January 30, 2017

The article meditates on the vital role that language can play in terms of what power is and who has it, in the context of the recent political situation. 

Brennan writes: 

Orwell wrote that freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. He wrote that he who controls the past controls the future, and that he who controls the present controls the past. If you can colonize the minds of a population with untruths and confusion, you forcibly re-write reality. This is done with stories. It’s done with language. How we speak about the world is a reflection of how we see it.

She is also the author of The Oyster Wars.