Tracking Orwellian Change: New Meanings of “Deep State” and “Working Class”

August 31, 2023

When left/liberal fixations fall out of establishment favor, they’re re-christened as conservative menaces

by Matt Taibbi Racket News

Thanks to a great response last week to an article about Klaus Schwab’s creep-tastic use of the term “transparency,” I’m pressing forward with a Devil’s Dictionary-style lexicographical project, tracking multitudinous dystopian alterations to American political speech.

I absolutely want the list to be a collaboration with Racket/Substack readers, so this and future entries will feature open comments sections. I see this list working best if it also functions as a usage tracker, à la the Oxford English Dictionary. The best gift my father ever gave me was a full OED, a monstrous rack of volumes that still sits devouring space in my house, daring me to look up the earliest recorded use of pecker in the impertinent sense (“1902 FARMER & HENLEY Slang”).