All the terms that acquired a different meaning over the last 5 years
This compendium is based on actual unironic uses of the terms by perverse academia and lying media. How fast is culture destroyed?
- science
- now it means "whatever authorities / journocels / celebrities tell you to believe", no matter how unscientific (according to the prior definition) it may be
- vaccine
- anti-vax
- racist
- used to mean "odious discrimination against people solely based on race"
- now it's some sort of evil original sin that, apparently, only white people are capable of, consisting (more or less) on not subordinating oneself to non-white people
- white supremacist
- it used to mean "people who believe whites should be supreme"
- now it just means "people who notice hatred against whites"
- safety
- now it includes people who fear others saying obvious truths they disagree with
- man / woman
- people with penises can be women now — people with vaginas can be men
- pregnant
- the term would always imply woman before, nowadays "men can be pregnant too" (see prior definition)
- -phobic
- used to mean "irrational fear"
- now it simply acts as an insult, often proffered as revenge for making a joke or questioning a shibboleth
- violence
- it now includes thoughts, written or said, that others hate and want to proscribe
- peaceful
- conversely vis a vis the prior one, this now includes physically violent acts like arson, battery and attempted murder
- healthy
- morbidly obese people are "healthy", according to "health at every size " activists
- insurrection
- peaceful protests / marches are called "insurrection" now
- misogyny
- today it's used in the sense of "disagreement with a woman" (or, more and more frequently, a man who incorrectly believes himself to be a woman)
- sexism
- used to mean "irrational hatred of the other sex" or "odious discrimination against people solely based on sex"
- today, it's an accusation of evil or sin, that may or may not be vaguely related to sex
- in the modern definition, women are not capable of sexism — they can only be victims of it — so only men can be accused of sexism
- two weeks
- it clearly means either "two years" or "for as long as we can get away with"
- far right
- used to be reserved for organized violent groups animated by right-wing beliefs
- today it generally means anyone to the left of, or slightly to the right of, Bill Clinton
- conspiracy theorist
- someone who tells a truth that is generally accepted today, only six months early
- quarantine
- formerly, forced isolation of sick people
- now, forced isolation of even provably healthy people
- passport
- now it includes permits to engage in ordinary everyday activities that were arbitrarily prohibited, rather than being limited to permits for international travel
- censorship
- now it excludes censorious acts by businesses or individuals, even when those acts are clearly done at the behest of, or in accordance with the extralegal wishes of, a government
- hate speech
- this one is a bit of a neologism
- the term covers many categories of ideas, many of which are truthful, almost none of which are hateful (in the original sense), that certain people revile to see communicated
- freedom of speech
- before, the notion that you are free to communicate ideas, and other are free to listen to you, without fear of retaliation or interference by third parties
- now, an obsolete practice that protects the communication of "hate speech"
- trust / safety
- before, reliability and freedom from danger or injury
- now, the name of a corporate department in charge of deforming or falsifying (often true) information the corporation intends to suppress, and censoring people communicating said information
- fascist
- before, a person who supports a government under fascistic principles
- now, anyone who rejects certain left-wing ideas
- fact-checker
- before, someone in charge of checking the truth value of factual claims
- now, someone who routinely distorts or suppresses (often true) factual claims
How about others you might know? Tell us!
In Newspeak it was seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it was heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were nonexistent.
— George Orwell, appendix: the principles of Newspeak