9 ms·

The Autocrat's Language

hugh4life 9y ago
Every side treats with ironism the terms defined by their enemies. http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetole...
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  But some sides are sillier than others.
bushin 9y ago
In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, thou alone art my stay and support, mighty, true, free Russian speech! But for thee, how not fall into despair, seeing all that is done at home? But who can think that such a tongue is not the gift of a great people!
adrianratnapala 9y ago
Then something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share that experience, because they had no language for doing so. This is a very good point, but is I think a bit obscured because it seems to mistake the map for the territory. I think what the writer is getting at is that without a shared language it's harder to build up common knowledge. Which means more than just everone knowing something. It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum. Each person can see the Emperor has no clothes, but without sufficient communication they cannot all know that it is safe to laugh at the Emperor.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum. Well not ad-infinitum. Just 3 levels needed: 1. I know (think of a graph with one node A) 2. I know that the other knows (A -> B) 3. I know that the other knows, that I know (A <-> B). That's basically how common sense works, and it helps groups of people work as a group (solve problems, achieve a common goal). But first this bootstrapping is necessary. Anyway, in this particular case it is like political or ideological common sense ("the emperor doesn't have clothes"). That's why large gathering of people were looked at with suspicion or were outright illegal, because it might start this bootstrapping process. Then before you know it, people start to act. This is probably one reason that gatherings protests are useful to -- achieve this effect. It can be done online, but a lot of communication is non-verbal, it's how people say things, how they act, dress, tone of voice, etc.
  - vehementi 9y ago
    The "common sense" part means that I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that you know...
- taurath 9y ago
  The conversation ends up being "is is shitty? yeah its shitty. fuck it." which is the exact state of being that led to trump being elected.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    But also to the one that brought down the Berlin Wall.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Yes, and arguably to every revolution. Some were good, some were bad, and some were epically bad.
      - QAPereo 9y ago
        Don’t forget the ones which led to good, but were epically bad to live through... France for example.
      - adrianratnapala 9y ago
        But in the case of bad revolutions, would the story have ended up any better if people had somehow maintained the spell of ignorance about the previous regime? I think it more likely that would just lead to an even worse revolution a bit further down the track.
        mirimir 9y ago
        Democracy can produce horrible results. Dishonest and/or sociopathic demagogues can exploit dissatisfaction. In the US, for example, Presidential elections were designed to temper democracy, through the Electoral College. It's become restricted pretty much to tie breaking. But one can imagine situations where it would basically declare a cooling off period, by picking a caretaker President.
Wall_Street 9y ago
Good point.
dropit_sphere 9y ago
> Witch hunts cannot actually be carried out by losers, big or small: the agent of a witch hunt must have power. Aaaaay, and now the public conversation has finally advanced. The contention of the far right is that this statement is exactly right, but not in the way the author means. That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting. From he-who-must-not-be-named: >Think about it. Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn't waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk. They're getting burned right and left, for Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won't see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.
- vkou 9y ago
  > That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting. Just because a bunch of people can do some witch hunting on twitter doesn't make it a lucrative and safe career. Twitter slacktivists aside, who do you think currently has an easier job - people fighting for civil rights, or people who are fighting against them? One side in this fight uses water cannons in freezing weather on unarmed people. The other gets hit by water cannons in freezing weather. One side is untouchable. The other gets routinely beaten, harassed, and arrested - legally or otherwise. One side has killed ~50 people over this year in a series of hate crimes. The other... Punched a few nazis. Or hell, if you want to talk about twitter slacktivism, have you seen how much abuse feminist writers, BLM activists, and LGBT people receive? You may claim that some martyr or other of the conservative sphere received similar levels of censure, but I assure you, the people on the other side of this are not having easy, cushy lives.
  - ogre_magi 9y ago
tacon 9y ago
