Meaningless Words: Orwell's 80 Year Old Essay Holds Up

'Politics and the English Language' remains a quintessential piece of writing and instruction

There’s a strange liturgy to American politics now. Not liturgy in the religious sense, though it certainly taps the same instinct, but in the way people recite specific phrases with total confidence and almost no understanding. I read Peggy Noonan’s column this week, and she read Kamala Harris’s book 107 Days. She noted that Harris referred to illegal immigration as “irregular migration,” a euphemism so gently ridiculous it practically dissolves on contact. But that’s the point. It sounds softer, safer, less politically radioactive.

I see this constantly. Our public vocabulary is full of words and phrases that signal urgency, righteousness, or moral sophistication without ever requiring anyone to say something concrete. Orwell warned about this nearly eighty years ago, calling them “meaningless words”—what he said “…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

It appears in Orwell’s 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. Nearly everyone with casual knowledge of Orwell knows his novels, especially 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell was a good novelist, but he was a terrific essayist. If you have a chance, pick up a book of his essays or read them on the Orwell Foundation website. It is free.

Politics and the English Language is primarily about writing. Still, what he says goes beyond how people write and describes how words and phrases used in politics have become pointless and tedious to the extent that the words don’t have any real meaning. They merely appear to have great profundity.

Despite its age, the essay holds value even in 2025. Orwell writes:

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

“Democracy” is the critical word here because I’ve likely heard the phrase uttered in some form or another in the last ten years, eleventy-billion times. It has become entirely synonymous with Donald Trump, and for the longest time, it was all about him and the “threat” he was to “democracy.”

But since 2015, “threat to democracy” or “threat to our democracy” has come to apply to whatever political niche they choose. You can pick from a hat all of the threats: the Supreme Court, certain types of legislation, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, climate change, Fox News, the makeup of the Senate, the Electoral College, AI, elections themselves, etc. The list goes on.

It gets to a point where it doesn’t have much meaning to most people, who, we should remember, do not spend a good chunk of their time in a day, week, month, or year immersed in politics. Thirty percent of Americans cannot name all three branches of government. That’s pretty high. And while 70% can, that is basic civics, not an indicator of their proclivities as it relates to politics daily. If only 30% know what the three branches of government are, what percentage do you think know what a discharge petition is?

So when the average person does tune in—which is typically close to an election—and they’re inundated with “threat to democracy” at every turn, what impact does one think that has? Trump, after all, despite everything that went down on January 6th, 2021, the investigations, indictments, convictions, the promise to be the “retribution” (a promise kept!) for his voters, still won. He won back all the states he lost in 2020 that he won in 2016, and picked up Nevada as well, while convincing 77 million people to vote for him—three million more than voted for him in 2020, and a whopping 15 million more than in 2016.

One could say, “But Jay, Trump is a threat to democracy!” The question of whether that is true is not the point I am making. Read what Orwell said about the word “fascism.” As noted, people have chosen to apply that phrase, as Orwell said, to “something not desirable.” Don’t take my word for it. Go look up any of the examples, and you will find it. And not among the fever swamps of the far left, but from mainstream journalists, think tanks, and other institutions. Here are some examples for the Electoral College:

The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy - Jamal Bouie

The Electoral College Is a Threat to 21st Century Democracy - Aspen Institute.

The Electoral College is a ticking time bomb - William Galston for the Brookings Institute (in the opening graf, Galston writes, “It’s time that Americans face up to the danger the Electoral College poses to the integrity of their democracy. To put this threat in perspective…”)

The nationalist right, or new right, or whatever right they call themselves, does something similar. When they talk about a Republican politician they don’t like, they refer to them as a “neocon.” Here is Tyler Bowyer of TPUSA playing white knight for poor JD Vance, who he says is getting “attacked” (that’s criticism for normal people).

They merely use the term “neocon” as a pejorative. They have no idea what it actually means. Short for “neoconservative,” you could ask ten different people aligned with Bowyer politically to define neoconservative, and you’d get ten different answers—all of them wrong—with “warmonger” or “pro-war” likely being the constant thread among the responses.

They use the term to describe any Republican who holds an interventionist philosophy on foreign policy, but that doesn’t make them neoconservatives. I won’t get into all of what it means. If you want a good refresher, listen to Jonah Goldberg’s solo podcast from 2024, called The New Neocons. He goes into detail about the origin of the term, how it evolved, and essentially how it has become, as Orwell says, a term for “something I do not like.”

The ultimate goal of using particular words and phrases, as Orwell said, is an intent to deceive. When people say the Supreme Court is a “threat to democracy,” what they’re really saying is, “I don’t like the rulings the current makeup of the court is issuing; therefore, I will try to convince you that it is a ‘threat’ to turn opinion against it.” They’ll mask their displeasure by making comments about the court’s “legitimacy,” which again is based wholly on decisions they do not like. The attempt is to come across as objective, showing “concern” for what the court is doing, when their view is entirely subjective.

People agree or disagree with court decisions at all levels, all the time. However, claiming the decisions one doesn’t like as a “threat to democracy” is just bad faith, just as it is in describing the makeup of the Senate, the Electoral College, or legislation.

Take Senator Chris Murphy and the latest continuing resolution passed and signed by the president to reopen the government. His message on the spending bill during the shutdown? “None of us have an obligation to vote for a budget that funds the destruction of democracy.”

The senator should take a cue from Mr. Orwell.