English language cops a Woke battering
THE international aid agency Oxfam has just released its Language Inclusive Guide, which is further evidence, if more was needed, on how Woke ideology is destroying common sense and enforcing an Orwellian form of group think and mind control.
The guide argues: “Choices in language can empower us to reframe issues, rewrite tired stories, challenge problematic ideas and build a radically better future based on survivor-centred, intersectional, antiracist and feminist vision of equality”.
Ignored is instead of directing time and resources producing a nonsensical guide characterised by politically correct jargon and neoMarxist inspired theory, those responsible should have focused on relieving suffering and poverty in underdeveloped nations.
As Orwell argues, if you can control language you can control how people think and interact and the centrality of language explains why cultural-left activists are so intent on subverting and altering the meaning of words to suit their radical ideology.
The Oxfam guide argues language “has the power to reinforce or deconstruct systems of power that maintain poverty, inequality and suffering” and condemns English as “the language of a colonising nation” guilty of enforcing “Anglosupremacy”. The guide characterises the West as guilty of enforcing “white supremacy” and “white privilege”.
Ignored are the billions of dollars every year Western governments and aid agencies give to poorer, less developed countries and the work started since the end of the Second World War to improve health, education, food production and eradicate disease.
Also ignored in the guide is any awareness or recognition that much of the suffering and disadvantage experienced by people in the Third World is the result of inter-tribal warfare and the corruption and crimes committed by home-grown, despotic leaders.
While many of the examples in the guide are now commonplace, like replacing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ with ‘person’ and using ‘chairperson’ instead of ‘chairman’, other examples demonstrate we have gone down the rabbit hole.
One of the most controversial examples of Woke language use relates to radical gender and sexuality theory.
Instead of being biologically determined, where the overwhelming majority of babies are born male or female, the guide argues gender and sexuality are social constructs and the correct expressions to use are ‘AFAB’ (assigned female at birth) and ‘AMAB’ (assigned male at birth).
If the Oxfam Language Inclusive Guide was the only example of the way words are being subverted to enforce cultural-left group think and mind control, then it could be dismissed as the oddity it is.
The reality, though, is that such is the power and influence of Wokeness that it now permeates our schools, universities, government departments and the media.