A lot of disparate events over the last few days proving yet again that the Republicans have managed to hijack the English language. When they use a word it means exactly what they say it means, and when we use one, it no longer means what it means, unless we have Republican permission. Not only that, but in many cases, we accept this language perversion and propagate it ourselves.
I’ve noted many times before that the term “pro-life” is hardly the equivalent of the reality of the Republican position on abortion, or anything else. Yet not only do we let them use the term without pushback, many on the left use it themselves.
Even the term “white nationalist” also (wait for it)…whitewashes the reality. Americans, by and large, don’t consider the term “nationalist” to be pejorative. They do understand the shorter word “racist”, which fits the bill exactly.
Recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made what should have been an uncontroversial characterization of the concentration camps in which we are incarcerating innocent children, to wit, that they are concentration camps. The right will have none of it, and few in the Democratic Party have come to her defense, much less join her in using a term that precisely describes what we are doing to these children.
It was a recent tweet by Matt Yglesias that got me thinking about this once again, as he pointed out how inappropriate it was for the press and Oregon public officials to refer to the armed thugs intimidating the Oregon legislature as a “militia”, their own self selected term for their criminal gang. Would either of those institutions extend the same privilege to an armed group of blacks demanding reparations? Once again, however, many on the left utilize the term without caveat, much less without using a more appropriate term, like “armed fascists”.
We need to take back the language. Part of the way you do that is by using a term over and over, just like the opposition. We generally have no need to use a term to mean anything we want it to mean. Generally speaking, we’re fine with the dictionary definitions. But repetition is all. Instead of running away from AOC, every Democrat in Congress should use the term “concentration camps” to refer to our concentration camps.
There are some signs of hope, though they come from unexpected quarters. A popular community knitting website, of all things, has banned statements that support Trump because “[s]upport of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.” That’s clear thinking, and it’s about time the media, purportedly sane public officials, and elected Democrats followed their lead.
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