“Also known as the Thought Police in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four“
Synonyms: NHL, NFL, college speech codes, McCain-Feingold, ”Hate Crime,”
Can you use it in a sentence?
Thikpol use psychology and surveillance (even within homes) to seek out and destroy people who even think about challenging authority. The Thought Police are used to investigate and punish citizens who have committed “thoughtcrime.” The goal is to control speech.
Can you give me an example?
Example 1: The National Hockey League fined the Head Coach of the Edmonton Oilers, Pat Quinn, $10,000. Quinn’s crime? It seems that after one of his players was injured on a questionable play, Quinn had the nerve to speak out about the incident and how the game was refereed. A senior NHL official, Colin Campbell, noted that ”Mr. Quinn’s comments were inappropriate and without justification.”
Perhaps illustrating Mr. Quinn’s frustration, the NHL decided not to take any action against the Filthadelphia Flyers’ Scott “Tyson” Hartnell for biting Penguins defenseman, Kris Letang. In the league’s defense, there was not any usable tape showing the incident. No explanation about how Letang got bite marks on his finger.
Example 2: The Community College of Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) threatened disciplinary action against a student who wanted to start a gun rights group on campus. The student did not want to bring guns onto campus, she simply wanted to hand out flyers to gauge interest for the group. Fortunately for many students fighting this kind of oppression, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”) provided legal counsel to the student.
Example 3: During the most recent presidential election, the group Citizens United made a movie critical on then-candidate Hillary Clinton. Courts decided that the television advertisements for the movie’s release could not be shown. Courts applied McCain-Feingold (thanks John McCain) and determined that the ads could not be broadcast. The Supreme Court has taken the case and maybe some common sense will be applied to this bad legislation.
Example 4: This example was actually the inspiration for this posting. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to make it a crime to assault a gay person because they are gay. This is another expansion of the “Hate Crime” laws. This has been a disturbing trend where authorities venture into our thoughts to apply additional punishment for our thoughts. Assaulting a gay person, or any person, is already crime punishable under the law and rather than apply the current laws and actually punish violent criminals, we are now going to look into their brains. In House’s usual slimey fashion, the amendment was attached to a defense spending bill in order to get it passed. Let us punish, truly punish, the actions and leave thoughts to our creator to handle when our time is up.
2 CommentsLeave one
how does any of this relate to thought police? these laws are certainly ridiculous, but i don’t see any connection to controlling your very mind and thoughts. Am I missing something obvious or what?
My take from 1984 is that even with severe control over speech Big Brother could not control thoughts. I equate the way authorities try to control “thought” by controlling speech. These authorities are essentially thought police in that they control expressed thoughts.