In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Winston Smith (AKA “6079 Smith W”) was an editor in the Ministry of Truth Records Department. This employment required him to rewrite historical documents as necessary to validate Big Brother’s propaganda.
I don’t know how many people had the same job as #6079 in the novel, but our reality has a pecksniff* of “journalists” beavering away at altering the past and implementing Newspeak…
[T]he Party has an ingenious plan to break the link with the real past by introducing a language barrier. When “all real knowledge of Oldspeak [disappears] . . . the whole literature of the past will have been destroyed” (56). After a few generations, when people are no longer capable of decoding information from the past, there will no longer even be a need to censor the history that has the potential for breeding unorthodox ideas — it will be completely out of the public’s reach.
That’s why we’re told there is no such thing as biological sex, for example. And why there has been an attempt to redefine “packing the court”.
In the universe our Maim Scream Media™ imagine, Hunter Biden is a paragon of virtue, and Joe Biden never bragged about coercing the Ukraine to fire a prosector investigating Burisma, Hunter’s employer. In that universe the New York Post does not exist, so a Tweet about a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden would not require a suspension. Twitter and Facebook would not have to suppress any reference to either story, sparing the Maim Scream Media™ the trouble.
As to revisionism, when the Leftist rag Salon published a story alleging Tom Cotton was not an Army Ranger last week, Newsweek scuttled into their archives:
Newsweek Edits 2015 Story on Army Rangers to Conform to New Attack on Tom Cotton
Prior to that, Winston Smith was sighted at the Washington Post, rewriting a 2019 story:
The Washington Post Tried To Memory-Hole Kamala Harris’ Bad Joke About Inmates Begging for Food and Water
Meanwhile, as noted yesterday, “journalists” are proclaiming themselves sacred guardians of the 1st Amendment as cover to justify censorship and deplatforming. Because, you know, only “real journalists” can be trusted to convey right think.
Winston Smith was at least uncomfortable about his job. In fact, he was tortured for his temerity.
The Columbia School of Journalism has not called for that. Yet. It’ll have to start with fines.
In this phantasmal universe, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the DNC never financed a report, written by a corrupt foreign agent, leading to a multi-million dollar investigation that turned up nothing. Nor were many of her ideological foes subjected to illegal surveillance and FISA warrants obtained by trusted Federal agencies via obvious lies to a court.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton never had a private email server violating basic security protocols and ignoring Federal records requirements.
Democrats and their scribblers are not the first to inhabit such a universe. Ask Nikolai Yezhov… well you can’t, because he was disappeared.
Now you see him – now you don’t.
Yezhov oversaw Stalin’s purges as head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, when Stalin had him secretly arrested and tried, then executed. He’s the short guy (his nickname was “The Dwarf”) who is blocking a view of the water in the shot on the left.
*Pecksniff is my appropriation (from Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit character) for a group of journalists. Like a nest of vipers, a cackle of hyenas, or a wake of vultures.
An unctuous hypocrite, a person who affects benevolence or pretends to have high moral principles; (also) a person who interferes officiously in the business of others. Frequently attributive. Also (occasionally) as adjective.
Masterful
Thank you