Language and Reality: How the Left Uses Ambiguity to Frame Issues
26th March 2018
This hasn’t gotten as much discussion as it deserves.
The left’s favorite bit of language manipulation is the inventing (or repurposing) of words and phrases that function as vague, nefarious placeholders for their grand political ambitions. (Think of them as linguistic Trojan Horses). The idea is to introduce a concept into mainstream thought using a word and phrases that, quite literally, have no fixed meaning. In fact, the more nebulous the term the better. Once this word or phrase becomes embedded in public discourse, it becomes the vehicle for a host of far-left progressive agendas. The lack of a concrete meaning makes the appropriated word or phrase ideal for whatever is currently in vogue with the left.
The most notable example of this technique is the infamous “social justice,” a word phrase that literally means whatever the hell you want it to mean. The social justice movement is in one way bone-jarringly idiotic. How can so many people latch on to a phrase that has no concrete meaning? In another way, the fact that progressives have been able to infect so many universities, public schools, and well-meaning people with the social justice virus is a marvel of political engineering.
My favorite leftist verbal sneak is the term ‘capitalism’. Coined by Marx to spit-tag the system he thought he was fighting against and picked up by people who ought to know better on the free-market side because they didn’t have anything to use in its place, it doesn’t describe anything in the real world and is useful only for the creation of hate-speech against people who think they ought to be able to do what they want rather than what the government wants.