Not long after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, Kellyanne Conway was in an interview when she turned a set of lies into “alternative facts.” Now, we are headed toward alternative language under the Trump administration.
Trump has started a war on the media because he doesn’t like the things they say about him. He tweeted:
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
The purpose of the news is to inform the American people about what is going on. Telling us that they are fake is pretty dangerous, Mr President.
The University of California, Berkeley professor George Lakoff, a linguist said this about it:
“A fake does not have the primary function, but is intended to deceive you into thinking that it does have that function, and hence to serve the secondary function. A fake gun won’t shoot, but if you are deceived into thinking it is real, it can intimidate you.”
“… It is done to serve interests at odds with the public good. It also undermines the credibility of real news sources, that is, the press. Therefore it makes it harder for the press to serve the public good by revealing truths. And it threatens democracy, which requires that the press function to reveal real truths.”
The way that language has evolved has sped up with the increase in social media use in the world. Changing the language is putting us in a scary spiral towards a dictatorship. Big Brother Trump will censor our language into Newspeak. Censoring language and changing history is exactly what dictators do. The book, 1984, is an example of this. They cut out long words and use lots of abbreviations.
Oppressive governments suppress free speech and freedom of the press. We will just have to keep fighting for our rights in this regime. Calling any opinions you don’t like lies is just wrong, and it’s scary when you are president.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot.
