Double Speak Quotes
He was referring to the tendency of Arab diplomats and leaders to privately assure U. S. leaders about issues and then go home and make speeches in Arabic completely different from their private assurances and commitments. He advocated ignoring all private statements by Arabs and paying attention only to what they say in their own country and in Arabic. For a good example of an Arab politician doing this, see {585490}.
The Chinese laborers were slaves by most definitions of the word as they had been brought to South Africa on a system of indentured servitude. Slavery was illegal so the term had all kinds of political and legal significance. His statement was a masterpiece of admitting that it was almost slavery but leaving some wiggle room so as not to have classified it as such. Some use this as an example of Churchill’s capacity for hypocrisy.
There is a great irony to this quotation. Here we have a communist propaganda agent using the extreme excesses of an American Anti-Communist fanatic to the Communist advantage by associating them with McCarthyism. It supports the view of many political scientists and historians that McCarthyism was in the long run more beneficial to the Communists than not.
