At Free Speech Backlash we aim to give readers clear and concise analysis. That requires clear and concise English. Readers might not always agree with an opinion, but they should be able to understand it. George Orwell’s basic rules (”Politics and the English Language”) on writing English still apply:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Mark Twain had good advice on writing sentences: “At times he may indulge himself with a long one, but he will make sure that there are no folds in it, no vagueness, no parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole”.
Paragraphs are essential to clear writing. They are units of thought, not length. Long paragraphs can confuse the reader. Paragraphs must be homogenous in subject matter and sequential in treatment. Use the language of everyday speech, not that of pedants, politicians, policemen, bureaucrats, lawyers or the woke and politically correct.
Further suggestions follow. If you disagree with any, or have any suggestions of your own, please let us know.
- Don’t be arrogant or dismissive of those that disagree with you. They are unlikely to be mad or bad.
- Gender. Forget the woke and frenzied feminists. Gender is grammatical and applied to words not people. If someone is female that is her sex, not gender. Dismiss the transgender distortion of science, biology and commonsense for the lunacy it is.
- Man and he can be used to represent both sexes. This comes from Old English. in which man meant human, or person. Male was were, still existing in werewolf and female wif, still used in this way in Northeast England and in terms like fishwife. A man was wereman and a woman was wifman.
- Unless an abbreviation is as well-known as UK, NATO, USA, CIA or BBC, write it out in full on its first appearance eg. Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
- If an abbreviation can’t be pronounced use the definitive article. If it can be there is there is usually no need to, thus NATO but the CIA.
- Active, not passive: Tom kissed Suzy not Suzy was kissed by Tom.
- Affect means to have an influence on. Not to be confused with the verb effect, which means to accomplish.
- Americanisms. Avoid them, unless you are an American, thus normality not normalcy, oblige not obligate, got not gotten, lift not elevator, aeroplane or aircraft, not airplane. And anyone using segue will be banned for life.
- Anarchy is the absence of government. Do not use it as a synonym for chaos.
- Crisis: much overused: a crisis is a decisive event, a turning point.
- Different to not different than.
- Disinterested means impartial. Uninterested means bored.
- Due to, when used to mean caused by, must follow a noun. Otherwise use because of or owing to.
- Fewer than/less than. Use fewer with numbers of individual items or people ie, fewer than a thousand subscribers. Use less than with measured quantities ie, less than ten pints of beer.
- Split infinitives. Split away, we are writing English, not Latin. But beware of the fury of the pedant.
- Identical with, not to.
- Jargon. Avoid it or you might end up sounding like the pretentious bore at Chatham House who wrote “The City Safe Resilience Project is a cross-sector initiative bringing together experts...to enable multi-tier practitioner-orientated collaboration on resilience and anti-terrorism challenges and opportunities.”
- Oxymoron. An oxymoron is not an unintentional contradiction of terms. It is a figure of speech in which contradictory terms are deliberately combined, like bitter-sweet or friendly fire.
- Practical/practicable. Practical means useful, practicable means feasible.
- Propaganda is the systematic attempt to spread doctrine or opinions. It is not necessarily synonymous with lies.
- Protest. You can protest your innocence or an intention to do something, but if making a complaint or objection you must protest at or against it.
- Report on, not into.
- Scotch means to disable. The people may also be Scotch, Scots, or Scottish. Choose as you like.
- Ship. A ship is always feminine.
- Which and that. Which informs, that defines. This is the house that Jack built, but this house, which Jack built, is up for sale.
- Who and whom. Who is used for the subject in the relative clause, as in this is the man who she intends to marry. But if saying this is the man whom most women want to marry, whom is used because the subject of the relative clause has become most women. Confusing isn’t it?
Punctuation: guidelines on common problems.
Apostrophes
- With singular words and names ending in s use the possessive ending ‘s ie, boss’s and St James’s.
- Also use the normal possessive ‘s for plurals that do not end in s: children’s.
- But use the ending s’ on plurals that end in s: Scots’.
- Also use s’ on plural names taking a singular verb ie, Barclays’. Lloyd’s poses an insoluble problem so avoid using it as possessive.
Brackets - If a whole sentence is within brackets, the full stop goes inside. Square brackets are to be used for interpolations in direct quotations: (Let them [the poor] eat cake), as using ordinary brackets implies the words inside are part of the original quote...
Colons - Use a colon “to deliver the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words” (Fowler) ie, “They brought presents: gold, frankincense and oil at $60 a barrel.” Use a colon for a whole quoted sentence, but not for a quotation that begins mid-sentence.
Commas - commas aid understanding. Too many in one sentence can be confusing.
- It is not always necessary to put a comma after a short phrase at the start of a sentence if no natural pause exists.
- But a breath, and so a comma, is needed after longer passages.
- Use two commas, or none, when inserting a clause in the middle of a sentence.
