Nineteen Eighty-Four: What Orwell Got Right
the novel remains prescient in its depiction of two key elements of modern-day political correctness conceived of and promoted by the Progressive Left: the war on language and the war on memory.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell focuses on an individual living in "Oceania," a socialist society comprising the present-day nations of England and the Americas. In the novel, Oceania is abandoning standard English, which is referred to as “Oldspeak,” and is adopting “Newspeak,” a limited vocabulary designed to restrict thought.
On the college campuses, the progressives have adopted a form of Newspeak with the identical goal -- to get rid of heretical thoughts. Thus, students are protected by “safe spaces,” works of art that might cause discomfort are preceded by “trigger warnings,” and prohibited statements are referred to as “microagressions,” and “hate speech.” Make the latter phrase a compound word (hatespeech) and it has an unmistakably Orwellian cadence.
Starting in academia, politically correct speech has now infected the media, the arts, tech companies, and corporations.
The protagonist in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, works for the ironically named “Ministry of Truth,” which is engaged in the practice of constantly editing history to conform to the current party line.