I don't speak German, so it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that Führer means "leader" (or "guide", according to Wikipedia). And that that word is essentially dead in modern German speech. So how do you refer to the "leader" now?, I asked. I didn't get a good answer to that question, but it would probably take more understanding of German as to how they get by without the obvious word. I wonder if "news" may be dead in English in the near future.
- im3w1l 9y ago
  Leiter, I believe.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    Yes, when I lived in Germany I heard "Leiter" a lot when I expected "Führer". To me it sounds like it should mean "conductor". Can real German speakers tell me if "Leiter" was always a very common word for this usage or merely a not-unreasonable word that won out post-war because it happens to be a bit like the English word? (In fact I suspect they are cognate, maybe that's why electrical conductors are sometimes called "leads").
    - InternetOfStuff 9y ago
      Native speaker here. Führer and Leiter seem similar in meaning, but are really quite distinct, both in denotation and connotation. And, contrary to what grandparent poster said, Führer is by no means dead. "Führer" means guide. As in, a mountain guide ("Bergführer"), tourist guide ("Reiseführer" - both guide book and person), or driver of a vehicle: driving license ("Führerschein"). Similarly, "Anführer" is a leader of a like-minded group, often in the sense that he is not a formal leader. To pick an example from current affairs: Carles Puigdemont is (formally) the president of Catalunya, and (informally) the leader ("Anführer") of the independence movement. There is quite a number of words derived from Führer. The verb "leiten" means to direct. Thus, a "Leiter" is somebody who gives directions: a director. This was, and is, a reasonable word, especially in a professional context. To explain the Nazi diction a bit. Think of uses like Bergführer ("mountain guide"): somebody who leads his charges skillfully through treacherous terrain. I suppose that was the kind of image the Nazis wanted to project on Adolf Hitler (who you are of course referring to). It's true that Führer may sound politically piquant to German ears, but only in quite specific contexts. It's a pretty normal word.
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
Regarding NPR's choice of words: it is in fact quite common to avoid very direct accusations in politics and news. I really doubt the author came about this for the first time ever, but rather wonder if he detested it as much each and every time earlier.
- akkartik 9y ago
  The reason to avoid very direct accusations in politics in news is to keep your powder dry -- so that you can have greater impact when you truly need to do so.
  - andrewem 9y ago
    The argument the author makes is exactly that this is a time where words like "lies" are necessary, and to avoid them now constitutes lying to your audience rather than avoiding inappropriate overstatement.
- elgenie 9y ago
  The author is a woman; Masha is the Russian diminutive for Maria.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    Is there any phonological rule that can help tell? For the last name you can check "-ov" vs. "-ova", but what about given names? In school I knew a boy named "Misha" (so assuming I am remembering his nationality correctly) it would seem that "-sha" can go with either sex.
    - wruza 9y ago
      Diminutives are all the same, -a, -ya, -ik because of diminutive suffix replacing the ending. Full names usually end on -[y]a for women and on consonant for men. So there is no general rule, I think. (native speaker) Edit: added -ik
roenxi 9y ago
That was a pleasure to read. Pushing the politics to one side; there is a call here to use words correctly and to use clear and unambiguous descriptions. That is a coherent and entirely reasonable expectation on any political dialog. Doubly rewarding was that the writing style, while not pro-Trump, avoids the bile and hysteria that has been common since the last American election. Limiting criticism to unclear language does the author a lot of credit. Limited changes are needed to apply this article to many political statements. Trumps pronouncements are particularly entertaining examples though. His speech can make it so clear that he isn't using specific facts. Watching his opponents trying to deal with something so audacious can be very entertaining.
- mirimir 9y ago
  I also loved the article. However, I thought that he was too hard on Trump, in his dissection of that interview. I'm certainly no Trump supporter. And yet, his comments about the missiles in Syria struck me as honestly reflective. Trump does bullshit a lot, and it's easy to make fun of him. But that's arguably more honest than typical Presidential rhetoric.
  - andrewem 9y ago
    (As was noted elsewhere in the comments on this submission, the author is a woman, and quite well known - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen) It's hard to know how to criticize your comment constructively, though one might say that it's not that "Trump does bullshit a lot", it's that he cannot escape bullshitting in any situation. He exists outside facts. If you think the author's criticism of Trump is too harsh, then you should read her earlier piece published just after the election: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/ http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autoc...
