In his great essay “Politics and the English Language,” first published in 1946, George Orwell observed, “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’ ”
I leave it to readers to decide whether certain other ‘isms’ are, as used today, similarly devoid of meaning, or worse, subject to the rule of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Alice responds, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” But Humpty Dumpty will have none of it, as he replies dismissively, “The question is which is to be master — that’s all.”
Truth has a way of getting lost in the quest for power.
