Thought Criminals of the World, Unite!

Expressing Yourself in an Orwellian World

Here is another “Best of” from my regular Substack, “I Protest.” If you don’t already, please go there and subscribe, so you can read my regular writings:

https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/

The great George Orwell defined Thought Crime as “unorthodox political thinking that contradicts the tenants of the ruling political party.” In his novel 1984, there are Thought Police to enforce this intellectual rigidity. As teenagers, many of us were required to read 1984 in high school. Apparently we didn’t learn anything from it.

Although I have been called “dangerous,” and “racist,” and “anti-Semitic,” and “communist,” I am essentially a Thought Criminal. With almost everything I write, I am challenging the established narrative about something. I ask questions. Our leaders don’t like anyone questioning them. And the general public doesn’t like questions much, either. I don’t know how many people I’ve met in my life who told me, “You ask too many questions.” Some girl wrote that in my yearbook. And you’ll find that most people training you on the job get exasperated pretty quickly. “You mean you don’t get it yet?” There is a real human antipathy towards explanation.

As the false opposition leader Goldstein, whom I have compared to Donald Trump many times, explained in 1984: “Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.” That’s us; protecting the stupidity.

Thought Crime didn’t happen spontaneously. First there was political correctness. Originating as a regular comedy skit on Saturday Night Live, with Phil Hartman playing a boob that keeps saying “inappropriate” things, the term political correctness rapidly made its way into our common language. State controlled media began referring to it. Comedian Bill Maher starred on the Politically Incorrect talk show, which served to reinforce political correctness into the public consciousness. Maher and his slew of celebrities invariably defended Bill Clinton against every scandalous accusation. It was not a show that was receptive to any “conspiracy theory.”

Then we started hearing the term “hate crime,” along with “hate speech,” being bandied about by deluded Leftists in the political and entertainment worlds. I think I was alone in instantly rejecting this absurd term, and recognizing it for what it was; the precursor to “Thought Crime.” They’ve refined it a bit now, using “cancel” to describe what is essentially the creation of an Unperson, to use another Orwellian term. Most recently, both “disinformation” and “misinformation” have been utilized by government authorities, to describe Thought Crimes.

Even in the “awake” world, there are levels of awareness. Many times, people have said, “You can’t mean that,” or “You aren’t suggesting,” or “That’s going too far!” in response to one of my radical pronouncements. The Sheeple are more blunt. They simply label your Thought Crime as “racist,” or perhaps “treasonous.” They might suggest you are a “domestic terrorist.” And in today’s world, if you share your “criminal” thoughts on social media, or with the wrong person at work, you may be instantly “cancelled.” In other words, unemployed.

Now, just who determines what is a controversial opinion versus “disinformation,” or “hate speech,” is the important point to consider. If it were just our family and friends, who had no power to control our future prospects, then it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Sticks and stones, and all that. But the ones who are deciding have the power to “cancel” us for our thoughts. And there are increasing indications that they don’t want to stop at this level of “cancel culture.” They would very much like to prosecute Thought Criminals. For no other “crime” than their beliefs. You’d have as much justification in prosecuting people for the films they watch, or the music they like.

I don’t know what level of control really existed over the citizens of Nazi Germany, or in the Soviet Union, or in Mao’s China. But it couldn’t have been worse than what is happening in present-day, America 2.0. People have been “cancelled” for wearing a MAGA hat. They’ve lost their jobs for sharing views which used to be widespread in this country. Doctors have been pressured into telling medical students that “people,” and not just women, can get pregnant. This pressure is coming from every government agency, and big corporation, and big universities, and the entire entertainment world. The “cancel culture” now is the culture.

Like vampires need blood, the “Woke” social justice warriors who run the “cancel culture” need victims. They need Thought Criminals. So they are always in search of them. If I still had a job in the outside working world, you can bet I would have been “cancelled” long ago, for my writings on Substack alone. Writings like mine offend some people, and the “cancel culture” depends on people being offended. Virtue Signalers live not only to, of course, virtue signal to each other, but to be “offended” on a constant basis, and then triggered to punish the “offending” party.

“Vengeance is mine,” said the Lord, but the social justice warriors want vengeance, and need it daily. Our courts are now becoming filled with Thought Criminals, who have “offended” the “cancel culture” to such an extent that they are being prosecuted for doing so. Political prosecutions are all the rage now. Watch the laughable show trials of Alex Jones, which resemble traditional western judicial proceedings as much as the trial of the Knave of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. We are indeed almost at the level of the Queen of Hearts declaring, “Sentence first, verdict afterwards.”

The verdict in these political prosecutions is preordained. Alex Jones, regardless of whether he was a willing participant in the charade, wasn’t allowed to plead not guilty. And when a jury awarded a group of Sandy Hook parents an unfathomable $2.75 trillion in damages recently, our “legal” system went far beyond any kind of nonsense dreamed up by Lewis Carroll, or any kind of satire our best comedic minds have ever produced. Just for comparison, the big tobacco companies paid $206 billion in general damages against the healthcare system, and BP paid $20 billion for causing the Gulf Oil spill, the greatest ecological disaster in modern history.