    - mirimir 9y ago
      As I said, I'm not a Trump supporter. He's a demagogue. And worse, he's arguably the first "Reality TV" president, in that he honed his public persona for "The Apprentice". If Stephen Colbert wins in 202, he'll be the second. It's a strange world. Anyway, it is refreshing to hear a US President reflect on the enormity of the power at their command, and on the risks of using that power. No matter how incoherent they may be. I don't know whether Trump could escape bullshitting, if he wanted to. It could be entirely an act, designed for his target audience. But either way, what concerns me is that such a persona is so evidently popular.
emartinelli 9y ago
This reminds me of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"[1]. A timeless work about language misuse in Politics. [1]http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/ http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
musage 9y ago
> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. -- George Orwell, letter to Noel Willmett (1944) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwe...
theyregreat 9y ago
As an aside, some of my favorite words to say: chatoyance and conchoidal.
mannykannot 9y ago
This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate for having their emotions stimulated without regard to facts. To put it another way, the author had no difficulty in refuting those inconsistencies and lies; his problem is that not enough people care about it.
- thenewwazoo 9y ago
  I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong proposition anyway. You have a concept, but when I use the word that describes the concept, I could be describing the concept or the not-concept.
  - pizza 9y ago
    Yeah, this makes sense to me according to my experience of people's perceptions of loaded words. When a word may seem like it has e.g. five or six meanings - it conveys more bits of information - plausible deniability -> capacity to retroactively compress the word's meaning - people 'analyze'/recognize simpler words (only one meaning, i.e. GitHub) differently than they do loaded words (multiple meanings, i.e. dream) - people take their own personal uncertainty (over which meaning is the correct one that they need to interpret the word as) as a sign that if they share their recognition, it's more likely to make them look like a fool in public Observers realize that the original speaker's (e.g. Trump or Stalin) plausible deniability is a kind of insurance policy against audience members calling them out
    - mannykannot 9y ago
      I am not sure that plausible deniability is much of an issue, because the people making such statements don't seem to care if they are caught in a contradiction or lie. Why don't they care? Because their supporters, and those who are close to being their supporters, don't care. It's not so much about deceiving the skeptics (who are not likely to be deceived anyway) as it is about giving those who incline to one's views an excuse for believing that their instincts were unquestionably right, and to get them worked up about it (this applies to Trump et. al. rather than Stalin, because the latter had other means of getting his way, and whatever you think of Trump, he is no Stalin.)
panoptispeech 9y ago
The author indicts Trump's use of language. While his speech does have a certain word salad quality, the left's use of language has been far more damaging. The proponents of academic intersectionality have been using language in a characteristic manner, the effect of which is to attach the emotional valence of an everyday English word to a politically charged concept, giving the language abuser a cudgel with which to beat his political opponents. Word | Meaning in 1990 English ---------+-------------------------- Gender | Personality Violence | Critique Harassment | Disagreement Safety | Uniformity Diversity | Uniformity Unsafe | Controversial Equal | Identical Sexist | Non-discriminatory Racist | Non-discriminatory Problematic | Dissident Biased | Discerning You may find the above table inflammatory, but I didn't intend it as such. My table reflects a real abuse of the language of the sort the author of the article describes. People at work have said that "violent and oppressive ideas" require physical violence as "self-defense". These people were referring to mere words. Others have claimed that to be "safe", people with disagreeable opinions must not be allowed to speak. Obviously, words are not violence (1990 term), even if some people call them "violence" (2017 academic left term). The same shift in denotation (but deliberately not connotation) features in discussions of concepts like "decolonialism", "science", and "culture". If that isn't authoritarian language, what is? I don't blame the right generally and Trump specifically for playing the same game. Unfortunately, the only winning move is not to play.
adrianratnapala 9y ago
When writers and academics question the limits of language, it is invariably an exercise that grows from a desire to bring more light into the public sphere, to arrive at a shared reality that is more nuanced than it was yesterday. Is the author seriously trying to suggest that the likes of Derrida was trying to do that?

