Leftist Lexicon - Big Lies and Doublespeak

The Big Lie

Adolf Hitler coined the term "big lie" (große Lüge) in Mein Kampf to explain how people could be convinced to believe a gross distortion or colossal lie because they wouldn't believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." He claimed that Jews implemented the Big Lie to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general and nationalist politician Erich Ludendorff who himself blamed Jews and others for a conspiracy that resulted in Germany's defeat and ignoble standing in Europe after World War I. The irony is that Hitler and Ludendorff were promoting big lies about Jews; lies that led to the extermination of 6 million of them by Hitler.

The notion that repeating a lie often enough will transform it in the public's mind into a truth has been attributed to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and other notorious tyrants, but the idea was probably around centuries before them. It appears in the 1869 novel The Crown of Life in a form that may be the basis for the current expression of it.

If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it.

Doublespeak – Doublethink and Newspeak 

In his dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell invented the term "doublethink" to describe indoctrination by the totalitarian government to compel people to accept conflicting beliefs as truth, usually contradicting their own memory or sense of reality. He also invented "Newspeak," a fictional language invented by the government to limit critical thinking. Doublespeak, which doesn't appear in Orwell's book, is a modern contraction of those two terms. The doublespeak names for government offices were contradictions of their mission. The Ministry of Love interrogated, tortured, and brainwashed enemies of the government. The Ministry of Peace waged war. The Ministry of Truth distorted history, destroyed historical records that conflicted with their agenda, and generated lies and propaganda to promote their dogma.

Leftist Lexicon of Doublespeak

In a spectacular modern example of Doublespeak—almost as if they were the totalitarian government in 1984—leftists have perverted language to mean things disconnected from their original meaning. Some of the terms are a big lie, like "climate change" (see below), which have been so widely and uncritically adopted that they have become a perverse form of received wisdom, even though they are gross exaggerations that are demonstrably false.

Here's a partial lexicon of leftist terms that mean something completely different to them than the original meaning the rest of us understand:

racist noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

fascist noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

misogynist noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

bigot noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

homophobe noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

Islamophobe noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

xenophobe noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

Nazi noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

Hitler noun: someone winning an argument with a leftist

democracy noun: any system designed to let leftists rule, often referred to as "our democracy" (which some of us write as Our Democracy™), means government by leftists. When Republicans win elections, it's fascism (see above) and a threat to Our Democracy™

climate change noun: catastrophic, imminent, human-caused global warming and imaginary disasters from increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is now 0.04%, up from 0.03% a couple centuries ago, formerly called global warming

climate denier noun: a pejorative term meant to demean people and conflate them with Holocaust deniers, it means someone winning an argument with a leftist about so-called climate change

A couple more just for fun:

literally adverb: figuratively

ironically adverb: coincidentally

See Steven Hayward's Lexicon of Current Political Terminology for more.

Florida redistricting complaints are racist

ProPublica posted a review leftist political screed complaining that the redistricting done by Governor Ron DeSantis was racially oriented and illegal.

How Ron DeSantis Blew Up Black-Held Congressional Districts and May Have Broken Florida Law

As with all leftist grievances, the facts don't support the allegations. Before reading the article, which is heavily tinged with racist views of voting and congressional districts, just glance at the voting districts in question before 2022 and in 2022.

Which map looks more obviously gerrymandered? In other words, which one looks like it was drawn to purposely incorporate a large and disproportionate population of a specific racial group in one district? 

The pre-2022 map of District 5 was drawn to include specific parts of one large city (Tallahassee) then stretched across the state to include specific parts of another large city (Jacksonville) over a hundred miles away. Compare that to the districts in the 2022 map which have large contiguous areas that look like they weren't drawn on purpose to overrepresent a specific racial group which also happens to vote for Democrats 90% of the time. For reference, blacks are about 13% of the population of the United States nationally, though they are more concentrated in many big cities. It makes sense that voting districts that have large black populations should also have representation that is higher than the national average but this is definitely "stretching" the point. Heh.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 states:

No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

Section 5 allows redistricting as long as it:

does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color

The 2022 districts are clearly legal and also accomplish representation of the higher percentage of blacks living in those districts despite all the complaints in the article. It's astonishing that the Florida Republicans in the majority left the District 5 map alone when it was clearly drawn by the former Democrat majority in a way that favors Democrat candidates. Apparently they haven't learned yet how the Democrat Party has been running circles around them with redistricting and voting procedures that heavily favor Democrat candidates. It's time for them to wake up and even the playing field.

It's interesting that leftists spend so much time viewing the world through the lens of race. The allegations of racism they levy against their political opponents look an awful lot like projection of their own unconscious racism.

GOP is the party of real racial justice

I know that will blow some minds but it's true. Virtually every mainstream media and social media platform has been propagating the theme that Democrats unite Americans and Republicans divide them. It's exactly the opposite.