The award to these Sandy Hook families is by far the largest ever given in the history of lawsuits. This would be unreasonable enough, if Alex Jones had murdered children himself. But to state that his thoughts on the event, his speculation, was a greater crime than the deaths caused by Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder, for instance, sends a clear message as to the priorities of the system. What is important in America 2.0 are thoughts. Are you questioning the systemic corruption? Ironically, all the George Soros-funded prosecutors across the country are releasing violent criminals without bail. They are far more interested in punishing Thought Criminals.

So if you bust up a McDonald’s with a hatchet, as one man with a long criminal history recently did, you are released without bail in less than a day. And then free to commit more crimes, as that guy predictably did. And get released again without bail. If you’re an illegal immigrant, you can commit crime after crime, and still not be deported. Complaining about that is what brought the original “racist” label on Donald Trump. Meanwhile, those who committed no violent acts on January 6 remain in prison for almost two years, denied all due process, and face draconian sentences. The only crime they want to stop is Thought Crime.

When it is “controversial” to say that all lives matter, you know we’ve reached a certain level of tyranny. But when it’s potentially criminal to say something as self- evident as that, then we’ve gone to new levels, perhaps never broached before in the history of civilization. I think some people have been “cancelled” for posting “All Lives Matter” on social media. So, whoever is “offended” by such an obvious truth, and wants to punish someone for saying it, clearly doesn’t think all lives do matter. Which ones don’t? And why does seemingly everyone in a position of great authority now hold such a poisonous philosophy?

What constitutes “hate speech?” Is it like “obscenity,” which some old Supreme Court justice once admitted he couldn’t define, but “I know it when I see it?” So I guess the “Woke” authoritarians in charge now can’t define “hate speech” or “disinformation,” but know it when they see it or hear it. That’s not exactly the traditional concept of law, but we’re way beyond those quaint traditions now. “Mandates” have no basis in law, either. It’s all about feelings, baby! How does what he said make you feel? Shouldn’t he be punished for believing such a thing? That’s the essence of Identity Politics, the triumph of emotion over reason.

We have no more politics now outside of Identity Politics. And once the public accepted the concept of political correctness, this was inevitable. After all, if there is political correctness, there must be political incorrectness as well. How do you have open political discourse if it’s already been established what is “correct” and what isn’t? How do you debate? They have demonized “conspiracy theories,” which they use to label any criticism of their corrupt authority. And it’s a short leap from “conspiracy theorist” to “domestic terrorist.” Ask the current Justice Department about that.

Much as the Soviets sent lots of dissenters to Siberia, under the general diagnosis of mental illness, the “Woke” authoritarians basically blame a mental illness for our dissent. They have taken a page from the Holocaust “denier” playbook, whereby people all over world have been thrown into prison for “denying” some aspect of that particular part of history. Now, they intersperse “denier” into their vernacular, as a synonym for their more common smears. Basically, Thought Criminals are “in denial” of the goodness of the state, and the honesty of those who lead it.

The original critics of the Warren Commission, 9/11 “Truthers,” the Obama “Birthers,” COVID “deniers,” Election “deniers,” Science “deniers,” the list is endless. If you dispute an important official narrative, you will be given one of these demeaning labels. At best. At worst, you will become unemployable and perhaps even wind up in one of our terrifying “Woke” courtrooms. With the kind of judge that Alex Jones, or Roger Stone, had. You might as well be Batman on trial, with the Joker presiding as judge. The Alex Jones show trials opened the door to all of this. Already, Kanye West is being sued for $250 million by George Floyd’s family.

So you can see the progression here. First, they started “cancelling” people for their off the job opinions. In other words, fired them. Now they are prosecuting them, and using families in the process. As I’ve noted, will we see the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 launch lawsuits against “Truthers” who “harassed” them with their “misinformation?” Maybe they can enlist Caroline Kennedy on behalf of the Kennedy family. After all, critics of the official version of the assassination have “harassed” them for decades by disputing the Official State Truth. There is a very fine line between investigation and “harassment.” But the precedent has been set.

As I’ve said many times, you either believe in free speech or you don’t. Period. No exceptions. There have been laws on the books for a very long time, protecting people from slander. It isn’t “slander” to dispute what your government is saying. It isn’t “misinformation” to have a different opinion. And “hate speech” is a concept that negates free speech. Hate is a human emotion, and in the eye of the beholder. Don’t call us “terrorists” or “racists” or “White Supremacists” or “Conspiracy Theorists.” You are the “deniers,” by denying us basic civil liberties. Call us what we are to you- Thought Criminals. Go full Orwell.