MCLC: China sharpens its censorship blade (7)

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China sharpens its censorship blade (7)
In “1984” there is a scene that expresses the ethos of manipulative political language rather well. In this particular scene, Syme (a government philologist) exhorts Winston Smith on his lack of passion for Newspeak. Syme is proud of the fact that Newspeak is the only language with a diminishing, rather than growing, lexical resource. He asks Smith, ‘don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it’. During the conversation, Syme indirectly reveals the regime’s fear of uncontrolled language. He declares, ‘The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect’. This can be slightly adapted to read: ‘the Revolution is incomplete while language can still express dissent’. Put in contemporary terms, this means the CCP will never feel safe until there is no way left for the masses to express defiance, resentment, and indeed, revolution itself. It explains their panic when voice is given to opposing ideologies. Motives to control and monopolize information (and its many and varied media of expression), to make it appear and disappear if it says something they don’t like is constructed on the CCP’s most profound fear: unpermitted political discourse engenders unpermitted political deeds. Actions based on politically unsanctioned thought are the ‘contagion’ of dissent.
Joe Alvaro <jjalvaro-c at my.cityu.edu.hk>
Hong Kong
by denton.2 at osu.edu on February 13, 2015
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