By Michael A. Hancock | Commentary, Substack
In George Orwell’s 1984, citizens were told that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. It was called Newspeak—language engineered to distort thought—and doublethink, the act of believing two contradictory things at once.
Today, we don’t need fiction. We have the perpetual news.
Across America, mobs swarm immigration offices, smash windows, burn vehicles, blockade highways, and hurl explosives at federal buildings—all while being shielded under the banner of “peaceful protest.” The phrase is repeated so often it’s practically trademarked. Politicians echo it. Journalists parrot it. And poets romanticize it, casting destruction as defiance and rage as righteousness.
The public is expected not just to accept the contradiction, but to believe it, revere it, and repeat it.
This isn’t simply semantic sloppiness—it’s strategy. In the tradition of Orwellian doublethink, we are told to hold two incompatible truths in our minds simultaneously: that protest is peaceful and that violence is a legitimate expression of moral outrage.
That civil disobedience is noble, even when it terrorizes communities. That chaos is justice.
And if you notice the contradiction? You’re the problem.
The recent ICE resistance riots are the latest example of this linguistic theater. Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and Seattle have all seen eruptions of violence masked in moral vocabulary. The targets are law enforcement and immigration officers.
The tactic is disruption. The aim is submission. Yet the framing is unchanged across major outlets: “peaceful protest.” Even when it’s not.
When Orwell wrote of Newspeak, he envisioned a world where language was weaponized to make independent thought impossible. Words were not meant to express reality, but to reshape it.
We’re living that reality now. “Equity” no longer implies fairness—it means sanctioned discrimination. “Democracy” means enforced conformity. “Peaceful protest” means sanctioned violence, as long as it’s for the right cause.
Once language is corrupted, liberty is undefendable.
If burning police cars is peaceful, then what isn’t? If the people setting fires are freedom fighters, then who are the tyrants? The goal here isn’t to describe events accurately. It’s to invert moral clarity—to replace it with ideological obedience.
The consequences are devastating. When mayors and governors actively sanction lawlessness, law-abiding citizens are abandoned. When federal buildings are attacked, and the state shrinks from protecting them, it isn’t justice—it’s a preview of anarchy.
But anarchy, too, is recast in soothing tones. “Mostly peaceful.” “Frustrated but righteous.” “Unheard voices.”
This is not protest. It’s performance. And the phrase “peaceful protest” is the costume.
Why the linguistic charade? Because words shape public perception. And perception shapes political will.
The Left has learned that if they control the language, they can control the response. If the act of smashing windows and blocking ambulances is called “activism,” then any resistance becomes oppression. And if federal agents attempt to restore order, they’re cast as jackbooted fascists.
It’s the old Marxist trick in a new American dialect: deconstruct meaning, seize moral ground, and redefine resistance as dominance. They don’t need to censor dissent if they can make language itself unintelligible.
This is why Orwell matters now more than ever—not because we’re becoming his dystopia, but because we’re already living within its logic.
The Left’s manipulation of the term “peaceful protest” is not just dishonest—it’s dangerous. It creates a permission structure for mob rule, excuses violence as virtue, and, worst of all, invites authoritarian responses by making genuine civic order impossible.
Every time a city descends into chaos while elected officials mutter about “expression,” we get closer to the moment when a public, exhausted by disorder, begs for a strong hand.
And the Left knows it.
The pattern is familiar: provoke chaos, reframe it as justice, accuse all opposition of oppression, then consolidate cultural and political power through fear and moral confusion.
This isn’t grassroots democracy—it’s managed demolition. And it begins not with bricks and bottles, but with slogans and spin.
So, what now?
First, we must resist the theft of language. Conservatives should never use the phrase “peaceful protest” to describe rioting just because NPR does. Call it what it is: political intimidation. Mob coercion. Urban insurrection.
Second, we must restore the moral vocabulary of protest. There is a fundamental distinction between speech and sabotage. Civil disobedience is a noble tradition involving personal sacrifice, not anonymous violence.
And third, we must confront the Left’s Newspeak directly. When they redefine “peace,” “freedom,” or “justice,” we must not yield an inch. The battle for liberty will not be won on the battlefield or in the ballot box unless it is first won in the arena of language.
Because if we concede the words, we’ve already lost the war.
Orwell didn’t write fiction. He wrote prophecy. And unless we wake up, the phrase “peaceful protest” will become the slogan under which freedom is finally extinguished—not by a tyrant’s decree, but by the willful blindness of a people who no longer know what words mean.
Hancock also publishes on Substack. You can check out more of his work here.
Michael A. Hancock is a retired high-tech executive, visionary, musician, and composer, exploring diverse interests—from religion and arts to politics and philosophy—offering thoughtful insights on the intersections of culture, innovation, and society.
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