This article is written by Mark Satta, assistant professor at Wayne State University.
If you've been paying attention to how Russian President Vladimir Putin talks about the war in Ukraine, you may have noticed a pattern. Putin often uses words that mean the exact opposite of their usual meaning.
He claims to be engaged in the "denazification" of Ukraine while seeking to overthrow or even kill Ukraine's Jewish president, who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.
He qualifies the acts of war such as "peacekeeping tasks".
Claims that Ukraine is conspiring to create nuclear weaponswhile the greatest current threat of nuclear war appears to be Putin himself.
Putin's manipulation of language is attracting attention.
Kira Rudik, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, recently said about Putin in an interview with CNN:
"When he says, 'I want peace,' he means, 'I am gathering my troops to kill you.' If he says, 'They're not my troops,' he means, 'They are my troops and I'm rallying them. ' And if he says, 'Okay, I'm withdrawing,' it means, 'I'm regrouping and rallying more troops to kill you.'"
Kira Rudik
Like professor of philosophy studying the British author George OrwellRudik's comments about Putin remind me of another set of statements: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." These are the words engraved on the side of the building of the government agency called the "Ministry of Truth" in the dystopian novel by Orwell "1984"published in 1949.
Orwell uses this feature of the novel to draw attention to how totalitarian regimes - as occurs in the fictional State of Oceania of the book-, perversely distort language to gain and retain political power. Orwell's keen understanding of this phenomenon was the result of having witnessed it himself.
Lies more terrifying than bombs
In dealing with Putin's lies and linguistic spin, it is useful to look at what earlier thinkers and writers, such as Orwell, have said about Putin's relationship between language and political power.
OrwellOrwell, an Englishman who lived from 1903 to 1950, experienced war, imperialism and poverty during the first half of his life. These experiences led Orwell to identify himself as a socialist and a member of the British political left.
It might seem inevitable, then, that Orwell would have looked favorably upon the soviet communisma leading force on the political left in Europe at the time. But this was not the case.
On the other hand, Orwell believed that Soviet communism shared the same the same shortcomings as Nazi Germany. Both were totalitarian states where the desire for power and total control displaced any space for truth, individuality or freedom.
Orwell did not believe that Soviet communism was truly socialist, but only had a socialist facade.
At the age of 33, Orwell served as a soldier. volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. He fought with a small militia as part of a larger left-wing coalition that was trying to stop an insurrection by Spain's nationalist right wing. This left-leaning coalition was receiving military support from the Soviet Union.
But the small militia he was fighting with Orwell eventually became the target of Soviet propagandists, who launched a series of accusations against the militiaincluding that its members were spies for the other side.
This was a by-product of the Soviet Union's attempts to use its participation in Spain as a way to gain political power.
Orwell observed how the militia he had fought with was defamed in the European press as part of this Soviet defamation campaign.
He explained in his book "Tribute to CataloniaThe "smear campaign included telling provable lies about specific facts. This experience deeply disturbed Orwell.
Later in the year reflected on this experience and wrote that he was frightened by the "feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading from the world." That prospect, he said, scared him "much more than the bombs."

Language shapes policy and vice versa
Such fears influenced much of his most important writing, including his novel "1984"and his essay "Politics and the English language".
In this essay, he reflects on the relationship between language, thought and politics. For Orwelllanguage influences thought, which in turn influences policy.
But politics also influences thought, which in turn influences language. Thus Orwell, like Putin, saw how language shapes politics and vice versa.
Orwell argues in the essay that if one writes well, "one can think more clearly", and in turn that "clear thinking is a necessary first step toward political regeneration," which I think meant to him that a political order could recover from destructive political influences such as totalitarianism. This makes good writing a political task.
The desire to Orwell of avoiding bad writing is not a desire to advocate rigid rules of grammar. Rather, Orwell's goal is for language users to "let the meaning choose the word, not the other way around." Communicating with clarity and precision requires conscious thought. Job needed.
But just as language can illuminate thought and regenerate politics, so can language can be used to obscure thought and degenerate policy.
Putin clearly sees this and seeks to use it to his advantage.
"Doublethink", "double speak".

Orwell warned against Putin's kind of language abuses and wrote that "if thought corrupts language, then language can also corrupt thought".
Orwell explored how the mutual corruption of language and politics is seen in a totalitarian regime in his dystopian "1984".
In the world of "1984"The only crime is the "crimental"(the neo-language word for crime for having unorthodox or politically unacceptable thoughts). The ruling class seeks to prevent the possibility of a crimental eliminating the language necessary to have those thoughts previously criminalized.
This included any idea that could undermine the totalitarian control of the party.Limit language and you limit thought, or so the theory goes. Thus, the Russian Parliament approved, and Putin has signed, a law that could result in criminal offenses penalties for using the word "war" to describe the Ukrainian war.
Orwell also uses "1984" to explore what happens when communication conforms to the desires of political power rather than to demonstrable facts.
The result is the "doublethink"which occurs when a fractured mind simultaneously accepts two contradictory beliefs as true..
The slogans "War is peace", "Freedom is slavery" and "Ignorance is strength" are paradigmatic examples. This Orwellian idea has given rise to the concept of double-speak, that occurs when one uses language to obscure its meaning and manipulate others.
Doublespeak is a tool in the arsenal of tyranny. It is one of Putin's favorite weapons, as it is for many authoritarians and would-be authoritarians around the world.
As Orwell warned: "The power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them back together again in new forms of their own choosing.".
Article by Mark Satta, assistant professor at Wayne State University, originally published in The Conversation and is published here under a Creative Commons license.. You can read the original article here.
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