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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGeorge Orwell explained Trump and his voters
George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four back in 1948. Now, sixty eight years later, most of the horrible dystopia about which he wrote has come into being. If you haven't read it, please do yourself a favor and do so. It explains so much of today's "reality." Here's a sample.
Doublethink was described by George Orwell as simultaneously holding two conflicting beliefs. Orwell describes it thus:
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.
Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell describes doublespeak as being a part of newspeak, which is the method for control of thought through subtlelanguage. Doublethink adds control that eliminates uncertainty and so the whole belief system seems coherent.
Doublethink is not hypocrisy as the person actually believes in both things, even though they contradict.
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.
Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orwell describes doublespeak as being a part of newspeak, which is the method for control of thought through subtlelanguage. Doublethink adds control that eliminates uncertainty and so the whole belief system seems coherent.
Doublethink is not hypocrisy as the person actually believes in both things, even though they contradict.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/belief/doublethink.htm
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George Orwell explained Trump and his voters (Original Post)
Cyrano
Dec 2016
OP
world wide wally
(21,760 posts)1. Like Frank Luntz?
I think elements of Animal Farm are at play as well.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/animal-farm/book-summary
shockey80
(4,379 posts)3. Doublethink
Is this not a form of mental illness?
Cyrano
(15,075 posts)4. Perhaps. But it's a tremendous
tool for those in power to control the masses.
Over 60 million people bought Trump's bullshit. If that's not doublethink, I don't know what is.