May-June 2001:
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Conference on Organized Resistance
Star Wars Opponents Gather
East Timor Seeks Justice
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Activist Editorial
Nonviolencespeak

The purpose of Newspeak was . . . to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought . . . should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
              —George Orwell, 1984

t’s only partly true that in the absence of the word, the thought is unthinkable, else we would have neither wheels nor democracies. Yet the converse is wholly true: The more people see a word, the more credence they give the thought behind it, even when they believe they know better.

For example, when “mankind” was a synonym for “humanity” (as it continues to be, in many circles), people did believe, in their deepest hearts, that men were more human than women. (“Surely not!” you say. But then why “doctors” [male] and “lady doctors,” “poets” and “poetesses”—why, for that matter, “men” and “wives”?) When the language of a racially polarized culture equates evil and darkness, how can it have no impact on what Black and white people perceive about people of color? And if we say that a vital or energetic person past 50 is youthful, doesn’t it suggest that vitality and energy are rare among the old?

At the Nonviolent Activist, we believe that the word can be parent to the thought and grandparent to the act. And like the government of Orwell’s Oceania, we want to live in a world where some thoughts are unthinkable—with the difference that what’s on our hit list is pretty much the opposite of Newspeak’s: We’d like “War is Peace,” for example, to be unthinkable, and “revolution” to be at the top of everyone’s vocaulary.

But we do believe that part of the Nonviolent Activist’s mission is to help bring about a society in which no one can imagine that a difference in gender or race is a difference in humanity, or that age and vitality are incompatible. So there are words this magazine doesn’t use and others that it doesn’t use in certain contexts, and when people write articles using them, we edit them out and substitute less loaded ones. Call us censors, or cheer us on; either way, we thought you might like to know why the magazine you read has the vocabulary it does.

On race: We don’t use “dark” as a synonym for “bad,” or “dire,” or “grim.” And you may have noticed that when we describe an African-American as “Black,” Black has an initial capital, just as African-American, Italian, and Jewish do. (We don’t capitalize it when referring to black Africans.)

And speaking of “Jewish,”we usually describe the conflict in Israel/Palestine as being between Israelis and Palestinians, not Jews and Arabs

On gender: No -man or -ess endings in this magazine. Never ever. No policemen, mailmen, firemen or fishermen appear on these pages, nor do actresses, waitresses, or poetesses. We don’t characterize gender as essential. We also don’t use “seminal” to mean “crucial,” or “groundbreaking,” or “fertile.” (Did you know that in the Middle Ages scientists thought that an ovum was more or less inert matter, and that the life force came from sperm? Some feminists have argued for creativity as feminine, deriving from a mother principle; we compromise and keep it genderless.)

Then there are a few things specific to nonviolent activism, like “nonviolence” and “antiwar.” The usage gurus are split on these, but the Associated Press Style Book, which we follow, hyphenates them. We don’t, because we think nonviolence is not just the negation of violence, it’s an affirmative force in the world. We talk about “military spending,” not “defense spending,” although we reluctantly write about the budget of the Dept. of Defense, where Newspeak is alive and well.

Odds and ends: Highly energetic people are energetic at any age; they don’t become “youthful” if they stay that way past 50. “Citizen” isn’t a synonym for “person” or “activist”; many activists aren’t citizens. The United States isn’t contiguous with America; when something comes from the United States we call it a “U.S.” thing, not an “American” thing. Finally, we don’t capitalize “president” or “administration” when writing about the federal government because we don’t want to give them that much respect; some mainstream institutions have reached the same conclusion, but for different reasons.

That’s some of our list. What’s on yours?

Note: Publications Committee member David McReynolds dissented from this editorial.