Reply #1: Doublethink: "Every major event since Bush's appointment by the supreme court [View All]

[Hannah Bell]

was presented to the public on the basis of doublethink."

The full definition of doublethink is:

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

"Virtually every major event since that time was presented to the public on the basis of doublethink."


The article gives the example of the "weapons of mass destruction" that were the basis for the invasion of iraq.

Rather soon after the invasion, the media acknowledged, more or less, that there were no such weapons. "But this was presented as though devoid of meaning or consequence...a matter of 'flawed intelligence'".

"Acknowledging the non-existence of WMD while defending the war" = doublethink, since if the stated reason for the war is false, the war itself can't be justified.

"One can hold both beliefs simultaneously only by juggling them—momentarily banishing one belief to oblivion while discussing the other."