Remember Napoleon and Snowball, two of the main protagonists in Animal Farm? The ruthless leader, the fleeing rebel (assumed to stand in for Stalin and Trotsky respectively) at the time? Orwell’s parable was not just a veiled condemnation of (communist) autocratic rule. It also mirrored the use of language as a tool of seduction, oppression and incitement of hatred. Yesterday I pointed to the language heard at the RNC that focussed on condemnation and call to violent action.
Here is the original (not prescient) review of the book:https://newrepublic.com/article/114852/1946-review-george-orwells-animal-farm
Let me make a related point today: Language can work on an everyday basis as well to establish or perpetuate stereotypes, stereotypes that will be used by authoritarian regimes to rouse the people against ready-made scapegoats. I have two simple examples in mind that I grew up with – every German person in the last 200 years or more grew up with; as innocuous as they seem they stand for a wider cementing of stereotyping.
This plant’s name in German is Judentaler – Jew silverling or coin. The association between money and Jews gets firmly rooted in everyday language. 
Another German expression when meeting someone greedy is: Der ist vom Stamme Nimm! He is a member of the tribe Grab. MOT or member of the tribe is of course a reference to Jews, and in the context of grabbing, taking or greed the old imagery is reignited.
The young get subtly educated by this kind of language without anyone noticing – which is probably the point.
And of course gestures are another way of communicating – this one by Laura Ingraham straight from the RNC….
Where is the uproar?
According to the review the book traces the history of public parks including their role (in the eye of philanthropic Victorians) to pacify the urban poor. Post WW I park creation was increased to enhance physical fitness in young men, having shown lamentable lack thereof when conscripted earlier. And of course now parks are making way for ever larger number of shopping malls… I find it interesting to learn about what social, political or economic pressures shape environments that we take for granted.
Freud wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), “The present cultural state of America would give us a good opportunity for studying the damage to civilization which is thus to be feared.” His enduring nightmare, that America, with its notions of Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, would be “gain[ing] control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man” was made real in 1945. In August of that year atomic bombs were deployed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 100.000 people immediately, 10s of thousands through radiation exposure later, and devastated most of the attacked cities. Current talk of “Let’s make America great again!” hints at a willingness to repeat this kind of strategic annihilation, and one wonders if and what we’ve learned from history, if anything at all; it also makes Freud seem quite prescient.
