re: #152 Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

Somewhat related: Some German guy wrote a book right after the war that studied the way fascists used language to indoctrinate people. It’s called “Lingua Tertii Imperii.”

“No, the most powerful influence was exerted neither by individual speeches nor by articles or flyers, posters or flags; it was not achieved by things which one had to absorb by conscious thought or conscious emotions.
Instead Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously… language does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it.

The Third Reich coined only a very small number of the words in its language, perhaps - indeed probably - none at all… But it changes the value of words and the frequency of their occurrence, it makes common property out of what was previously the preserve of an individual or a tiny group, it commandeers for the party that which was previously common property and in the process steeps words and groups of words and sentence structures with its poison.[1]