George ORWELL’s essay “Politics and the English Language”, published in 1946, took aim at the bureaucrats, academics and hacks who obfuscated their misdeeds in vague, jargon-packed writing. On October 7th an open letter from a clutch of student groups at Harvard University vaguely described the “unfolding violence” in Israel without ascribing blame to Hamas. Abstract brutality “unfolding” shocks rather less …
