The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

For those who have imbibed the postmodern hallucinogen, and have become convinced that our understanding of reality is wholly constructed through language, there is no harm in casually redefining terms – or outright lying about how such terms are generally used – if the ends justify the means. It’s the same reason governments refer to swingeing cuts to the welfare state as ‘efficiency savings’. It’s why the CIA has referred to torture as ‘enhanced interrogation’. It’s why the Ministry of State Security during the era of Soviet forced labour camps did not ‘sentence’ a person, but rather ‘imposed an administrative penalty’. In his book, Imaginary Homelands (1991), Salman Rushdie recalls hearing a US military spokesman during the Vietnam War describe a deadly bombing raid as having ‘obtained a 100 per cent mortality response’. This is the kind of rhetorical sleight of hand that Orwell warned us about, and the ‘woke’ are masters of the art.