The Oct. 16 Bulletin carried an Associated Press piece by one Manuel Valdes about immigrants from Latin America, referring to them as “indigenous peoples.” The adjective indigenous was employed 10 times in 9 1/2 column inches of type.

This term is newspeak for illegal aliens.

It sounds much better, perhaps even dignified, a nomenclature for a special class. But it is not only deceitfully Orwellian, it is also absurd.

George Orwell, once inclined to be a communist until he figured out that Stalin’s Soviet regime was actually fascist, a terror apparatus just like those of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, told us about such dictators’ tools — newspeak, double speak, doublethink, and thought crime — in his novel 1984. He was warning us. His cautionary tale has been printed in more languages than any other novel.

Usually, you did not worry about reading such drivel in newspapers. Editors would excise such humbug, as weeds from a golf course, or at the very least put quotes around it with attribution.

One such editor would always be the wire editor, a nameless hero who would intercept nonsense flowing from some zealot with a hidden prejudice or bias working for such as The Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times or LA Times-Washington Post news services.

Perhaps it is futile to worry about the diligence of wire editors; perhaps there are no more wire editors, none left to weed out the knee-jerk vocabulary.

You needn’t go along with it. Reject newspeak. Commit thought crime.

Jack Daniels

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