By: Petra Janša
“‘War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,’ writes Orwell as he describes a regime built on the control of words and, consequently, even of thought.”
This is how the latest episode of Utrip began, signed by a journalist of the public broadcaster who, years ago, openly cheered for illegal crossings of our national border in her reports. Naturally, she did not disappoint this time either, firing her “brilliant” arrows at the American president, claiming that Orwell’s words “have proven all too relevant in these times, in the global village of which Slovenia is also a part.” She had in mind above all the current developments in Greenland and Venezuela.
If you wish, you can find her piece in the MMC RTV SLO archive. As for me, I would recommend that the journalist read Michael Knowles’s book Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, recently published by our own Nova Obzorja and one of the most frequently referenced political books in Slovenia in recent months. In it, she would find an in‑depth discussion of Orwell’s Newspeak from 1984 as the archetype of modern linguistic manipulation. Knowles uses it in Speechless as the central framework for explaining how (left‑wing) political correctness evolved from politeness into a tool for thought control and censorship.
Let’s take a concrete example. The term “hate speech,” instead of being used with the precise definition of publicly inciting violence or issuing direct threats – as described in the criminal code – is now applied to criticism of the current government, scepticism toward official media narratives, and opposition to left‑wing ideological agendas such as gender theory and climate policy.
This theft of language is no accident – it is a strategy. And as long as we allow it, we will continue to lose our ability to think and speak freely.
