As I was sitting in the Leadership Institute’s communications training this past weekend, listening to Ron Nehring’s presentation on “Disarming the Left’s New Rhetoric of State Control,” I couldn’t help but think of George Orwell’s 1984.
In Orwell’s classic, the Party didn’t just police actions; it policed words. It invented “Newspeak,” a language designed to make it impossible to think outside the regime’s narrative. If you couldn’t say “freedom,” you couldn’t demand it. If you couldn’t define “truth,” you couldn’t defend it.
Sound familiar?
Today’s Left may not run a dystopian superstate yet, but they’re playing the same linguistic games. Illegal immigrants are magically rebranded as “undocumented.” Rioters become “protesters.” Prostitution is softened into “sex work.” It’s not compassion. It’s not precision. It’s propaganda.
And like Orwell’s Newspeak, it’s designed to make dissent unthinkable.
Nehring’s warning landed hard in that training room:
“Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you.”
The Left is framing us every single day, and if we don’t start fighting back, we’re going to wake up in a world where truth itself has been redefined.
The Left’s Newspeak in Action
As I listened, it struck me just how deliberate all of this is. These aren’t random word choices. They’re strategic weapons.
- Vocabulary laundering: “Homeless” becomes “unhoused,” shifting the blame to “the system” instead of personal decisions. Just like Newspeak, the word hides the truth.
- Constraining the argument: Call every problem “systemic injustice,” so the only possible solution is more government. If crime is “inequality” and failure is “racism,” the individual is absolved, and the state must expand.
- Euphemisms and excuses: Shoplifting gets rebranded as “survival.” Addiction becomes a “disease.” Teen pregnancy is “early parenthood.” Each change erases accountability and makes dependency permanent.
- Moral flattening: In 1984, the Party declared “war is peace.” Today, the Left declares accountability “oppression.” Right and wrong collapse into a gray fog where anything can be excused.
I remember thinking as Nehring went through these examples: this is Orwell, playing out in real time. The Party had its Ministry of Truth. The Left has its wordsmiths in academia, corporate PR departments, and media outlets. The effect is the same — bend reality until people stop questioning it.
The Conservative Counter-Strategy
The good news is, Nehring didn’t just diagnose the disease of modern Newspeak. He handed conservatives a battle plan. And sitting there, I realized this isn’t just for candidates or consultants.
This is for all of us.
Reclaim the Language
Stop repeating their sanitized words. Illegal is illegal. Riots are riots. Equity? That’s the government picking winners and losers.
When they say “undocumented,” say: “No, that means they broke the law.” When they say “justice-involved individual,” call it what it is: “That’s a criminal.”
Orwell showed us what happens when the regime defines reality. Our job is to call things by their true names.
Lead With Values, Not Policy Wonkery
One of my biggest takeaways: people don’t rally around spreadsheets. They rally around freedom, fairness, family, and safety. Anchor arguments there.
- “Hard work should be rewarded, not punished.”
- “No family should have to choose between heating their home and paying the rent.”
- “Every child deserves a safe classroom, not excuses for chaos.”
In 1984, the Party tried to erase even the concept of truth. By leading with values, we remind people that truth still exists, and it still matters.
Pair Criticism With Solutions
It’s not enough to say “that policy won’t work.” We have to show what will.
The Left says addiction is a disease. Don’t just scoff. Say: “We don’t help addicts by pretending it’s someone else’s fault. We help them with real, tough help and accountability.”
That kind of framing doesn’t just resist their language games; it inoculates us against the tired claim that Republicans just complain without fixing anything.
Tell Stories, Not Systems
I’ll admit, this one hit me personally. The Left hides behind jargon like “systemic inequality.” But real people don’t live in systems. They live in neighborhoods and families.
Tell the story of the restaurant owner forced to close, while others just feet away got special exemptions. The community became safer when criminals were finally held accountable. The guy from South Central L.A. who walked away from gang life and worked his way out of poverty through grit, not handouts.
Each shows the kind of fairness, responsibility, and opportunity conservatives fight to preserve.
Orwell showed us how systems swallow individuality. Conservatives win by putting individuals back at the center.
Use Humor to Puncture the Absurd
One of the best tips from the presentation: satire works.
If criminals are “justice-involved individuals,” burglars must be “unwanted houseguests.”
In 1984, humor was outlawed because satire is dangerous to regimes built on lies. It’s just as dangerous to the Left’s word games today.
Why Conservatives Must Respond
This isn’t just strategy for politicians on a debate stage. It’s strategy for every conservative.
At the dinner table. At the school board meeting. On Facebook. At the office water cooler. Every time you refuse to repeat the Left’s euphemisms, every time you replace their manipulation with truth, you’re not just debating — you’re resisting.
The Left counts on conservatives shrugging off “semantics.” But semantics shape culture. Culture shapes law. And law shapes the future our kids will inherit.
If the Left controls the dictionary, it controls the destiny of this country.
That’s why Nehring’s warning echoes Orwell’s prophecy. The Party in 1984 reduced language until freedom itself became unspeakable. The Left is trying the same trick here, one word at a time.
So don’t just argue policy. Frame it. Don’t just reject their ideas. Replace their words with truth. Don’t just complain. Offer better answers anchored in values.
The battle is bigger than the next election. It’s about whether America remains a nation of responsibility, liberty, and opportunity or slides into a culture of dependency, victimhood, and permanent state control.
Orwell showed us the endgame: a world where truth is whatever the Party says it is. Where “2 + 2 = 5” and questioning it makes you a criminal.
The Left hasn’t built a Ministry of Truth yet, but their word games are leading us down that dark road.
And the only way to stop it is to fight back. With courage, with clarity, and with words that actually mean what they say. Because once Americans see through the Left’s Newspeak, their house of cards collapses.
Truth is powerful — but only if we dare to speak it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member