Every side treats with ironism the terms defined by their enemies. http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetole...

adrianratnapala 9y ago
But some sides are sillier than others.

bushin 9y ago

In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, thou alone art my stay and support, mighty, true, free Russian speech! But for thee, how not fall into despair, seeing all that is done at home? But who can think that such a tongue is not the gift of a great people!

adrianratnapala 9y ago

Then something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share that experience, because they had no language for doing so. This is a very good point, but is I think a bit obscured because it seems to mistake the map for the territory. I think what the writer is getting at is that without a shared language it's harder to build up common knowledge. Which means more than just everone knowing something. It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum. Each person can see the Emperor has no clothes, but without sufficient communication they cannot all know that it is safe to laugh at the Emperor.

rdtsc 9y ago
> It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum. Well not ad-infinitum. Just 3 levels needed: 1. I know (think of a graph with one node A) 2. I know that the other knows (A -> B) 3. I know that the other knows, that I know (A <-> B). That's basically how common sense works, and it helps groups of people work as a group (solve problems, achieve a common goal). But first this bootstrapping is necessary. Anyway, in this particular case it is like political or ideological common sense ("the emperor doesn't have clothes"). That's why large gathering of people were looked at with suspicion or were outright illegal, because it might start this bootstrapping process. Then before you know it, people start to act. This is probably one reason that gatherings protests are useful to -- achieve this effect. It can be done online, but a lot of communication is non-verbal, it's how people say things, how they act, dress, tone of voice, etc.
- vehementi 9y ago
  The "common sense" part means that I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that you know...
taurath 9y ago
The conversation ends up being "is is shitty? yeah its shitty. fuck it." which is the exact state of being that led to trump being elected.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  But also to the one that brought down the Berlin Wall.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Yes, and arguably to every revolution. Some were good, some were bad, and some were epically bad.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Don’t forget the ones which led to good, but were epically bad to live through... France for example.
    - adrianratnapala 9y ago
      But in the case of bad revolutions, would the story have ended up any better if people had somehow maintained the spell of ignorance about the previous regime? I think it more likely that would just lead to an even worse revolution a bit further down the track.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        Democracy can produce horrible results. Dishonest and/or sociopathic demagogues can exploit dissatisfaction. In the US, for example, Presidential elections were designed to temper democracy, through the Electoral College. It's become restricted pretty much to tie breaking. But one can imagine situations where it would basically declare a cooling off period, by picking a caretaker President.

Wall_Street 9y ago

Good point.

dropit_sphere 9y ago

> Witch hunts cannot actually be carried out by losers, big or small: the agent of a witch hunt must have power. Aaaaay, and now the public conversation has finally advanced. The contention of the far right is that this statement is exactly right, but not in the way the author means. That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting. From he-who-must-not-be-named: >Think about it. Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn't waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk. They're getting burned right and left, for Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won't see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.

vkou 9y ago
> That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting. Just because a bunch of people can do some witch hunting on twitter doesn't make it a lucrative and safe career. Twitter slacktivists aside, who do you think currently has an easier job - people fighting for civil rights, or people who are fighting against them? One side in this fight uses water cannons in freezing weather on unarmed people. The other gets hit by water cannons in freezing weather. One side is untouchable. The other gets routinely beaten, harassed, and arrested - legally or otherwise. One side has killed ~50 people over this year in a series of hate crimes. The other... Punched a few nazis. Or hell, if you want to talk about twitter slacktivism, have you seen how much abuse feminist writers, BLM activists, and LGBT people receive? You may claim that some martyr or other of the conservative sphere received similar levels of censure, but I assure you, the people on the other side of this are not having easy, cushy lives.
- ogre_magi 9y ago

tacon 9y ago

I don't speak German, so it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that Führer means "leader" (or "guide", according to Wikipedia). And that that word is essentially dead in modern German speech. So how do you refer to the "leader" now?, I asked. I didn't get a good answer to that question, but it would probably take more understanding of German as to how they get by without the obvious word. I wonder if "news" may be dead in English in the near future.

