Tag: political correctness

Target Swiftly Bans Book On Behalf Of Anonymous Twitter User Crying ‘Transphobia’

An official Target company Twitter account announced Thursday they had removed author Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” from the retailer’s “assortment” after an unverified Twitter user complained the book questions transgender ideology, especially the concept of irreversible hormonal and surgical experimentation on minors.

“I think the trans community deserves a response from @AskTarget @Target as to why they are selling this book about the ‘transgender epidemic sweeping the country.’ Trigger warning: Transphobia,” wrote the user.

Target thanked the user for bringing Shrier’s book to their attention.

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Doublespeak

It is a language that is alive and well in our world today.

Doublespeak can refer to terms that are euphemisms (mild expressions designed to hide harsher or more direct ones), deliberately ambiguous (expressions designed to hide the truth) or actual inversions (outright lies which state the opposite of the truth).

Although he never used the term doublespeak in his book 1984, many associate doublespeak with George Orwell.

After all, it was Orwell who famously wrote that the motto of the totalitarian ruling party in 1984 was “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” – an example of an inversion.

Orwell did however use the term newspeak to refer to a new kind of language which drastically reduced the scope of available words and terms, so as to concurrently reduce the scope of possible free thought among the ruled population.

Many doublespeak terms in the following list are oxymorons, meaning that the term itself is contradictory.

Many hide the truth because it is too raw, unpalatable, uncomfortable or outright horrifying. It is vitally important we watch our language, because it plays a great part in how we shape our world and in how we create our reality.

In many ways, by unconsciously using these terms instead of more accurate or truthful ones, we are quietly lying to ourselves, or at a minimum acquiescing to the process of being lied to and programmed.

Political correctness is a great example of how language control, thought control and doublespeak can be introduced to an entire population without people realizing they are being deceived and manipulated.

Below is list of the top 20 modern Orwellian doublespeak terms, with the first half focusing on military and geopolitical terms.

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HBO Max Adds Introduction to ‘Blazing Saddles’ About ‘Racist Language’

If you go to watch Mel Brooks’ classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles on HBO Max this weekend, you’ll find something new: An introduction from film scholar and TCM host Jacquline Stewart. This follows HBO Max’s decision to briefly remove the controversial Oscar winner Gone With the Wind from its offerings, and then to make it available again with its own contextualizing intro, also by Stewart.

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Rocker Nick Cave: Cancel Culture Is ‘Bad Religion Run Amuck’

Earlier this year, the highly regarded Australian rocker and “Goth heartthrob” Nick Cave criticized “perpetually pissed-off…pearl-clutchers” who demand that old songs, novels, and other works of creative expression be censored or changed when they offend contemporary sensibilities. Writing in his monthly newsletter The Red Hand Files, he averred

I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland.

In the most recent edition of The Red Hand Files, Cave again takes aims against “cancel culture,” especially what he sees as its “refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas” and “asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society.” Cancel culture, he writes, “is mercy’s antithesis,” an impulse that combines the worst aspects of religious fervor and ideological certitude.

Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck.

Cancel culture’s refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society. Compassion is the primary experience — the heart event — out of which emerges the genius and generosity of the imagination. Creativity is an act of love that can knock up against our most foundational beliefs, and in doing so brings forth fresh ways of seeing the world. This is both the function and glory of art and ideas. A force that finds its meaning in the cancellation of these difficult ideas hampers the creative spirit of a society and strikes at the complex and diverse nature of its culture.

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