Well in the case of what we see today is that universities have indoctrinated fools into Stockholm syndrome. Its a made up narrative that took root in Western universities and spilled over to where such people went. Media, entrainment industry and big tech. No self respecting hard working person would actually suffer Stockholm syndrome because they work for a living. Its always the liberal upper middle class. Its never the proletariat that rebels unless he has no food, and its not the top end of population they too work for a living. Too busy. Its the middle university liberals that are the problem. Too much time on their hands and too big egos.

In Fools, Frauds and Firebrands (2015), Roger Scruton reminds us that “intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society in the belief they will be in charge of it” (p. 12), and this is one reason why they most often start with the area over which they have the most control: language.

Another reason is because reality has a stubborn habit of not cooperating with their utopian visions: thoughts are easier to control than economies or the revealed preferences of individuals.

In this article, I will explore the various ways in which the political left uses the techniques of Newspeak in the real world, in Britain and in the USA, while projecting their own totalitarian motives onto their opponents.

The US media, stocked with coastal elites who all seem to be on the same page politically (including on the issue of blacklisting those with dissenting opinion), has more or less devoted itself to daily preaching against Donald Trump for the past two years. Criticising or morally condemning Trump is hardly edgy or even a courageous act of sticking one’s head above the parapet; it is expected. Yet these people still call him a totalitarian. How can we account for this lack of self-awareness on their part? One of their own thinkers, the Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser, argued that people in the grip of ideology “believe themselves by definition outside ideology…ideology never says, ‘I am ideological.’”

In plainer words: if you are trapped in an echo chamber without anyone to challenge your ideas, it is difficult to be self-aware because there is no motivation to do anything other than revel in the righteousness of your cause. Inside the confines of your own imagination, you are a freedom fighter, a member of the Rebel Alliance – or should I say, #TheResistance – fighting the evil Empire. Under such circumstances you are likely to become intolerant of anyone who isn’t in your view also fighting against “The Dark Side.”

Given this fact, people who are part of the “Rebel Alliance” develop a way of speaking designed to circumvent the possibility of debate or even the introduction of evidence. They employ what Thomas Sowell called, in The Vision of the Anointed (1995), “pre-emptive rhetoric” (p. 64), a set of words and phrases that assert the correctness of the argument before anything else has even been said. At their most effective, such pre-emptive strikes become what Scott Adams has called, in Win Bigly (2017), “linguistic kill shots” which he defines as “a nickname or short set of words so persuasive that it can end an argument or create a specific outcome” (p. 28).

If you are ever in a situation in which you face the rhetorical kill shot (and the other rhetoric that is sure to follow) my recommendation is systematically to deny them this moral turf. Get them to explain what they mean in plain English, and if they will not or cannot do so, then do your best to redefine what they mean there and then. It is important to insist on this clarity, in order to uncover the real intentions behind the employment of loaded jargon, which if left unchallenged will undoubtedly obscure true meaning. Then press further: why is what they want desirable? How is it defensible both morally and economically? What are the costs of implementing it? Who should and why should they ? What are the likely long-run consequences of enacting this policy? What evidence do they have that this will work? Demand a fact-based approach. It is only fair that those who would redesign society from the top down should be put on the back foot in defending the radical utopian changes they want to see."

Neema Parvini is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Surrey. He is the author of five books, the most recent being Shakespeare and New Historicism Theory (2017) and Shakespeare’s Moral Compass (forthcoming 2018). He also presents a popular podcast series called Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory.

Nietzsche was ahead of his time...