im3w1l 9y ago
Leiter, I believe.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  Yes, when I lived in Germany I heard "Leiter" a lot when I expected "Führer". To me it sounds like it should mean "conductor". Can real German speakers tell me if "Leiter" was always a very common word for this usage or merely a not-unreasonable word that won out post-war because it happens to be a bit like the English word? (In fact I suspect they are cognate, maybe that's why electrical conductors are sometimes called "leads").
  - InternetOfStuff 9y ago
    Native speaker here. Führer and Leiter seem similar in meaning, but are really quite distinct, both in denotation and connotation. And, contrary to what grandparent poster said, Führer is by no means dead. "Führer" means guide. As in, a mountain guide ("Bergführer"), tourist guide ("Reiseführer" - both guide book and person), or driver of a vehicle: driving license ("Führerschein"). Similarly, "Anführer" is a leader of a like-minded group, often in the sense that he is not a formal leader. To pick an example from current affairs: Carles Puigdemont is (formally) the president of Catalunya, and (informally) the leader ("Anführer") of the independence movement. There is quite a number of words derived from Führer. The verb "leiten" means to direct. Thus, a "Leiter" is somebody who gives directions: a director. This was, and is, a reasonable word, especially in a professional context. To explain the Nazi diction a bit. Think of uses like Bergführer ("mountain guide"): somebody who leads his charges skillfully through treacherous terrain. I suppose that was the kind of image the Nazis wanted to project on Adolf Hitler (who you are of course referring to). It's true that Führer may sound politically piquant to German ears, but only in quite specific contexts. It's a pretty normal word.

YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago

Regarding NPR's choice of words: it is in fact quite common to avoid very direct accusations in politics and news. I really doubt the author came about this for the first time ever, but rather wonder if he detested it as much each and every time earlier.

akkartik 9y ago
The reason to avoid very direct accusations in politics in news is to keep your powder dry -- so that you can have greater impact when you truly need to do so.
- andrewem 9y ago
  The argument the author makes is exactly that this is a time where words like "lies" are necessary, and to avoid them now constitutes lying to your audience rather than avoiding inappropriate overstatement.
elgenie 9y ago
The author is a woman; Masha is the Russian diminutive for Maria.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  Is there any phonological rule that can help tell? For the last name you can check "-ov" vs. "-ova", but what about given names? In school I knew a boy named "Misha" (so assuming I am remembering his nationality correctly) it would seem that "-sha" can go with either sex.
  - wruza 9y ago
    Diminutives are all the same, -a, -ya, -ik because of diminutive suffix replacing the ending. Full names usually end on -[y]a for women and on consonant for men. So there is no general rule, I think. (native speaker) Edit: added -ik

roenxi 9y ago

That was a pleasure to read. Pushing the politics to one side; there is a call here to use words correctly and to use clear and unambiguous descriptions. That is a coherent and entirely reasonable expectation on any political dialog. Doubly rewarding was that the writing style, while not pro-Trump, avoids the bile and hysteria that has been common since the last American election. Limiting criticism to unclear language does the author a lot of credit. Limited changes are needed to apply this article to many political statements. Trumps pronouncements are particularly entertaining examples though. His speech can make it so clear that he isn't using specific facts. Watching his opponents trying to deal with something so audacious can be very entertaining.

mirimir 9y ago
I also loved the article. However, I thought that he was too hard on Trump, in his dissection of that interview. I'm certainly no Trump supporter. And yet, his comments about the missiles in Syria struck me as honestly reflective. Trump does bullshit a lot, and it's easy to make fun of him. But that's arguably more honest than typical Presidential rhetoric.
- andrewem 9y ago
  (As was noted elsewhere in the comments on this submission, the author is a woman, and quite well known - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen) It's hard to know how to criticize your comment constructively, though one might say that it's not that "Trump does bullshit a lot", it's that he cannot escape bullshitting in any situation. He exists outside facts. If you think the author's criticism of Trump is too harsh, then you should read her earlier piece published just after the election: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/ http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autoc...
  - mirimir 9y ago
    As I said, I'm not a Trump supporter. He's a demagogue. And worse, he's arguably the first "Reality TV" president, in that he honed his public persona for "The Apprentice". If Stephen Colbert wins in 202, he'll be the second. It's a strange world. Anyway, it is refreshing to hear a US President reflect on the enormity of the power at their command, and on the risks of using that power. No matter how incoherent they may be. I don't know whether Trump could escape bullshitting, if he wanted to. It could be entirely an act, designed for his target audience. But either way, what concerns me is that such a persona is so evidently popular.

