In his famous book, 1984, George Orwell painted a nightmare picture of what the world would become. He called it 1984 because he wrote it in 1948 and switched the two last digits around showing it would be way into the future. Among the features of this nightmare world was something called “newspeak”.
This was a very simplified language where many words had been abolished in order to make it very difficult if not impossible to think. It was a language designed for the imposition of a totalitarian regime. A language that penalised clear thought, and tried to make everything sound pleasant and reassuring. The prime example of this is that there was no such word as bad. It was ungood.
Now if you want a current example of how newspeak works all you have to do is listen to the EU commissioners and try and understand what it is they are saying. They spew out a lot of words which you think must be the result of serious analysis and the expression of plans and decisions.
But if you listen carefully, you will see that they are really saying things which are the opposite of what is going on with the sole intention of fudging, trying to make nonsense sound serious and of course misinform us and deceive us. For instance, with the Greek bond swap, etc. we were told that Greece is a unique case! So this couldn’t be done for anybody else!
Now we have Spain in a flutter. Spain which is the 5th largest economy of the Eurozone. Olli Rhen, a master of newspeak, says the Commission will recommend Spain be given an extra year to reduce its deficit to 3%, but this is a special case! It will be only for Spain and not Greece or anybody else! The implication being, in such cases, that this is just an aberration, a special case, because really the rest of the EU is functioning smoothly and ticking with precision along the lines laid down by the directorate.
And then they go on with numbers and forecasts for 2092, and theories that we shall have growth after we have reduced deficits and we will do all this with no money and I don’t know what else. It is all made in serious statements by serious people with terrible diction usually.
It’s not that they are all so dumb. They know very well that neither Greece, nor Spain now is a “unique” or a “special” case. They know that it is the EU and the Euro that are in deep trouble causing the mayhem. But as in Orwell’s 1984, they just can’t say that for fear of Big Brother. Big Sister in our case. They need to tell another story from the real one. They need to convince everybody, but perhaps themselves above all, that really all is in order and all is going well and according to plan.
It’s all the fault of Greece, now Spain, then Italy. It is never the fault of those designing policy and putting it into effect. It is not the fault of a badly designed, half baked, distorting Euro, no! It is the fault of the profligate southern states and so on. As to the fiscal rectitude that Spain has been graciously given an extra year to achieve, it is all arrant nonsense and something that can never be achieved by anyone under the iron fist of austerity being imposed.
But if they know all that, why do they persist in the deceit and misinformation? Is it just because they are in complete denial?
In 1984 Newspeak was designed to keep a totalitarian regime in power. Something like that is going on now, though at a rather farcical level. Though the blood on their hands from the growing number of suicides in Southern Europe is hardly a farce.
But for whatever reason we are being fed all this Nonsense Newspeak, the bottom line is that as long as it persists there will be no solution to the EU crisis. Because if you keep squeezing the wrong screw and not bothering about the lack of oil, say, in the engine, then you mustn’t be surprised when you blow the gasket.