To be “Orwellian” is to speak with absolute clarity. – Frank Luntz
A few days ago a source shared this image with me; it’s a portion of a report by Luntz Global, commissioned by Swanee Hunt’s “Demand Abolition” prohibitionist organization, directing Seattle “authorities” in how to mislead the public about sex work. It’s only two pages, so you might be interested in taking note of the number of “sex trafficking” shibboleths that appear in it, including “holding sex buyers accountable”, “our girls are not for sale”, “trafficking and prostitution are inextricably linked”, and “your mother, your sister, your daughter…” This much is unsurprising; I’ve written for years about Hunt’s purchase of the Seattle prosecutor’s office, and two excellent articles earlier this year went into depth about the extent of this depraved and illegal subversion of the so-called justice system. But what many of you may find interesting is the identity of the spin doctor at work here: Luntz Global is the company founded by Frank Luntz, best known for his work shaping the language, talking points and propaganda for the US Republican Party, the UK Conservative Party, and pro-Israeli groups. Luntz was a pivotal figure in the ’90s political campaigns of Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot and Newt Gingrich; he currently contracts for Fox News; he is the creator of the phrases “death tax”, “climate change” (to replace the more severe “global warming”), “energy exploration” (i.e. oil drilling), and many others; he is the man who made the jingoistic term “traitors” acceptable in US political speech again. His entire philosophy of political speech is that politicians should eschew appeals to reason or intellect and instead concentrate on arousing strong emotions. This is the man whom “feminist” Swanee Hunt hired to shape the anti-whore language of the recipients of her “progressive” campaign to deny the agency of adult women and unleash the violence of the fascist police state on peaceful people engaged in consensual and mutually-beneficial transactions. But please, tell me again about “wings” and how the two US political parties are so distinctly different.
I recall reading that article in The Intercept about the King County Prosecutor’s office being on the take from Texas oil heiress Swanee Hunt. Now we can add Frank Luntz to the list of moral panic propagandists.
The irony of it all. The District Attorney of the so-called deeply blue State of Washington selling influence over his office to a Texas oil heiress. It’s the antithesis of what political liberals on the West Coast claimed to be against during the charlatan Bush administration.
I spent my early life working in corrupt Sub-Sahara Africa and Central America. There it’s common for prosecutors and police to sell their services to the highest bidder to settle scores against their enemies. That it’s now OK to do the same in King County is more proof that our criminal code is a joke. It’s become nothing more than a tool for the rich. How are we now different than the banana republic’s we once looked down on at as corrupt because their government institutions were all for sale to the rich and connected?
This was the philosophy, if that’s the word, behind the appeals of the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum in the UK a couple of years ago. I don’t remember who was responsible for spreading the idea. Doesn’t Bannon have the same idea?
Whatever, an appeal to emotion rather than to reason seems to be remarkably effective today; perhaps, we would have called it ‘rhetoric’ in the past. Today, though, people are supposed to be ‘time-poor’ and simplistic messages, populist messages, do seem to be the ones that get through.
I found those sound-bites particularly disturbing;
>We must put an end to sex-buying.
What people do with their time and their money in private is none of your business.
>Focus on those who don’t have a choice – everyone deserves real opportunities.
Eliminating the choice to pay for sex doesn’t expand choice or offer opportunities.
>No buyers, no business.
Trade helps both parties.
>Prostitution is in YOUR neighborhood – and mine.
Does it really bother you that someone else is having fun?
>We stand for the simple truth that our girls are not for sale.
Your girls? Are they your slaves?
>Trafficking and prostitution are inextricably linked.
Garment manufacture is more “inextricably” linked to trafficking than prostitution is.
Don’t see you trying to arrest people buying shirts.
>There is no shame in sex – but there IS shame in coercing women and children into selling their bodies for it.
You have no shame in coercing them not to.
>No one deserves to be bought.
Except for the Seattle prosecutor’s office. And any other politicians you want to buy.
>Your mother, your sister, your daughter … they deserve better.
Your mother, your sister, your daughter … they deserve better, but they’re stuck with you.
>Prostitution doesn’t just hurt the victim. It hurts the buyer – and their families and society at large.
Sounds more like it hurts your sensibilities.
How did Luntz reinterpret “Orwellian” to mean speak/write with “absolute clarity”?
One of Orwell’s most famous essays is “Politics and the English Language” where he criticizes the use of obfuscation in political writing to mislead and even justify atrocities. Luntz simplified this even further by proclaiming that Orwell was calling for more clear and direct use of verbiage — then proceeds to use the same type of political language that Orwell himself decries.
No surprise at all that Hunt chose to rely on his expertise in propaganda. When you’re unable to support your views with facts — especially when the facts show you’re doing more harm than good — just twist things around and appeal to emotions.
Of course, she was doing that long before she teamed up with Luntz. She considers offering money to public officials if they will do her bidding as a kind of “grant” by her group. Funny, but I always thought that the word for this activity was bribery.
“How did Luntz reinterpret “Orwellian” to mean speak/write with ‘absolute clarity’?”
That statement from Luntz is closer to Goebbels definition of propaganda than Orwell’s, who as you stated correctly viewed obfuscation as the primary tool of effective propaganda.
Like the King County prosecutor that continually said “we cannot arrest our way out of this problem” while proceeding throw every police resource he had available at this moral panic in an attempt to arrest his way out his own manufactured problem. This often happened to the determent of real child exploitation cases the Prosecutor office declined to follow up on, perhaps due to a a chronic lack of resources once they declared war on consensual adult sex.
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/crime/article/Jury-Ex-SPD-sergeant-guilty-raping-children-Amador-12992034.php
Saying that you’re arresting adults to save vulnerable women, while showing callous disregard for pursuing cases against violent men where real women feel they have been raped and sexually exploited.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/at-least-50-seattle-sex-child-abuse-cases-stalled-for-years-on-detectives-desk/
This is right out of 1984’s “the ministry of war is the ministry of peace” and “the future is always certain, but the past is always changing.”
[…] sex worker and blogger Maggie McNeill devoted a recent post on her site The Honest Courtesan to an intriguing document: two pages purportedly culled from a report prepared for Demand […]
Eloquently reasoned … thank you for shining the light into the pigsty. It needs cleaning out.
[…] trabajadora sexual y bloguera con sede en Seattle Maggie McNeill dedicó una publicación reciente en su sitio The Honest Courtesan a un documento intrigante: dos páginas supuestamente extraídas de un informe preparado para […]