emartinelli 9y ago

This reminds me of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"[1]. A timeless work about language misuse in Politics. [1]http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/ http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...

musage 9y ago

> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. -- George Orwell, letter to Noel Willmett (1944) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwe...

theyregreat 9y ago

As an aside, some of my favorite words to say: chatoyance and conchoidal.

mannykannot 9y ago

This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate for having their emotions stimulated without regard to facts. To put it another way, the author had no difficulty in refuting those inconsistencies and lies; his problem is that not enough people care about it.

thenewwazoo 9y ago
I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong proposition anyway. You have a concept, but when I use the word that describes the concept, I could be describing the concept or the not-concept.
- pizza 9y ago
  Yeah, this makes sense to me according to my experience of people's perceptions of loaded words. When a word may seem like it has e.g. five or six meanings - it conveys more bits of information - plausible deniability -> capacity to retroactively compress the word's meaning - people 'analyze'/recognize simpler words (only one meaning, i.e. GitHub) differently than they do loaded words (multiple meanings, i.e. dream) - people take their own personal uncertainty (over which meaning is the correct one that they need to interpret the word as) as a sign that if they share their recognition, it's more likely to make them look like a fool in public Observers realize that the original speaker's (e.g. Trump or Stalin) plausible deniability is a kind of insurance policy against audience members calling them out
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    I am not sure that plausible deniability is much of an issue, because the people making such statements don't seem to care if they are caught in a contradiction or lie. Why don't they care? Because their supporters, and those who are close to being their supporters, don't care. It's not so much about deceiving the skeptics (who are not likely to be deceived anyway) as it is about giving those who incline to one's views an excuse for believing that their instincts were unquestionably right, and to get them worked up about it (this applies to Trump et. al. rather than Stalin, because the latter had other means of getting his way, and whatever you think of Trump, he is no Stalin.)

panoptispeech 9y ago

The author indicts Trump's use of language. While his speech does have a certain word salad quality, the left's use of language has been far more damaging. The proponents of academic intersectionality have been using language in a characteristic manner, the effect of which is to attach the emotional valence of an everyday English word to a politically charged concept, giving the language abuser a cudgel with which to beat his political opponents. Word | Meaning in 1990 English ---------+-------------------------- Gender | Personality Violence | Critique Harassment | Disagreement Safety | Uniformity Diversity | Uniformity Unsafe | Controversial Equal | Identical Sexist | Non-discriminatory Racist | Non-discriminatory Problematic | Dissident Biased | Discerning You may find the above table inflammatory, but I didn't intend it as such. My table reflects a real abuse of the language of the sort the author of the article describes. People at work have said that "violent and oppressive ideas" require physical violence as "self-defense". These people were referring to mere words. Others have claimed that to be "safe", people with disagreeable opinions must not be allowed to speak. Obviously, words are not violence (1990 term), even if some people call them "violence" (2017 academic left term). The same shift in denotation (but deliberately not connotation) features in discussions of concepts like "decolonialism", "science", and "culture". If that isn't authoritarian language, what is? I don't blame the right generally and Trump specifically for playing the same game. Unfortunately, the only winning move is not to play.

adrianratnapala 9y ago

When writers and academics question the limits of language, it is invariably an exercise that grows from a desire to bring more light into the public sphere, to arrive at a shared reality that is more nuanced than it was yesterday. Is the author seriously trying to suggest that the likes of Derrida was trying to do that?