The lamestream media coverage of the Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux tour down under is as good an example of how the truth-benders operate as you will get. Between what the radical ferals said (and did), and how the media covered the events, we have a perfect case of simply making things up as we go along, including words and their definitions.
And the entire scenario is by now entirely predictable:
A) A conservative speaker seeks to exercise his right to free speech
B) The militant left vows to prevent the conservative from speaking
C) The militant left does everything possible to shut down the meeting
D) Police have to try to restore order
E) The media portrays all of this as far-rightists disturbing the peace
Yet somehow all this was the fault of the two conservative speakers. Somehow they are to blame for all this. And on top of all this, we had the truly Orwellian move by the police BEFORE any meetings were held, saying that because trouble was brewing by the left, the police were going to charge the conservatives $68,000 for having to show up to keep the peace!
I discussed this yesterday: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/07/20/this-is-how-we-destroy-free-speech/
Just try to get your head around this, by looking at how this would play out if things were the other way around. Imagine a bunch of radical leftists holding a public meeting. That is not hard to imagine, since it happens all the time. What almost never happens is a group of conservatives show up to protest it, or seek to have it shut down.
And then imagine the police – before the event – sending a $68,000 bill to the leftists, to deal with any expected trouble by the conservatives! Um, I am not aware of this ever happening, at least here in Victoria. But if it did, the left would be screaming about how grossly unfair this would be. As one person said elsewhere, “If private enterprise did this, the police would call it a protection racket.”
And this is the hardest thing of all to imagine: imagine the media calling those holding the meeting extreme leftists, or far-left activists, while calling the protestors concerned citizens. Nope, that just is not going to happen. Any person who differs from the PC media worldview is automatically a “far-right” activist or an “extreme-right” controversialist.
But those coming with the stated aim of violently shutting things down never get any adjective attached to them. If anything, the brainless media runs with the idiotic names used by the leftists themselves, most notably, “antifascists”. Really.
Um, does no one know what a fascist is anymore? Among other things, a fascist uses violent means to oppose those of another point of view. A fascist will forcibly suppress all opposition and criticism, and use thuggish means to allow only their voices to be heard.
Hmmm, why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, the leftist protestors are carrying on exactly like that. They are fascists, seeking to destroy free speech and democracy. They are brown shirts who use bullying, intimidation and violence to shout down and shut down all opposing voices.
Yet they call themselves Antifa, or anti-fascists! Talk about Orwellian double speak fully on display here. In this regard one of the best lines heard last night was found in one media account of the violence that took place. You may need to be seated first before you read this account from last night about the rioting:
A protester has managed to jump on stage to disrupt the Melbourne speaking event of visiting conservative commentator Lauren Southern, as hundreds of anti-facist [sic] protesters clashed with police outside. Nita Habibi was pounced on by security as she invaded the stage during Ms Southern’s presentation. She was quickly removed from the venue while shouting “I love Muslims”. “I love freedom of speech,” she told The Australian after being evicted. “I wanted to interrupt the thing. I think it’s really dangerous what’s happening. Hate speech should be interrupted.”
Yep, we can all see that you love freedom of speech. Because violently interrupting someone from speaking is such a terrific indication of how much free speech is valued and believed in. Yep, I can see that. Makes perfect sense to me. We see here the totalitarian misuse and abuse of words on full display.
And as another indication of how deplorable the mainstream media has become, notice in that quote how they can’t even spell properly the words they are using! As to the violence itself, you can see videos of all this action here: http://caldronpool.com/watch-antifa-storms-stage-attempts-to-take-down-lauren-southern-during-her-speech/
The truth is, social engineering is always proceeded by verbal engineering. Change the words and you can change the culture. In this case, you try to convince people that a violent attempt to shut down a public meeting is actually an example of treasuring freedom of speech.
And you try to convince folks that a person giving a speech is a fascist, while the thugs seeking to shut down the meeting are somehow anti-fascists. Simply change the meaning of words like this and you can change a culture. Call black white. Call good evil. Call freedom hate. Call democracy fascism.
Anyone who has read their Orwell knows all about this. In his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, we see the totalist state doing this to perfection. Winston Smith, the main character of the novel, works at the “Ministry of Truth”. On the outside wall are the three slogans of the Party: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
Hmm, sounds just like today with the radical left and their intent on destroying society by first destroying language. Later in the book Smith is being tortured in the ‘Ministry of Love’. His interrogator is trying to ‘cure’ him of his belief that reality is found in anything other than as the State sees it. Consider this snippet from the scene:
Interrogator: “How many fingers am I holding up Winston?”
Winston: “Two”.
Interrogator: “And if Big Brother says I am holding up three fingers, then how many fingers am I holding up?”
Winston: (after being suitably tortured) “Three”.
Orwell often warned about such things. As he said elsewhere, “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” Or this: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” And again, “Truth is treason in an empire of lies.”
And that is just what we find ourselves in today, with the radical left and their useless stooges in the media doing their bidding. But if your love of fiction has not yet taken you to Orwell, perhaps we can run with another work – this time Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, penned in 1865. There too we find the attempt to redefine language. Consider this very short bit of dialogue:
Humpty Dumpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.
Alice: The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.
Humpty Dumpty: The question is: which is to be master – that’s all.
Yep, that’s about it. Let me finish with the words of philosopher Edward Feser from his important 2008 book, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. He argues that our secular humanistic thinking has led to the point where
we are well past the time when slippery-slope arguments might be used to try to shock a liberal or a secularist out of his folly. You can no longer attempt the reductio ad absurdum with him, for he will now simply embrace with enthusiasm any absurdity that follows from his premises and thank you for suggesting it to him. He is well through the looking glass, his mind and his moral sensibility so thoroughly corrupted that to him it is obvious that black is white, up is down, sodomy is marriage, and scraping a fetus from its mother’s womb is compassion.
Yes, it has come to that. And what we saw last night, and will see all week around Australia is just another indication of all this. If Orwell were alive today he would have so much more material to use. He could probably quite easily do a few sequels to 1984.
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