The perversion of the English language

Language is a powerful vessel. It defines how we think, speak, write, and communicate. If you control language, you control the masses.

It is no wonder that left-wing ideologues are working to hijack the English language.

As a writer, it has been deeply concerning to see how certain words and phrases have been altered to suit modern narratives and agendas over the past few years. Take Covid as the example. We saw definitions ‘evolve’ to current needs when the predictions of ‘experts’ failed to live up to historical standards. Instead of an apology, words were changed.

Readers may remember ‘vaccine’ and ‘herd immunity’.

The World Health Organisation’s definition of ‘herd immunity’ on June 9, 2020 was:

Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection. This means that even people who haven’t been infected, or in whom an infection hasn’t triggered an immune response, they are protected because people around them who are immune can act as buffers between them and an infected person. The threshold for establishing herd immunity for COVID-19 is not yet known.

Five months later, on November 13, 2020, the definition was changed to the following:

‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.

See the difference?

The scientific concept of herd immunity did not change. There was no ‘new science’ or medical revelations to justify the alteration of its definition.

What we had instead was a gap emerging between public expectation and raw Covid statistics. They even added quotation marks to lower the status of a hard scientific principle to a ‘concept’.

We come to the inescapable reality that the definition was changed to protect governments around the world, their health ministers, and medical bureaucrats.

The CDC also changed their definition of ‘vaccination’ from ‘the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease’ to ‘the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.’ They claimed it was changed because a false impression was given that vaccines were 100 per cent effective, when no vaccine is. Mind you, most childhood vaccines are over 96 per cent effective while flu vaccines remain generally ineffectual. Covid did not alter this dynamic, merely highlighted a little-known fact.

If you run a ‘fact check’ on this, you’ll come up with the usual screeching of ‘this is fake news!’ but click through to the detail and you find that it is true, it just ‘lacks context’. The context in question is the lacklustre performance of mRNA vaccines.

‘The change also addresses the new technology of mRNA vaccines in light of the Covid pandemic,’ says USA TODAY.

You might as well write, ‘They performed so poorly we had to lower everyone’s expectations via the language.’

Definitions surrounding Covid were not the only ones altered.

More recently, we have seen the definitions of ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ changed to accommodate the Woke teachings of gender fluidity.

(I want to note here that when editing this piece, Microsoft Word’s Editor function, which now has an ‘inclusiveness section’ suggested I change boy and girl to ‘children’ because ‘a gender-neutral term here would be more inclusive’.)

Merriam-Webster ‘updated’ their definition of ‘girl’ to:

A person whose gender identity is female.

Then they ‘updated’ the definition of ‘boy’ to:

A child whose gender identity is male.

They also took the liberty of ‘updating’ the words ‘female’ and ‘male’ to:

Female: Having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.

Male: Having a gender identity that is the opposite of female.

These definitions are vague when they should be distinct. They place the emphasis on identification, not biology. If one identifies as male, or identifies as female, then they are now, by definition, male or female.

Watering down words into ambiguities allows the conflating of sex with gender. Children learning this revised language are led to believe, wrongly, that reality is as malleable as language. It is not hard to see why more people are homeschooling their kids…

Merriam-Webster also changed the definition of ‘racism’, now defining it as:

The systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another. Specifically: WHITE SUPREMACY

Sound familiar? That’s because it is the doctrine of left-wing ideologues. We often hear about how ‘systemic racism’ is a problem in America from these individuals, be they in government, the media, or protesters on the streets at a Black Lives Matter riot (ahem?) protest. There’s a whole lot more of this kind of nonsense on the page for ‘racism’ on Merriam-Webster’s website, which you can take a look at here.

America is now, by means of determining whether a country is in a recession, in a recession. But the government does not want to admit the country is in a recession. The Biden administration knows that it has done a terrible job of managing the economy, but rather than come out and say it, the administration changed the definition recession.

The White House updated their website during the week to declare the following:

What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data – including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year – even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter – indicates a recession.

Biden’s economic adviser, Brian Deese also stated:

‘Two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession.’

A quick Google search for the definition of ‘recession,’ which comes from the Oxford Dictionary, says the exact opposite:

A period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.

The media went along with it. They told everyone that there were ‘fears of a recession,’ not that the country was already in one. They are rewriting reality as it occurs, much like the Ministry of Truth featured in Orwell’s 1984.

Wikipedia quickly changed their definition of ‘recession’ to favour the Biden administration before locking the page so that no one could change it back to what it truly was. They followed this by updating the page to include a warning at the top stating that ‘some media outlets have circulated an outdated version of this article, claimed to be its current state’. We can’t be having people seeing the true definition of a recession if it makes the government look bad, now can we?

Why should we care about dictionaries and websites changing definitions of words? Why does it matter?

Here’s why.

If they can alter definitions, they can alter are perception of reality. They can alter facts. And, ultimately, they can alter truth.

It is clear that these definitions have been changed to suit political agendas. This is about redefining reality. It is exactly what the Ministry of Truth did in 1984. That fictional regime altered facts and changed what was real to suit the needs of the Party (the government). In fact, they updated the dictionary often, publishing new editions with the acceptable definitions of words. The language used was NewSpeak, a language where terms had been altered beyond recognition, far from what they really meant.

This is taking place around us, and it is only the start. They will go after more terms and change more definitions until no one remembers what the old, true meanings were. And if someone accuses them of changing these meanings, they will gaslight them, claiming they never did.

Gaslighting is a common tactic. For an example, see Planned Parenthood. Prior to Wednesday July 27, their website stated:

Treating an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same thing is getting an abortion. Abortion is a medical procedure that when done safely, ends a pregnancy that’s in your uterus. Ectopic pregnancies are unsafely outside of your uterus (usually in the fallopian tubes), and are removed with a medicine called methotrexate or through a laparoscopic surgical procedure. The medical procedures for abortions are not the same as the medical procedures for an ectopic pregnancy.

They have since updated the website to remove this distinction. The result has been a heightened sense of fear from those that believe the overturning of Roe v. Wade will prevent them from legally terminating ectopic pregnancies. This is despite the fact that every state exempts ectopic pregnancies from their abortion laws.

If the manipulation of language in pursuit of politics is not addressed, the situation will worsen. We have a consortium of people who seek the death of truth. Eventually, society will no longer be able to tell the truth from a government fiction.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/the-perversion-of-the-english-language/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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