- Commas can alter the sense of a sentence. To write Mozart’s 40th symphony, in G minor with the comma indicates that the symphony was written in G minor, but to write it without the comma indicates that he wrote 39 other symphonies in G minor.
- Lists: do not put a comma after and at the end of a sequence unless one of the items includes another and.
- Never put commas after question marks.
Dashes - You can put dashes in pairs for parenthesis, but ideally not more than once per paragraph.
Full stops - Use plenty. They keep sentences short.
Quotation marks
- Use single ones only for quotations within quotations.
- If an extract ends with a full stop or question mark, put the punctuation before the closing quotation marks.
- If a complete sentence in quotes comes at the end of a larger sentence, the final stop should be inside the inverted commas.
- If the quotation does not include any punctuation, the closing inverted commas should precede the any punctuation that the sentence requires.
Semi-colons - Use them to mark a pause longer than a comma and shorter than a full stop and to distinguish phrases listed after a colon if commas are not suitable.
Definitions
There is much sloppy, vague and inaccurate use of many political terms like far right, which lazy, ignorant or mendacious journalists and politicians use as an epithet for those who do not agree with their woke dogma. Here are what we think are the correct definitions.
The belief that society is better without organised government, derived from the Greek an - without, and archos - government. It is not synonymous with chaos or violence.
Not a term that we like. Coined in the 19th century from Genesis 10-12 on the origin of biblical nations and specifically applied to the descendants of Shem, Semitic was first used to describe a group of related languages including Arabic and some Ethiopian tongues. However, antisemitism is now so widely used to mean anti-Jewish (which we prefer) it must be accepted as such. It is not necessarily the same as anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli, but of course antisemites are very often also anti-Zionist and anti-Israel.
Authoritarianism is characterised by a strong central government that allows people a limited degree of political freedom. However, the political process, as well as all individual freedom, is controlled by the government without any constitutional accountability.
The four most recognisable characteristics of authoritarian states are 1) Limited political freedom with strict government controls imposed on political institutions, political parties, and interest groups; 2) A controlling regime that justifies itself to the people as a “necessary evil”; 3) Strict government-imposed constraints on social freedoms such as suppression of political opponents and anti-regime activity and 4) The presence of a ruling executive with vague, shifting, and loosely-defined powers.
In other words, much like Britain in 2024.
Autocracy is a system of government in which one person—an autocrat—holds all political, economic, social, and military power. The autocrat’s rule is unlimited and absolute and is not subject to any legal or legislative limitation. Examples are the socialists Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Note that an autocracy is always a dictatorship, but not all dictatorships are autocracies. A dictatorship can be rule by a group, such as the woke globalists who rule much of the West.
A free enterprise system of profit and loss, the sanctity of contract, the rule of law and private property. In practice there are different models of capitalism, dependent of the degree of State involvement and the effect government interference has on two of capitalism’s most important functions, competition and the free market.
We believe that, while no economic or governmental system is perfect, capitalism is the best form of economic organisation possible as it is consistent with human nature and economic reality. In our view governments’ role should be restricted to regulation aimed at ensuring genuine competition and a free market while providing welfare for those genuinely unable to work and short term, limited welfare for those able to work.
Collectivism is the basis of major political systems such as Socialism, Communism, and Fascism. Collectivism prioritises the needs of the collective over the needs of the individual.
Marx defined Communism as the final state predicted by his ‘philosophy’ of dialectical materialism. This held that progress occurs through class struggle, with economics being the determining factor, and only violent revolution can cause the shift from private ownership to socialism and then communism. Once achieved, communism would be a classless, moneyless society, without personal property, in which each would contribute according to his ability and take according to his needs. Government, unrequired, would wither away. Just like that.
Conservativism is not really an ideology, but instead a study of human nature. Its basis is the view that human nature is, if not fixed, not easily changed and even then within narrow limits. From this it follows that Utopian ideologies, based as they are on the assumption that human nature can be perfected, must end up in totalitarianism as those imposing them come up against the inevitable opposition resulting from intrinsic human nature.
Conservatives oppose rapid changes in society, but not all change or reform. Instead change must be organic and done through institutions that have stood the test of time. English common law is a good example of a conservative institution.
The fusion of Big State and Big Corporations and, therefore Left Wing with a strong tendency towards authoritarianism or even totalitarianism.
This is the hardest to define. Democracy is defined as a government that empowers the people to exercise political control, limits the power of the state, provides for the separation of powers between governmental entities, and ensures the protection of natural rights and civil liberties. In practice, democracy takes many different forms. The two best known types are direct and (limited) democracy qualified as ‘representative’. In practice the most common form of democracy is fake democracy, in which the state and its allies ensure that the people have no meaningful choice, or have election results rigged one way or another, such as postal votes and by mass media propaganda. If Abraham Lincoln’s definition that democracy is “…government of the people, by the people, for the people…” is accepted, there has never been a real democracy anywhere.
