It is an axiom of economic warfare that the surest way of destroying a country is to debase its currency; for example, by flooding it with counterfeit money. It is no less true that the surest way of destroying a nation’s culture and identity is to debase its language. Not surprisingly, therefore, subversive agencies are giving the highest priority to the corruption of the English language. These ‘semantic forgers,’ all in the course of promoting their odious political correctness, are at work in our schools and colleges, in central and local government, in publishing houses and throughout the mass media. In the process they are seeking to make certain words as unacceptable as counterfeit money, to alter the traditional meaning and value of other words, and to introduce new terms serving their own perverse ideology. (George Orwell prophesied as much in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the official language was ‘Newspeak.’)

The process is insidious and potentially deadly; accordingly we must exercise the utmost vigilance and ruthlessness in arresting its progress, just as we would have to remove all counterfeit money from circulation in order to safeguard the value of our material assets. And let no one dismiss the matter as ‘just words’; words are the vehicles of thought, and thought governs most of our lives in one way or another.

As with counterfeit money or goods, we must be alert enough to detect the attempted fraud at – and preferably before – the point of sale, or else we soon find ourselves a good deal poorer. Accordingly, the aim of these notes is to sharpen this vigilance and help drive the counterfeiters and all their worthless productions out of our national life. But first we need to review the ways in which people’s thoughts, speech and behaviour can be influenced by propaganda.

Propaganda is intended to alter the way people think and feel about the society they live in and its governing values and priorities. In order to do this it resorts to the following tactics:

• Word approval – Whereby certain words or phrases are given special prominence and ‘respectability’ by their frequent usage in influential circles and the mass media. People are thus apt to adopt such usages themselves on the grounds that ‘what’s good enough for the likes of them must be alright.’ One need only observe the influence of popular media figures in promoting everyday use of certain words or catch-phrases. Note also how certain profanities once wholly unacceptable in polite company have now become commonplace in the mass media and, as a result, in everyday social intercourse.
• Word disapproval – Whereby certain words or phrases expose the user to disagreeable social reactions like personal abuse, loss of preferment and even of employment, and other forms of victimisation. The offender is put under more or less punishing pressure to ‘mind your language’ and conform; as witness the rampant ‘political correctness’ lobbies in education, publishing, the mass media and politics. Such pressures now begin at kindergarten level.
• Repetition – Given enough repetition the ‘in’ word or phrase will soon replace its predecessors, if only because people don’t like to sound ‘odd’ or behind the times.
• Euphemism – Disguising whatever is intrinsically ugly, repulsive, immoral or otherwise unacceptable behind more attractive, less offensive, or neutral labels. At the everyday level this is just a matter of simple politeness and civilised conduct; but in the hands of unscrupulous politicians and ‘social engineers’ the euphemism becomes a sinister device to deceive and indoctrinate the public into accepting things which are intrinsically repugnant or contrary to the national interest.

  Typical examples are ‘gay’ for sex pervert; ‘love-making’ for casual copulation; ‘multi-cultural’ for mongrelised; ‘under-privileged’ for parasite; ‘entrepreneur’ for swindler; ‘negotiated settlement’ for surrender; ‘subsidiarity’ for subordination; ‘freedom’ for anarchy; ‘non-judgmental’ for indiscriminate; ‘value-free’ for unprincipled.

• Censorship – May of course go well beyond mere word or phrase disapproval to suppression of certain kinds of publication and of certain writers or speakers by officialdom, academics and the media. Some forms of censorship are of course benign; for example when applied to pornography, national security and libellous material. The credentials and motivation of the censors determine whether or not censorship is benign or malignant.
• Popular appeal – Whereby the propagandist’s message is ‘packaged’ or presented in a way likely to disarm criticism. This is designed to exploit the ‘feel-good factor’ among the all-too-gullible general public, using popular entertainers and radio/TV soap-operas as vehicles for multi-racialism, feminism, homosexuality, promiscuity, federalism, etc.

  For example, Negroes and Asians are featured in numerous programmes as if they were a normal part of society. They are often depicted as highly intelligent, responsible, exemplary and ‘caring’ people, whose presence enriches our society in every way. In popular radio and TV series they are almost invariably cast as model citizens, heroes, or victims of white ‘racism,’ by programme-makers aptly described as ‘inverted missionaries.’ And if the plot will not sustain too many obvious racial anomalies, they are gratuitously inserted into background scenes (a process known among British TV cameramen as ‘blonking,’ i.e. getting Blacks ‘on camera’).

  The popular appeal element of such propaganda is therefore an artful compound of bogus philanthropy, cloying sentimentality, euphemism and superficiality; all designed to ‘help the medicine go down’ all those gullible throats. But, in particular, the ‘multi-cultural’ campaign amounts to the same thing as telling us that adding dirty water to vintage wine produces an exciting new cocktail.