There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America

In his classic essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell described political speech as consisting “largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” Six decades later, the tactics of disinformation and manipulation diagnosed by Orwell persist on the political battlefield, along with new propaganda techniques made possible by advances in scientific knowledge and modern technology.

"There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America" which took place at the New York Public Library on November 7 2007, invited historians, linguists, cognitive experts, journalists, government officials, and political consultants to assess the current state of public discourse — and journalism’s response to it — one year before a hotly contested presidential election.

"What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics," an anthology featuring twenty prominent writers and thinkers, was released at the time of conference.

The three panels, Propaganda Then and Now: What Orwell Did and Didn't Know, Deceiving Images: The Science of Manipulation and Solutions: The Future Political Landscape, can be viewed here on the Link TV website.

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Visit the official site
List of speakers

Propaganda Then and Now
Deceiving Images
The Future Political Landscape