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As far as I know, there's never been a post-war effort to ban the word "Führer", nor did the Nazis try to remove the ordinary meaning. Heck, calling Hitler "Th
by adrianratnapala 9y ago
As far as I know, there's never been a post-war effort to ban the word "Führer", nor did the Nazis try to remove the ordinary meaning. Heck, calling Hitler "The Leader" was in no way an abuse of language. And yet the word has become uncommon because of a kind of shared embaressment.
Now I think tacon is wrong to think that "news" will go a similar way, but if it can happen to simple and basic words like "leader", then it's a reasonable thing to speculate about.
- pvg 9y agoGermany was occupied and actively de-nazified so the idea that this stuff disappeared out of a genteel embarrassment seems ahistorical.
- schoen 9y agoI want to suggest that "Führer" did have an unusual specific ideological connotation in the Third Reich that is very different from just saying "Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany and FDR was the leader of the United States". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip
- adrianratnapala 9y agoCorrect, but that is still in line with it being an appropriate use of language. In Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has the unofficial title of "Supreme Leader". This is a very specific title within Iran, and has a specific ideological connotation. And yet it is also a perfectly normal and accurate use of the word "Leader".