It’s not who you think it is. It’s not the people who use pronouns, it’s the ones who want to abolish words they don’t like.
But, you might say, that’s a cartoon making a humorously exaggerated claim. Nope, those are the literal words of Project 2025.
The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.
But, you might continue to say, you’re a white man. You have nothing to worry about.
Unless you’re living in Florida, of course.
Also, as ProPublica revealed when they published Project 2025’s secret training videos, a representative of the group said
If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.
They really think they can warp reality by controlling the dictionaries.
Remind me, if someone could, exactly how the existence of any of these terms “deprive[s] Americans of their First Amendment rights”? And how censoring such terms is not a violation of the right to freedom of speech that is explicitly enumerated in the aforementioned First Amendment?
Project 2025 didn’t think this up.
It is copied straight out of George Orwell’s 1984.
This is Newspeak.
@mathman85: They’re not saying individuals can’t use those words, they’re saying they want the government to not be allowed to use them. First A.-wise, it’s not ok for the government to restrict your speech, but it’s fine for it to restrict its own speech. At least I think that’s how they imagine it would work.
Ridana – what is happening in Florida?
Raven @ 2 Ungoodly oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc
Raven – reminds of me of a saying from Brad DeLong – if this is not like 1984, why do they keep using it as a guide book.
@Ridana:
Fair enough, but that still leaves us with the question of how it is that the use or mere existence of such terminology constitutes a violation of any of anyone’s First Amendment rights. (I know; some of these jerks think that being criticized for saying horrific, bigoted things is somehow a violation of their free speech rights, but I wish it would be something less shallow and foolish than that.)
This isn’t their complete list. It’s just the start.
They will go on to delete such words and terms as Freedom, Democracy, Racial Equality, Race, Equal Rights, Religious Freedom, Trans, Gay, Lesbian, Contraception, Birth Control, Voting, Democratic Party, Atheist, Maternal Mortality, etc..
The GOP Newspeak language will be a lot smaller than English.
There won’t be any Freethoughtblogs either. Free Thought will be one of the first terms to go.
Well, you know that back in 2014 Obama’s Obamacare program mandated the removal of the word “gullible” from dictionaries.
Trump reversed that on DAY ONE when he took office!
There is a comma missing between the long list of forbidden words and the list of things that are part of the government.
This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights [insert comma] out of every federal rule, etc…
I wonder where they got that idea. 1984 has already been mentioned, but the more radical postmodernists liked to tell us (maybe still do) that there is no reality beyond or independent of texts.
The authors of 2025 are no different than the gamer trolls who pitched a years long fit over the bleedingly obvious fact that the whole industry was deeply misogynistic.
I cannot fathom the amount of entitlement it required to write whole paragraphs of hysterical nonsense about gender, gender, gender, equity, inclusion etc, and then this bit:
Damn snowflakes literally claiming that depriving the half of Americans who own a uterus of basic healthcare, and erasing all non-white American’s civil rights is a huge violation of THEIR freedoms.
Fascist chauvinist swine have an entire manifesto for turning America into Galts Gulch, but they are being oppressed?
Won’t somebody think of the poor, poor, billionaire tech-bros, and how their rights are being violated by the existence of women and POC and genders? Oh, the humanity!?!
I mean, it’s kind of true.
It’s like how they want to do away with all sex education in schools; I used to believe that was born of a kind of naivete. That they wanted to preserve “innocence” in children until they could marry them off to the person of their parents choosing. Too, that they honestly believed they could “protect” their children from “becoming” LGBTQ+ by keeping them from learning about LGBTQ+ people. It was gross, controlling, and wrong, sure, but eventually I came to see the truth, and that truth so much worse.
The truth is that, if you don’t have the language or context to describe rape and sexual abuse, then you can’t accuse powerful abusers and rapists. You might feel that what was done to was wrong but, without the language to articulate how and why, it’s nearly impossible to meaningfully express that to others. Thus, powerful men will be free to abuse and rape whoever they want without fear of consequences.
To be clear: I’m not saying that every single right-winger who supports stuff like Project 2025 is a rapist. I’m just saying they want to keep their options open.
So, while they can’t warp reality in any objective sense, they can alter their subjective experience of it. That’s all they care about, and to hell with the consequences for anyone else.
I remember a bit from T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone when Merlin changed a young Arthur into an ant so that the future king could learn what it was like to be such an animal.
It turned out that the land of the ants was a place where everything not forbidden was compulsory; and there were two adjectives in the ant language, done and not-done. When Arthur tried to explain that there could be times when something not-done could be done, that obviously identified him as a not-done ant. Merlin saved him just in time.
They really think they can warp reality by controlling the dictionaries.
