Something that just occured to me is that while George Orwell was a very brilliant man who had understood the socialist, etc. mindset and methods of his time very well, he may not have been able to predict the refinement and innovations they or others who adopted their methods would come up with over the years to silence dissent.

Even if you've never read 1984, I imagine by now you're familiar with the term "Newspeak," the approved language of the Party in the book which has become a catch-all term to describe efforts to silence dissent through the destruction of useful language. It could certainly be an effective method, assuming you could manage to get people to go along with it.

The problem is that it involves a level of control that's difficult if not impossible to convince others to accept. Stop using entire words? Some you can if you frame them as offsensive slurs, but others are more stubborn and pervasive. "Newspeak," itself is a perfect example of this.

What if you could alter the definitions of words to the point that their original meanings become largely irrelevant? Even better, what if you could get some people to accept new definitions almost wholly different from the original? If some people refuse to accept those new definitions, so much the better.

Enter the Tower of Bab-il, a tale from the abrahamic faiths about men attempting to reach Heaven so they can be gods, and God "counfounding' their language to halt the project. That's the short version, and it's good enough for this conversation. Certainly the allegory would appeal to the egos of the Klaus Schwabs, the George Soroses and the Koch Brothers of the world, men and women who believe themselves above the 'lesser' people of the world, and fear they may rise up and overthrow them. Men and women who for instance would model the EU Parliment building after the Titular Tower.

Consider for example terms like 'racism,' 'oppression,' and even 'women' at this point. Can someone on the right talk to someone on the left about any of these issues without getting bogged down hammering out the proper combination of jargon to have a meaningful discussion? It's an uphill battle all the way!

But how could such a thing be done? How could you introduce these new definitions and perhaps new jargon to "confound" the speech of the masses? The easy answer is colleges and online social media. Both offer a wealth of opportunies to introduce new, Bab-il-ese definitions of words and impress on young minds that these are the 'correct' definitions. Of course other options are available, but you get the idea.

That's not to insist that a nerfarious plot is necessary to cause such a rift in language to occur, however. In fact, there's an old joke that America and England are two countries separated by a common language. It could simply be that one or both groups, in their college dormitories and their echo chambers, created 'new,' 'refined' definitions of these terms, independent of outside intereference by nefarious actors.

The point remains, however, that as long as we're speaking different dialects when we discuss complex issues like racial and sexual/gender dynamics, the project is doomed to fail.

This, small as it may seem, may be the single most important issue moving forward, in spite of being so easily overlooked...

Heads up; I'm mirroring this post on thedonald, Greatawakening, ConsumeProduct, kotakuinaction2, and maybe NoNewNormal , feel free to use whichever community you prefer.

Edit: thanks to a ConPro user for pointing this out:

https://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/f/u/fuf1/publications/Fonseca_Martin_ICIS_05_Abstract.pdf