Eric Voegelin on Ideology and Language

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Here:
The restriction of vocabulary and meanings: an ideological language has the purpose of interrupting the contact with reality, and on the other hand to admit as "reality" in quotation marks only the phantasy of the ideology. This restriction now pertains not only to words and meanings, but to whole bodies of propositions in philosophy or to facts of history that could interfere with the ideological "truth" by showing it to be a falsehood...

If one translates the Orwellian issue into more adequate terminology, one would have to speak of the "obsessive language" of ideologues–which has the double purpose of repetitious, mechanical iteration of the phantasy [e.g., "Taxation is theft!"] and of killing off, at the same time, any conflicting reality. ["Statists use violence to force their morality on others."]

Comments

  1. Anonymous11:53 PM

    I agree! However, you must admit that such things make it far easier to sell an ideology to a wider subscription, regardless of the principles and propositions that form such an ideology. I don't think that any ideology or "ism" escapes this trend. (hmmm...thinking...) Nope! None!

    Even if you tried to escape the ideology/ism sphere of human thought, rest assured that an "ism" would be defined to you by the rest of society. No escape!

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