No. They don’t care about people dying in the floods, or whatever. No need to hide that, as long as it is not blamed on them – either it’s god’s rage against lefties, or a conspiracy by lefties; no need to explain how, it just feels right to them. Emergencies need people to act, not think; they like that a lot.
I suspect humanity is splitting up in – at least – two tribes, the left and the wrong. The left tries to educate people – to conservatives that is existential threat. Trump et al. try to legislate away that threat, and establish their own narrative.
I am afraid that this might be a fight to the death..
They just want to be the French Dictionary Police. Or, perhaps: Alles ist in ordnung, daß der Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung billigt.
@11: It goes back quite a way before the postmodernists, to (among many others) Boas, Sapir, and Whorf in one chain (beginning at the tail end of the Victorian era); another chain leading into Ludwig Wittgenstein and Willard Quine; and implicit at least as far back as Nietzsche and Feuerbach. So it’s a bit unfair/late, and certainly inaccurate, to blame the postmodernists — an obstacle that the Heritage Foundation has been rushing toward like Wile E. Coyote running through a wall since the 1980s, demonstrating that its own research has always been less than rigorous. Of course, that entire first chain revolves around indigenous languages in the Americas (largely as studied by immigrants!), so it was unfit for consideration by the Anglo-Saxon conquerors…
“…term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
I think it’s implying that they have a first amendment right to contracts and grants, and there are rules, regulations, and legislation that harm their first amendment rights.
Or to get the grants and contracts they have to suffer speech harm.
It could be a set of different and related whining.
If they speak they should get grant? I don’t think that’s how the first amendment works.
“But, you might say, that’s a cartoon making a humorously exaggerated claim.”
The claim: “COME 2025, DO YOU WANT TO WAKE UP BEING RULED BY PEOPLE FROM 1025?”
I do say.
(And I am correct)
Instead of yielding to Caesar, they want to replace Caesar. No judgement on the passage, just noting the behavior.
Jaws@16–
Re: the French Dictionary Police. I assume you’re referring to the Académie française? If so, I agree that it can be rigid, culturally conservative, politically Francocentric, and often outright ridiculous with its refusal to accept loanwords, insisting on long, clunky phrases like ‘joueur-animateur en direct’ for ‘streamer.’ But however silly this might be, the Académie is not doing it to pretend streaming isn’t real.
This is so old-hat.
Orwell, Sapir-Whorf, and so forth.
—
Thing is, even if there is no word for it, one can use circumlocutions.
The ideas can still exist, and those ways of thinking can still exist.
(However did English get away with no literal term schadenfreude?)
[how does one prohibit abortion without actually using the term ‘abortion’?]
—
That document is, I reckon, about as much about trolling as about actual aspirations.
The same way it usually does: stalking another language, in this case German, and mugging it in a dark alley. :)
Ah, that one’s easy. Just say “ixnay on making unmen doubleplus unpregnant” or some such circumlocution.
BB, :)
(You know the Monty Python stoning scene from Life of Brian?)
But I just had a piece of halibut that was good enough for JehoBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT.
Of course, the 2/0/2/5/ 1/0/2/5/ 0025 project would have the same objection if there were any women at the stoning…
I’m very glad there’s no spelling & typos police or I’d be in an awful lot of trouble here!
i am worried about the Dream Police (Cheap Trick):
The dream police
They live inside of my head
The dream police
They come to me in my bed
The dream police
They’re coming to arrest me, oh no
You know that talk is cheap
And those rumors ain’t nice
And when I fall asleep
I don’t think I’ll survive the night, the night
‘Cause they’re waiting for me
They’re looking for me
Every single night they’re driving me insane
Those men inside my brain
The dream police
They live inside of my head (live inside of my head)
The dream police
They come to me in my bed (come to me in my bed)
The dream police
They’re coming to arrest me, oh no
Well, I can’t tell lies
‘Cause they’re listening to me
And when I fall asleep
Bet they’re spying on me tonight, tonight
‘Cause they’re waiting for me
They’re looking for me
Every single night they’re driving me insane
Those men inside my brain
I try to sleep, they’re wide awake, they won’t let me alone
They don’t get paid to take vacations or let me alone
They spy on me, I try to hide, they won’t let me alone
They persecute me, they’re the judge and jury all in one
They really think they can warp reality by controlling the dictionaries.
Their (generally, hardcore authoritarians’) ideological dynamic demands re-defining everything they can. Building on the heritage of Orwell, Bernays, and Holy Writ (not to mention practitioners like Adolf & Uncle Joe & The Chairman), these hierarchists strive to lay claim to all of our minds as their natural right, ordained by the Ultimate Authority.
This strategy has, after all, worked before in multiple situations – none of which, sfaik, were ecological/climatological crises.
Pierce R. Butler at 29, my retort was preemptive, at 22.
It may work on sheeple, but not on freethinkers.
We may have to LARP to appease the plebs, but we don’t have to believe guff.