The Tongue of MAGA Newspeak

Back to Orwell's 1984 and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence

In a shocking display of what appeared to be another example of his ignorance and illiteracy, the current occupant of the White House declared in his recent interview with ABC that the Declaration of Independence is “a declaration of unity, love and respect and it means a lot. It’s something very special to our country.”

He had previously referred to it as “the real deal.”

Reaction across the news and social was swift and harsh. The man clearly does not understand what this document is—even though he has an official copy of it in his office.

However, he displays much, much more in this statement. He speaks in the tongue of MAGA Newspeak.

This post will look at how MAGA Newspeak reflects the dystopian world of the MAGA cult. It gives us an entry point into understanding how the MAGA leaders and their cult communicate and are rewiring each other to create a language that is illogical to those who have not been indoctrinated. George Orwell in his novel 1984 gives us that road map.

I remember reading the novel, teaching it, living through the historic year of 1984 while thinking, is it happening? While some of the predictions were ghostly present in the real year of 1984, it didn’t seem like Orwell picked the right year for Big Brother. Life and politics and the years moved on until 2025.

Orwell should have picked 2025 for the title.

Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. Writing at a time when England had just survived World War II and was rebuilding its infrastructure and restructuring its political ideology, he had a lot to say about language and politics.

His 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language” argues for simplifying language, especially by political leaders: eliminate metaphors, pretentious diction, meaningless words. He concludes that “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”[i] Hmm. I think he’s on to something.

In our own evolving dystopian world, the use of language is key to understanding the MAGA cult and linguistic brain rewiring—and the person who is the master of it, the person at the center of the MAGA idolatry.

Orwell’s demonstration of changing the English language to fit a totalitarian usage is at the heart of 1984. Throughout the novel, the reader encounters official terms that in “Oldspeak” (standard English) should have opposite meanings. Some of them have entered our real-world vernacular, like “Big Brother” (the surveillance system that is supposed to protect its citizens but is really trying to rout out dissidents) and “Newspeak” (not news, propaganda). Ministries of the government had opposite meanings, such as The Ministry of Peace being the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Love being the Ministry of Law and Order. The party’s slogans were all opposite in Oldspeak. However, in Newspeak, they are logical:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Orwell includes an Appendix to Newspeak “…the official language of Oceania had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism.” [ii] He lays out the etymology of the language and how, over time, the repeated usage of Newspeak would rewire the brain into accepting only the government-version meanings of the language. He notes that Newspeak would supersede Oldspeak by 2050.

The content of the Appendix is a way to understand the MAGA cult and brain and the person at its center of idolatry by looking at their creation of MAGA Newspeak. I’m going to highlight some of the pertinent passages. Then, in a surprising conclusion, Orwell comments on The Declaration of Independence. Yup. No one can write this stuff anymore.

Here are some passages to consider taken from Appendix The Principles of Newspeak:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

The word free is carefully chosen because in Oceania, no one is considered free. Their entire lives are dominated by the watchful eyes of Big Brother and the Thought Police, and any dissenters are disappeared. Yes, disappeared is a word in Newspeak.

Orwell continues to explore other words that underwent change to reflect the guidance of Big Brother on its citizens’ thoughts. He breaks down vocabulary into three groups:

A: The vocabulary needed for the “everyday business of life”:

It was composed almost entirely of words that we already possess words like hit, run, dog, tree, sugar, house, field — but in comparison with the present-day English vocabulary their number was extremely small, while their meanings were far more rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of them. So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class was simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood concept. It would have been quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or for political or philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.

In Oldspeak dictionaries, words will have primary, secondary, and tertiary meanings. Words can be nuanced and be used ironically. Newspeak strips the words of those layers of thought, bringing only one meaning to the word. There is no room for public discourse about the layers of thought in Newspeak.

B: The vocabulary for political purposes. The B words were all compound words that created a single push of a noun and a verb/action: goodthink; crimethink. Group B includes words that were heretical in Oceania, but they have had the “undesirable meanings purged out of them.” He continues:

As we have already seen in the case of the word free, words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them. All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word crimethink, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word oldthink. Greater precision would have been dangerous. What was required in a Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped ‘false gods’. He did not need to know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch, Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the less he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the commandments of Jehovah: he knew, therefore, that all gods with other names or other attributes were false gods. In somewhat the same way, the party member knew what constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible.

Not only were words stripped of meaning, but words were also just eliminated, purposefully. The fewer words one had to express themselves, the fewer ways they could think on their own:

Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning ‘to quack like a duck’. Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment.

C: Scientific and Technical Terms. Newspeak has its way to strip down science as well, purging out any undesirable meanings:

Any scientific worker or technician could find all the words he needed in the list devoted to his own speciality, but he seldom had more than a smattering of the words occurring in the other lists. Only a very few words were common to all lists, and there was no vocabulary expressing the function of Science as a habit of mind, or a method of thought, irrespective of its particular branches. There was, indeed, no word for ‘Science’, any meaning that it could possibly bear being already sufficiently covered by the word Ingsoc.

The plan for Newspeak was to supersede all of Oldspeak. The stripping of the words would also strip writings from the past.

In doing so, “…the last link with the past would have been severed. History had already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long as one retained one's knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to read them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable. It was impossible to translate any passage of Oldspeak into Newspeak unless it either referred to some technical process or some very simple everyday action, or was already orthodox (goodthinkful would be the Newspeak expression) in tendency. In practice this meant that no book written before approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole.”

