Just read a children’s book about the cultural revolution in China. A huge part of the buildup was the doublespeak, politically correct inversion of language and words to break down old patterns of thought. It was quite disturbing to read the book and see how all that has ramped up in the past several years here in the U.S. (even though it’s been around for 20 or more years) - the “Central Committee” here - the media and Hollywood, professors have just ramped it up 100 fold.
A child’s nightmare unfolds in Jiang’s chronicle of the excesses of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China in the late 1960s. She was a young teenager at the height of the fervor, when children rose up against their parents, students against teachers, and neighbor against neighbor in an orgy of doublespeak, name-calling, and worse. Intelligence was suspect, and everyone was exhorted to root out the ``Four Olds’’—old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. She tells how it felt to burn family photographs and treasured heirlooms so they would not be used as evidence of their failure to repudiate a ``black’’—i.e., land-owning—past. In the name of the revolution, homes were searched and possessions taken or destroyed, her father imprisoned, and her mother’s health imperiled—until the next round of revolutionaries came in and reversed many of the dicta of the last. Jiang’s last chapter details her current life in this country, and the fates of people she mentions in her story. It’s a very painful, very personal- -therefore accessible—history. (Memoir. 11-15) — Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. —This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
That looks fascinating. Thank you for the info and link.