Words Apart…

IN TIMES LIKE THESE, WHEN WORDS SPOKEN in defence of political faith reveal and conceal with deception, it’s rewarding to return to the good old Orwell, whose prose remains a user’s manual. In one of his most-read essays, to make the point how words are abused by politics, he writes: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, so­cialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed defini­tion, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.” I quote this long passage from Politics and the English Language because what he wrote in 1946, a year after the fall of fascism and in the first dawn of a liberaldemocratic order, retains its sparkle as a reminder amidst the high winds of political hokum. Words are being de­ployed to build stories for our sake, and what we hear makes reality an existential dispute.

Defining the real, and calling out the conjured up, has become the most obvious politi­cal trend. And if we reread Orwell’s essay, we will know it has always been the case. Each age makes definitions a project in comparative faith, and we are in the middle of one. Most of the words that Orwell italicises are swirling around us today, and the multiplicity of their meanings, the confidence with which they are being used by both the political class and the chattering class, only show how we dread the real, and desperately need the comfort of the dubious. Arguments are being made about the return of fascism and its guides and gurus. As Ukraine promises to be this century’s longest war of attrition, fascism is the word Putinistas use to characterise Zelensky’s credo. It doesn’t matter any longer that the word applies more adequately to Putinism, an extreme sense of national destiny in which hurt, humiliation and honour are continuously whipped up. Orwell wrote the essay after the defeat of fascism as an ideology in power. When words escape from the confines of history, travel across geographies and ideologies, and end up as ammunition in the conflicts of another time, they become the building blocks of a disputed reality.

Stories told through such words turn politics into a moral drama with a clear division between good and evil. Take the three other words Orwell mentions: democracy, freedom and patriotic. There is no argument today about identity or national destiny without suitable definitions of these words, the elasticity of which remains intact. Democracy is not the word those who live in it use to describe the perfect form of governance; its limitations and its ability to defy expectations are what they point out in its defence. Its failures are more bearable than the success of systems tailored to terrifying perfection by the paranoid and the pathological, and the paradox of it all is that they too need the most covetable fig leaf in the market. It is a lie when autocrats attribute their power to people. And they do, always. Freedom, one of the other contested words, continues to be defined by the urgencies and expediencies of democracy. Whoever gives freedom the status of an absolute right, the morality of the progressive class has already clarified, compromises on responsibility—cultural, historical, and racial. The cult of offence is strengthened by the introduction of new technologies in social engineering. In search of the perfect victim, progressivism tells us, the idea of aggression itself must be revamped. And the latest social technologies make the excavation of the past for rebuild­ing the present easier; they allow those with a bigger baggage of social angst to make freedom conditional. Your freedom is my bondage.

The other word, too, mobilises and divides with equal force. Being patriotic is not a liberal label to flaunt, and to ask why liberals are cautious about patriotism is to challenge the questioning mind in those democracies fast turning to the right. The old virtues of be­ing a citizen are new entries in the liberals’ glossary of restrictions. Patriotism is on the list. The liberal caution is directly proportional to the right’s monopolisation of patriotism. The updated morality of progressive politics thinks the excessive emotionalism of the nationalist stifles freedom. Does it mean a rejection of patriotism as anti-modern is a brave attempt to bring reason back to politics? Does it mean popular impulses are by nature nativist and communal? It is as if what is forbidden in the progressive book is the most shared sentiment in unrestricted democracies everywhere.

Words and their variations make and unmake political storytelling. It is the ingenuity of the storyteller that words, defying historical contexts and cultural inhibitions, are what make electoral politics a referendum on the nation, for better or worse. It depends on your choice of words, and your ability to manipulate their meanings. “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political par­ties,” writes Orwell. The indefensible of the 21st century are defended in stories told in wrong words. The storyteller who wins popular approval doesn’t picnic in history for validation; he doesn’t take his cue from the politburo of phraseology. Victory belongs to those who can find words that match the present.

And when words make an original argument, we seek more of them, as in the rustle of the following pages.

Happy Holidays.

2024 New Year IssuedemocracyfreedomGeorge OrwellpatriotismUkraine