The Democratic Party has been promoting black subjugation and segregation for over two centuries. Before the Civil War they were the party of slavery. The Republican Party was formed in 1854 specifically to resist the expansion of slavery. Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican President in 1861 and the Republicans gained control of Congress.

After the Republican Party passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution between 1865 and 1870 reinforcing civil rights for black Americans, a large block of the Democratic party continued to denigrate black Americans by instituting Jim Crow laws and racial segregation in the South until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in schools and public accommodations was unconstitutional and ordered all states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed" but without an enforcement mechanism. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower proposed a civil rights bill to enforce the order to desegregate. Though they had lost their brief, slim majority in the House and Senate by then, Republicans managed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 over Democratic Party dissent to protect the right to vote, and to establish the Civil Rights Commission and Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 likewise was passed with enthusiastic support from Republicans, far greater than Democrats (see House and Senate vote counts).

Civil Rights Act of 1964

In June 1963 Democratic President John F. Kennedy proposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but it was held up in the House Rules Committee by Democrats to prevent it coming to a vote. In August 1963, the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place with Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Five days after Kennedy's assassination in November, newly-installed President Lyndon Johnson urged Congress to push the stalled civil rights bill forward as a legacy to the late President. The Democratic Party had a solid 60% majority in the House and despite their even larger 67% supermajority in the Senate, they didn't have enough votes in their own party to pass it in the Senate. Only 46 of the 67 Democrats in the Senate voted for it. Republicans, ever dedicated to the self-evident truth and American ideal that "all men are created equal," enthusiastically supported the bill while Democrats were bitterly divided over it. Here's the vote tally in the House and the Senate.

House vote

Democrats: 153 yea (60% of Democrats), 91 nay, 2 present, 12 not voting

Republicans: 136 yea (76% of Republicans), 35 nay, 2 present, 5 not voting

Senate vote

Democrats: 46 yea (69% of Democrats), 21 nay

Republicans: 27 yea (82% of Republicans), 6 nay

Republicans were even more supportive of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with 80% of Republicans in the House and 94% in the Senate voting for it, compared to 75% of Democrats in the House and 69% in the Senate.

Change in party affiliation

The Democratic Party's support for labor unions and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's anti-poverty programs began to attract black Americans toward the Democratic Party. The outreach by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the fact that the Democratic Party held both houses of Congress and the Presidency at the time of the passage of the Civil Rights Act began to persuade even more black Americans to the Democratic Party, despite the dirty secret that Democrats were less enthusiastic about minority rights than Republicans. The nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate for President in 1964 drove them away en masse from the Republican Party. Goldwater was one of only six Republican senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act (21 Democrat senators voted against it). Though a supporter of civil rights who had voted for the 1957 Civil Rights Act, his declaration that he voted against the 1964 Act because he thought it was unconstitutional was dismissed. The Democrat Party misrepresented it for political purposes as Republicans suppressing minority rights, despite the obviously better voting record of Republicans than Democrats. They succeeded in promoting the lie and drove a wedge between Republicans and black voters that has lasted to this day.

Over the next 60 years, Democratic Party politicians pandered to blacks by dangling legislative trinkets that amounted to essentially nothing. The bulk of the work to secure equal rights and opportunities for racial minorities had already been done by Republicans. Those legislative trinkets that did pass resulted in disastrous social changes for urban black communities and generational dependency on government handouts which weren't modified in any meaningful way until the Republican House and Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 to reform the welfare system.

While Republicans have long sought the goal of being "color blind" and treating all Americans equally, the Democrats continued to view Americans through the lens of race. In the modern era Democrats have adopted a "soft bigotry" of low expectations and race-based college-admissions. They are attempting to eradicate voter ID laws supposedly to "help" black voters who Democrats think can't get a photo ID. Their platform is centered on a social theory that segregates people by race and other categories and promotes the idea that white people are inherently racist. They inflame racial grievances, especially against the police, promote false narratives of racial inequity in arrests and incarcerations, and have celebrated thugs and criminals and denigrated accomplished black Republicans like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Their supposed "compassion" for blacks looks awfully condescending.

Republicans continue to promote policies that measurably improve the lives of black people instead of offering platitudes and unfulfilled promises. Here are a few recent ones:

• School choice that allows parents to move their kids out of underperforming schools. This is very popular with urban parents and is supported by 76% of black Americans.

• Prioritizing a strong economy and ending onerous government regulations to allow the business sector to grow and provide jobs, which has resulted in the lowest unemployment rate for minorities in U.S. history, 5.1%. See also here.

• Strengthening police forces and budgets to better patrol crime-ridden urban neighborhoods and reduce crime.

President Donald Trump has signed laws and executive orders and initiated other plans to improve educational and business opportunities for black Americans and economic prospects for poor people. All of this has been noticed by black Americans who are increasingly throwing their support to him as they distance themselves from decades of failed promises and policies by Democrats.

If you would like a copy of this graphic to print as a 24" x 18" yard sign, you can download the PDF file here and submit it to a print shop.