The capture of the minds of intellectuals under Stalinism is portrayed by the Polish author Czeslaw Milosz in The Captive Mind published in 1951. In our erstwhile “free” democracies we are suffering from a capture of the mind that shares some of the same intellectual roots as the totalitarian system under which Misosz had lived […]
Category: Free speech
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four and Hate Speech
I’ve just finished George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, a dystopian vision of a totalitarian society. There are many connections that could be developed between Orwell’s portrayal and contemporary politics. I was struck however by the central role the language “Newspeak” plays in the story. We’re all familiar with the deceptive reversals of meanings employed by […]