and all citizens paid the price. Not the deceived investors, who did not deserve such pity because if instead of losing their capital they had doubled it, they would have given nothing to the state, probably not even taxes on profits, while having acted foolishly they asked instead to be "saved".

 So if fraud becomes "crisis" in "politically correct" language, it's no surprise that starving the population of a Caribbean island with an embargo becomes "defense of democracy," just as the assassination of government leaders in the Middle East becomes "liberation of the people from oppression." The same motivation underpinning the kidnapping of a president in South America, even the most unwary could immediately understand what was happening next: the plundering of the country's raw materials.

 Finally, we must mention the ultimate level of linguistic and discourse degradation: the use of terms that conceal the violation of the most basic logic. This is the case, for example, with the term "fact checker," or even with those who fight against "fake news."

 Verifying facts or news presupposes that the verifier possesses the truth and therefore verifies whether the facts or news correspond to the truth he possesses—by divine grace or divinatory ability.

Not only every philosopher, but also any sensible person would laugh at such an illogical construction, since verifying means, at the very least, comparing data and information, rejecting those that contradict one another due to intrinsic or extrinsic contradictions. A judge would do the same, as explained above: "audiatur et altera pars" (let's hear the other side, too).

But fact-checkers instead proceed like the Ministry of Truth described by George Orwell in "1984," a disturbing dystopian tale that now seems even more outdated.

 

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1) Propaganda: How to Manipulate Public Opinion (original English edition, 1928).

 2) https://www.quora.com/Why-have-the-IPCC-prediction-models-performed-so-poorly-predicting-global-temperatures

 3) On October 8, the Council of the European Union renewed the sanctions regime against Russia's "destabilizing activities," affecting 80 individuals and 20 entities. Added to this list as of December 15, 2025, the 71-year-old Brussels resident is accused of his comments in so-called pro-Russian media and of spreading "conspiracy theories." Anyone who has read his books will have realized that all the sources he cites are exclusively Western and none Russian. Yet, the foreign ministers of the EU states cannot tolerate a colonel the UN had deployed on peacekeeping missions in various countries publishing documents that blatantly contradict the EU's narrative in the specific Russian-Ukrainian case.

 https://www.swissinfo.ch/ita/ue-prolunga-di-un-anno-sanzioni-contro-jacques-baud/92271309