Comment by clock_tower | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clock_tower | Hacker News Reader

At least for me, the most novel item in here, the one thing that makes the whole article invaluable, was the 14th point on Eco's list: the use of Newspeak and simplified language. I had never heard of this, but it's not surprising; it's internally consistent with the rest of what I know about Naziism and Fascism in general. It also reminds me of "Kids Against Trump", founded by a 9-year-old who could understand every word in Trump's speeches and was, accordingly, thoroughly creeped out. (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/why-are...)

Of course, Trump isn't likely to murder dissidents, and he has no desire for us-against-the-world unwinnable wars of conquest; likewise, I don't see a timeline in which Marine Le Pen revives Napoleon's ambitions, so the current alt-right moment has its advantages over historical fascism. (Alt-right-ness in general seems to be about staying home and hating/expelling foreigners, rather than looking for glory outside one's borders.) But these are unsettled times, all the same, and if you'd told me in the 1990s what I'd be seeing in the 2010s, I would never have believed you...

Keep in mind, wrt Trump and conquest, he thinks we (the US) should break international law and claim oil (and other resources) from the countries that we've already invaded. And he still wants to take the war to ISIS. Even if it's not a war of conquest, it's still a war outside our borders and a major talking point of his campaign and his disparagement of Clinton and the Democratic Party (their apparent refusal to reference ISIS in particular and Islamic terrorism in general).

"Of course, Trump isn't likely to murder dissidents..."

He has expressed great enthusiasm for locking up dissident journalists and committing war crimes against those he considers enemies, and boasted he could murder someone in the street and remain incredibly popular.

So, no, he hasn't quite outright expressed a willingness to murder dissidents, but seems to get a little closer to this line every day.

Perhaps more to the point, he's specifically said it was a problem that there weren't "consequences" to protesting any more, lamenting that "nobody wants to hurt eachother any more", and that "In the good old days, this doesn't happen because they used to treat them very, very rough, and when they protested once, they would not do it again so easily", blaming the present tolerance for protest on the fact that "we've become weak".

The hating foreigners and feeling constantly maligned can easily transition into "Are we going take being disrespected like that? Hell no! Let's go punch them in the face!" and the tanks start rolling.

If there's one bright side to Western Europe's 30+ years of low military spending, they don't have many tanks to send. Of course that's easily fixed as well.

Newspeak is so old news. Try Cognitive Infiltration for size: http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/

What are some examples of Trumpian Newspeak?

Trump gave birth to the words "low energy" to describe Jeb Bush and his followers really like to use the term.

Also, not specifically Trump, but alt-righters tend to use these words a lot:

* cuck

* cultural marxism

* cultural enrichment (sarcastically)

* religion of peace (sarcastically)

* traitor/treason

* rapefugee

* SJW (social justice warrior)

It just dawned on me that every single word I associate with the far right are used by them to describe their enemies.

...and the diluting of words like "war" by using it in "war on drugs" and so on. Describing acts of aggression as "defense", twisting the meaning of "security" and "freedom".

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