“Alternative Facts” is Newspeak

Kellyanne Conway’s “altern­at­ive facts” is Newspeak.

The Orwellian Newspeak term “altern­at­ive facts” was coined by US President Donald Trump’s coun­sel­lor Kellyanne Conway. She was attempt­ing to explain why a lie was­n’t a lie when told by the Trump administration.

But it was a lie.
A große Lüge.

Here we go:

“Alternative Facts” is Newspeak

In his fam­ous nov­el 1984, George Orwell described a new lan­guage favoured by the min­ions of total­it­ari­an powers.

Orwell named it Newspeak.

“Newspeak is the fic­tion­al lan­guage of Oceania, a total­it­ari­an super­state that is the set­ting of the 1949 dysto­pi­an nov­el Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. In the nov­el, the Party cre­ated Newspeak  to meet the ideo­lo­gic­al require­ments of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania. Newspeak is a con­trolled lan­guage of sim­pli­fied gram­mar and restric­ted vocab­u­lary designed to lim­it the indi­vidu­al’s abil­ity to think and artic­u­late “sub­vers­ive” con­cepts such as per­son­al iden­tity, self-expres­sion and free will. Such con­cepts are crim­in­al­ized as thoughtcrime since they con­tra­dict the pre­vail­ing Ingsoc ortho­doxy.“
Source: Wikipedia ¹Newspeak. (2023, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​N​e​w​s​p​eak

The pur­pose of Newspeak is to restrict thought, con­trol per­cep­tion, and obscure reality. 

Here are three real-life examples of Orwellian terms:

These are mod­ern-day examples of how lan­guage is weapon­ised to con­trol nar­rat­ives, min­im­ise dis­sent, and obscure real­ity — pre­cisely as Orwell warned in 1984.

Kellyanne Conway’s PR Legacy

The term “altern­at­ive facts” was coined by Kellyanne Conway, coun­sel­lor dur­ing US President Donald Trump’s first term.

Anyone can utter a stu­pid phrase in pub­lic, espe­cially under pres­sure from tough report­ers. However, Conway was no stranger to con­tro­ver­sial statements.

“After Trump’s inaug­ur­a­tion, Conway was embroiled in a series of con­tro­ver­sies: using the phrase “altern­at­ive facts” to describe fic­ti­tious and dis­proven attend­ance num­bers for Trump’s inaug­ur­a­tion; speak­ing mul­tiple times of a “Bowling Green mas­sacre” that nev­er occurred; and claim­ing that Michael Flynn had the full con­fid­ence of the pres­id­ent hours before he was dis­missed. Members of Congress from both parties called for an invest­ig­a­tion of an appar­ent eth­ics viol­a­tion after she pub­licly endorsed com­mer­cial products asso­ci­ated with the pres­id­ent’s daugh­ter, Ivanka Trump. In June 2019, the US Office of Special Counsel recom­men­ded that Conway be fired for “unpre­ced­en­ted” mul­tiple viol­a­tions of the Hatch Act of 1939.“
Source: Wikipedia ²Kellyanne Conway. (2023, December 14). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​K​e​l​l​y​a​n​n​e​_​C​o​n​way

The US pres­id­ency under Donald Trump’s first term made its mark in mul­tiple ways. Oxford Dictionaries even named “post-truth” Word of the Year in 2016.

“If you use his­tory and philo­sophy as a guide, it’s easy to see par­al­lels between Trump’s words and those of the most reviled fas­cists in his­tory. That scares me and should scare you too,” says Yale University philo­sophy pro­fess­or Jason Stanley.

“Alternative facts” is just as “fake news” a dan­ger­ous phrase. Thanks to Conway, we can now add anoth­er Newspeak concept to our post­mod­ern vocabulary.

It does­n’t mat­ter if someone tries to shut down the oppos­i­tion by scream­ing “fake news” or “words are viol­ence.” They’re extrem­ist battle cries of totalitarians.

Learn more: “Alternative Facts” is Newspeak

Hostile Media Effect Theory

Fake news! Alternative facts! Do you think that the news media is biased against your beliefs? 

Well, they might be.
Or… they might not.

Researchers have found that indi­vidu­als tend to see the news media as biased against them — even when it’s not:

“The hos­tile media effect […] is a per­cep­tu­al the­ory of mass com­mu­nic­a­tion that refers to the tend­ency for indi­vidu­als with a strong preex­ist­ing atti­tude on an issue to per­ceive media cov­er­age as biased against their side and in favour of their ant­ag­on­ists’ point of view.”
Source: Wikipedia ³Hostile media effect. (2022, October 25). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​H​o​s​t​i​l​e​_​m​e​d​i​a​_​e​f​f​ect

Are we para­noid? Do we see bias in the news media that isn’t there? In short: Yes.

The hos­tile media effect does­n’t imply that the media is nev­er biased. Still, sci­ence shows that oppos­ing groups often regard the same art­icles as against them and favour their opponents.

The exist­ence of the hos­tile media effect is sci­en­tific­ally well-estab­lished, but we still don’t know pre­cisely why it persists:

“The hos­tile media per­cep­tion, the tend­ency for par­tis­ans to judge mass media cov­er­age as unfa­vor­able to their own point of view, has been vividly demon­strated but not well explained. This con­trast bias is intriguing because it appears to con­tra­dict a robust lit­er­at­ure on assim­il­a­tion biases — the tend­ency to find inform­a­tion more sup­port­ive, rather than more opposed, to one’s own pos­i­tion. […] con­tent eval­u­ations based on per­ceived influ­ence on one­self vs influ­ence on a broad­er audi­ence sug­ges­ted that the hos­tile media per­cep­tion may be explained by per­ceived reach of the inform­a­tion source.”
Source: Journal of Communication ⁴Gunther, A.C. and Schmitt, K. (2004), Mapping Boundaries of the Hostile Media Effect. Journal of Communication, 54: 55 – 70.

Research sug­gests that the primary driver could be fear of oppon­ents gain­ing in strength, and the hos­tile media effect could be seen as a psy­cho­lo­gic­al defence mechanism.

Learn more: The Hostile Media Effect

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