Orwell was wrong: Word policing can’t end racism or sexism

The dictators in 1984 believe they can control people by controlling the words they use. In the novel, whether they are right is irrelevant — they believe it, so they force people to speak in approved ways. It is a sign of tyranny. If you doubt that, consider this:

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for Democratic Socialism as I understand it.” —George Orwell

Authoritarians on the right and left take two wrong lessons from 1984: they think policing language works, and they think they should police language to win.

1984 is partially inspired by the theory of linguistic relativity, aka the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or Whorfianism. The first Whorfians believed language shapes us. Their theory was discredited around the time 1984 was published. A related theory arose that’s called weak Whorfianism to distinguish it from the earlier strong Whorfianism. Weak Whorfians believe language slightly influences us. It recognizes that we can be influenced—ad agencies and propagandists would be out of work if that wasn’t true—but the influences are weak. If that wasn’t so, suffragists would not be known today by the form of their name that was meant as an insult, suffragists.

Authoritarian identitarians who demand that people use their preferred terms for race and gender are strong Whorfians. They should have seen the failure of using words to shape reality in…