The British government defines extremism as “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance], that aims to negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).”
By that definition the British government is extremist because of its Net Zero, mass immigration and support of Islamism policies.
The belief that all power should rest with the State, with the State controlling all areas of the economy and social life or, as one of its founders, Mussolini, put it “all within the State, nothing outside the state.” Fascism is therefore collectivist and a Left-Wing ideology and a necessary component of other Leftist belief systems such as communism and collectivism.
In the UK, Article 10 of the 1998 Human Rights Act protects our right to freedom of expression (a wider form of free speech) as follows: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
According to the UN genocide any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Just about anything can, therefore, be classed as genocide. The woke, globalist British ruling class can reasonably be accused of genocide against the British people under c, d and e.
The belief, founded on the notion that the nation state is the source of all conflict and/or incapable of solving global problems and therefore inefficient, redundant, that the world should have a single, global government. Organisations like the EU are intended as a stepping stone to global government and are dedicated to the eradication of the nation state. Globalism may be considered as the exact opposite of nationalism and patriotism.
The belief that Islam, usually a militant version of Islam including Sharia law and intolerant of opposition, should be the dominant force in society. Islamism is both a political and religious movement. Not all Muslims or forms of Islam are Islamist.
The belief that the State should intervene in economic and social affairs, ostensibly to achieve equality. But in practice to consolidate power in the hands of the state bureaucracy and favoured groups. Always involves high taxation and the state consuming a large proportion of economic output. Prominent Left wingers include Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Xi Jinping. Most modern western governments are basically Left wing.
Classical Liberalism is an ideology developed in opposition to control of government and society by aristocracy, absolute monarchy and the church. Its fundamentals are that people are rational individuals and able to make decisions for themselves in normal circumstances and should have freedom to take their own decisions without control by government.
As well as freedoms such as free speech or freedom to decide whether to follow a religion, people should be free to have property and use it as they wish. Liberals believe that a free market without government control is the most effective in creating wealth, and that government should be restricted to areas such as national defence, and in preventing people doing severe harm to others by criminal activity.
The term in the US means the exact opposite. See Left Wing below.
Liberty is the freedom to live your life in the way that you want, without interference from other people or the authorities, while respecting other people’s right to their liberty.
Aptly follows Left Wing. The two or bedfellows. The definition that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” is often (apocryphally) attributed to Einstein. You don’t need his brains to see the truth of it though. An example is repeatedly voting Tory in the expectation that they would, in power, act as a patriotic conservative government.
Marxism is a theory of historical materialism that describes stages of social evolution as primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and, finally, the utopia of advanced communism. It also states that social progress is the result of class struggle, and that profit is workers’ unpaid wages.
This occurs when the State is heavily influenced by a military caste or by politicians who believe that their country should use military forces to achieve its goals foreign policy goals. In 1914 the Kaiser’s Germany was militaristic. Britain however, was merely warlike.
The belief that one’s nation is superior to all others. Not to be confused with patriotism.
An oligarchy is a power structure made up of a few elite individuals, families, or corporations that have control of a country. It is not rule by the rich – see plutocracy.
Love for or devotion to one’s country. It is possible, and these days almost a duty, for patriots in western countries to virulently oppose the government of their country.
Plutocracy is a term for a society ruled by extremely wealthy people, often at the expense of the lower classes.
The Right holds that government should be kept as small as practicable and that law should be based on the primacy of the individual and the maintenance of individual freedom and liberty. Far right therefore must mean the anarchists, who believe in no government at all. Right wing has no relationship to nationalism, which has no Left- or Right-wing component. Right wing and Conservatism are not necessarily the same though today most Right wingers would call themselves conservative.
Socialism is an economic, social, and political theory advocating collective ie, governmental control and administration of a country’s means of economic production. Means of production include any machinery, tools, farms, factories, natural resources, and infrastructure used in producing and distribution.
Various forms of socialism have been tried around the world, always with disastrous results. Marx viewed socialism as a stepping stone to communism.
Systematic use of violence or coercive force to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.
Totalitarianism is dictatorial, centralised rule controlling all public and private life by coercion, intimidation, and repression. Totalitarian states are typically ruled by autocrats or dictators who demand unquestioned loyalty and control public opinion through propaganda. George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984, gives its flavour when Winston Smith is told by Thought Police interrogator O’Brien, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”
Woke is a further step away from reality and common sense than political correctness. The term defines the mental process of those who conform to left wing Globalist orthodoxies on subjects they intend to use to divide and rule, all set out for them intact, with no need to engage the brain. The woke have almost identical views on almost all of these issues. If a person subscribes to the lunatic critical race theory, you can be pretty sure he, or more often she, will be anti-Israel, pro-abortion, pro-mass immigration, be fervent in support of all those poor transgender thingies we hear about and be so anti-fascist that they embrace fascism. Obviously, they will have swallowed the climate crisis crap hook, line and sinker.