Orwell notes in the Appendix that literary writings, like those of Shakespeare and Dickens, were being rewritten to affect this erasure.

Okay, folks, here’s where it gets especially scary. Orwell brings in the Declaration of Independence as an example of how its ideas would not be understood in 2050.

Pre-revolutionary literature could only be subjected to ideological translation — that is, alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government...

It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.

As an Oldthinker, I know that the Declaration of Independence is a road map to Revolution. In February, I wrote about how Jefferson structured the Declaration as a syllogism to prove that George III was a tyrant—and those same arguments can be used against the current occupant of the White House. Since February, the list of grievances against this tyrant has expanded exponentially: https://mbmatthews.substack.com/p/a-colonial-roadmap-to-overthrowing?r=hcg5

But in MAGA Newspeak, the Declaration is a” declaration of unity, love and respect.” I’m not sure what the current occupant of the White House is thinking here. Maybe that’s the point. As an Oldspeaker, I want to know who is unified, loving, and respectful? Does he see himself as the revolutionary? If so, does that mean he should be unified, loving and respectful? Because we sure know he isn’t. That leaves only the tyrant. Does he see himself as the King? If so, has he forgotten that those unified, loving, and respectful revolutionary colonists fought a long and bloody war to overturn the monarch because the Declaration sets out the argument as to why they can overturn a tyrant?

That’s the point, my friends. I am an Oldspeak person. I question the logic. I want answers that reflect the truth of history and that uses clear and reasonable language. I want words that make sense. If there’s an argument premised, give me the factual evidence.

Don’t turn language in a MAGA Newspeak based on a cult leader’s biased and stupid view of the world and history.

Orwell wrote 1984 in 1949. Seventy-six years later, we see and hear MAGA Newspeak as the language of MAGA, especially in the mouth of MAGA’s fearless leader.

His noting the Declaration of Independence is “a declaration of unity, love and respect” exemplifies MAGA Newspeak is his language. I’m gobsmacked to make this connection. The doublethink here demonstrates and clarifies his view of the world and history.

It’s not meant to make sense in Oldspeak. It is the Newspeak of the MAGA cult.

The MAGA Newspeak has rewired the brains of the MAGA cult to think and talk in a language that is stripped of its logical sense and instead means frequently the opposite. This is what we’re up against. Repeating from Orwell is necessary here:

Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them. All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word crimethink, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word oldthink.

Those who oppose this regime are Oldthinkers. I believe in the concepts of liberty and equality. Those words have now come to mean crimethink.

Oldthink is language that conveys truth, honesty, and clarity. The MAGA Newspeak conveys only the barest of meaning, a meaning chosen to represent a political ideology. It relies on turning Oldspeak inside out to remove any sense of questionable meaning or logical intent. The repetition of the illogic becomes normal to those who are being reprogrammed.

The mainstream press constantly downplays the MAGA Newspeak as just being normal. But it isn’t. It is crawling into the MAGA brains like worms and has rewired the brains. It has crawled into the brains of mainstream reporters. They repeat it, and repeat it, thereby minimizing the illogic of it all, making it normal.

Orwell builds on this stripping and purging of meaning to create a dystopian world in which someone like Winston, an Oldthinker, has to be reprogrammed because he started to catch on to what was happening.

In custody, in this Ministry of Love, Winston works on reprogramming himself to accept the logic of Newspeak:

The past was alterable. The past had never been altered….Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense….

The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. CRIMESTOP, they called it in Newspeak.[iii]

However, Winston is a tough case. In his interrogation, the interrogator O’Brien asks:

‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’

Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.

‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything….

‘The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’

It takes the threat of being tortured by being eaten alive by starved rats to break Winston. He caves and betrays his love Julia to avoid that demise. He even accepts that TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE.

So, thanks to revisiting the literary dystopian path of 1984, this Oldthinker is now more educated to understanding how MAGA thinks and why they say the things they do. And the world they are creating full of hate, rage, fear, and stupidity, that is focused only the needs of the leader and the oligarchy that supports him.

DEMOCRACY IS OLIGARCHY

HONOR IS LOYALTY

RELIGION IS LEADER

SCIENCE IS LIETHINK

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

My Oldspeak intellect is thankful for this insight. However, I now have panic flashes of WTF, Orwell was right.

Let us not be a Winston. We must take on Big Brother, Newspeak, and remain honorable and loyal to Democracy, Science, Education, the Truth of History. We must remain compassionate and supportive of our communities and strangers. We must take on this battle. And, thank you for all you have done so far in this fight! You are needed, no matter what.

Because MAGA and MAGA Newspeak are here, in 2025.

If you’re a reader, revisit 1984. It’s readily available at your library or as a new, used, or online text.

If you want to watch a film version, it’s available on the Internet Archive, at least for now (as their funding has been stripped): https://archive.org/details/1984_20210125_202101/1984+The+Movie+-+Based+on+Nineteen+Eighty-Four+by+George+Orwell+-+Colorized.mp4

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[i] https://archive.org/details/PoliticsAndTheEnglishLanguage/page/n13/mode/2up?view=theater

[ii] https://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app

[iii] https://archive.org/details/GeorgeOrwells1984/page/n349/mode/2up?view=theater