Annals of Newspeak

In George Orwell's famous classic of totalitarianism, 1984, the ruling dictatorship had its own vocabulary, called Newspeak, which basically meant inverting words to mean the opposite of their previous meanings. For example, Slavery is Freedom.

Barack Obama and his minions have shown themselves to be assiduous disciples of the principle of Newspeak; to invert the meanings of words. Examples are legion: here are two recent ones I happened to notice.

In Ukraine, a violent mob overthrew the elected government, and the U.S. installed replacement “leaders.” These people Obama refers to as “democratic leaders.” Unelected, yet somehow “democratic.” Capitalists better no longer sneer at Bolshevik misuse of the word “democratic.” [1]

Another recent example is Obama's secret police henchman John Brennan. Obama wanted Brennan to replace Democratic Party apparatchik Leon Panetta as CIA head a few years back, but Brennan's involvement in CIA torture programs scuttled that back then. So Brennan was brought to Obama's side to run Obama's drone assassination program for him. So beloved by Obama is Brennan, that Obama last year once again moved to install Brennan at the top of the CIA, and this time he succeeded.

Brennan, as you'd expect of a career secret police type like him, can barely open his mouth without lying. But he has a habitual phrase whenever he utters a real howler. It's “Nothing could be further from the truth.” So during his Senate confirmation hearings for CIA Director, in denying that the drone death program ever harmed a hair on an innocent person's head, he used the phrase. [2]

Now that he was caught spying on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers and stealing documents off their CIA-provided computers, he once again denies what is proven fact with the phrase “Nothing could be further from the truth.

You can be guaranteed that if John Brennan says of something that “Nothing could be further from the truth,” it's true. It's like a tell in a poker player, a dead giveaway.

1] See “Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea.”

2] See “Jeremy Scahill: Assassinations of U.S. Citizens Largely Ignored at Brennan CIA Hearing,” democracynow.org, February 8th, 2013.