Time to raise a glass to Czech MEP Vladimír Železny.
In a recent interview on Radio Prague, he railed against the use (and mis-use) of language at the European Commission. He picked out the word ’sustainable’ as a particular example of meaningless Orwellian jargon:
“It was the genius of [George] Orwell who taught us a lesson that the totalitarian regime starts with a misuse of language. It’s a loss of meaning, of words. All this is very dangerous, and we know this from our very own experience. We were not a democracy – we were ‘people’s democracy’ under the communist regime, which was stupid because ‘people’s democracy’ means ‘democratic democracy’.
Such strange words improve, as jewels, some sensitive expressions, like ’sustainable’. Everything is sustainable in the European Union, or it should be. The misuse of such words is the first step towards totalitarian thinking. That’s why I tried to give a warning that this misuse will change our sensitivity to the creation of totalitarian thinking.”
The reference to totalitarian regimes might be a bit strong, but he’s certainly got a point about overusing particular words to the extent they lose their meaning.
