In 1995 GOPAC was a right wing group chaired by Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich produced a handout called Language: A Key Mechanism
of Control.
It was a list of 113 words for use in attacks on progressive ideas
and democrats.
“Words and phrases are powerful,” wrote Gingrich.
“…memorize as many as possible and remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
“Apply these (words) to the opponent, their record, proposals, and their party.”
The words on his list were: “traitors, betray, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, radical, hypocrisy, corruption, permissive attitude, greed, self-serving, ideological, anti-flag, anti-family, anti-child, anti-jobs, unionized bureaucracy, impose, and coercion.”
Republicans branded Democrats as, “sick, pathetic, incompetent, liberal traitors whose self-serving permissive attitudes promote a unionized bureaucracy and an anti-flag, anti-family, anti-child, anti-job ideology.”
Plus:
• abuse of power
• anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
• betray
• bizarre
• bosses
• bureaucracy
• cheat
• coercion
• “compassion” is not enough
• collapse(ing)
• consequences
• corrupt
• corruption
• criminal rights
• crisis
• cynicism
• decay
• deeper
• destroy
• destructive
• devour
• disgrace
• endanger
• excuses
• failure (fail)
• greed
• hypocrisy
• ideological
• impose
• incompetent
• insecure
• insensitive • intolerant
• liberal
• lie
• limit(s)
• machine
• mandate(s)
• obsolete
• pathetic
• patronage
• permissive attitude
• pessimistic
• punish (poor …)
• radical
• red tape
• self-serving
• selfish
• sensationalists
• shallow
• shame
• sick
• spend(ing)
• stagnation
• status quo
• steal
• taxes
• they/them
• threaten
• traitors
• unionized
• urgent (cy)
• waste
• welfare
To be clear, Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party did not offer 113 new policies the GOP might write to win an honest political debate.
The GOP chose to poison our politics by smearing Democrats and suppressing the vote.
Today the GOP violates Democratic norms.
Today the GOP writes cruel legislation in secret, and spreads Russian style propaganda in political ads.
Today, Newt Gingrich is a propagandist for Vladimir Putin.
In American Democracy the people are the government.
As citizens we pay taxes into a common fund which we use to promote the
public good.
The public good is public education, housing, healthcare, and nutrition for
our children.
We provide access to these essentials because a person without class
mobility is not truly free.
These are my daily affirmations, repeat after me:
Smear campaigns are not public policy
Words have meaning.
I will not be conned.
(c) Rob Goldstein 2015-2017
Quote from John Adams found on Twitter
Art by Rob Goldstein 
Reblogged this on Survivors Blog Here and commented:
WOW! That’s an eyeful, maybe the 80’s were our best years. M
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Newt is the source of the GOP’s disease.
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R
Still have invitation? All you have to do is accept and send back. I do the rest and you log in your site and reblog as you have. Does that make sense?
I need you back, badly. I hope you level and doing well.
We can make this happen in less than 5 minutes.
Hugs
M
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I don’t get an invitation. I a log in page. I sent screen shots.
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It won’t work that way, you have to send email back to me so I can do some admin work. In less than ten minutes your up. Just focus on sending email. As soon as ready I’ll let you know. We can Rock & Roll!
M
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I’ve never liked this particular piece of slime and his rhetoric of poisoning the society. Listening to him gives me a headache.
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Indeed. His so called ‘revolution’ destroyed the GOP.
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Thank you; I like your site very much, and your Artwork is brilliant!
Claudia
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Thank you for your visit and your comment.
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This is an excellent article. It’s amazing the extent to which the language that Gingrich appropriated has become common currency, particularly in online interactions. Yes, we should make an effort to take out language back and to use it in a thoughtful way. Language can be a powerful tool to unite us if we make the effort to use it that way.
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The right has used code words and talking points for over thirty years.
No ideas, just words stripped of meaning.
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Well said, Rob: I’ll be repeating this mantra back at every opportunity: I am a person not a thing. I am a citizen, not a consumer. I am someone.
Brilliant.
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Excellent post, as always……I am chagrinned to realize that this word, “consumer,” has been co-opted by, well, everyone from Newt to Uncle Sam (Walton). When I was a medical student in the 1980’s, Big Corporate “Medicine” loomed on the horizon, waiting for its opportunity to gobble up everything. A group of forward-looking citizens in my county formed the “(C) County Health Care Consumers” as a way to fight back against the tide that seemed, at that time, as if it could be beaten back if only the “consumers” of health care would band together, stand up for our rights to be more than numbers in some juggernaut’s computers….but look, it has turned against us and now we are consumers of corporate “health care” services in the same sense as we are consumers of the billions of pounds of necessary and unnecessary goods we buy every day……and maybe we grouse a bit about the crappy tee shirt made in China, but we swallow billions of pills made in dubious factories in India, with brand names like “Dr. Reddy’s”–like my antipsychotic pills, not a trivial thing! As you see, Rob, you have touched a nerve with me. It is a sad, sad thing. I wanted to be a horse-and-buggy doctor when I grew up, and I still do…but in order to serve the “consumers,” I need to have malpractice insurance, and process their “health insurance” claims, both of which I refuse to do. So I guess I will have to hope for that in another life, or else wave goodbye to that dream, too bad for everyone. Thanks for this post! –Laura
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Thank you for you for your fine comment!
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I think that this is actually true of a lot of places worldwide, not just America . And to be honest, I’ve never thought about how wrong it sounded, it just seemed normal to be described as consumers. As always, your blog topics are usually very informative:)
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I agree with you tat this is more widespread, but what I know is the United States-
I have always been bothered by what what I consider
a demotion in status from citizen to consumer…Thank you for reading my blog, I am very appreciative of your comment…:)
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hail ya! great post.
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😀
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