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On a tangent, the headline that NPR went with is "Greenlanders Vote Leftists Into Power, Putting Fate Of Rare-Earth Mine In Doubt" [0] The usage of the term le

On a tangent, the headline that NPR went with is "Greenlanders Vote Leftists Into Power, Putting Fate Of Rare-Earth Mine In Doubt" [0] The usage of the term leftist is very intriguing to me. It was once exclusively used to describe violent communist rebels in a far away jungle. The most common phrase was "leftist guerrillas." It is a very loaded term historically. Then, some time in the last couple years, unabashedly conservative news sources and personalities began to use it to describe anyone that doesn't vote GOP. Today the word was used by NPR in the "speakable" tag which is what appears as the headline in Google News. Based on the NPR article's content "Leftist" comes out of nowhere to me. Many other words could have been used like and each of those words is less loaded and likely more accurate than "leftist." I see the term used regularly all of a sudden, even by reddit commentors to describe themselves. The term has been very successfully normalized in a very short time. I am truly in awe of how conservative messaging is so successful. I would love to understand the mechanisms for use in business. Does anyone have any thoughts or insights on this? [0] https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/985046099/opposition-wins-elections-in-greenland-casting-doubt-on-future-of-rare-earth-min https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/985046099/opposition-wins-ele...

vidarh 6y ago
I think the shift you describe has been more general. The US right single-handedly rehabilitated the term "socialist" by using it on Obama - without that Sanders would not have had the chance he had. If anything I think that the conservative messaging has been decidedly of the foot-shooting variety by overreaching. I think they really damaged themselves that way in the long run. I find it interesting that you find the term "leftist" to be so loaded, because to me (living in the UK), the main issue with this term is that it does not make clear that this is a party to the left of the social democrats, that considers themselves explicitly democratic socialist. That said, I'll note the NPR article now has the headline "Opposition Wins Elections In Greenland, Casting Doubt On Future Of Rare-Earth Mine", and I actually find it more disturbing than that they initially used "Leftist" that they've managed to avoid even once mentioning that this is a socialist party. Not mentioning the views of the larger party in an article about an election is really odd. It feels like they want to downplay how left-wing the Greenland electorate is. It's just mentioned that they're the main opposition to the social-democratic party, but it's worth noting that the social-democrats and socialists combined now have 2/3's of the Greenland parliament, and the rest are mostly centrist liberals. It's also worth mentioning that this also means 26 of 31 seats are held by parties favouring independence from Denmark (though not necessarily immediately), but that the opposition to the mine on environmental grounds beat out the argument that the mining project would improve the prospect of independence by providing increased revenues and jobs. It's a remarkably vapid article.
- consumer451 6y ago
  Thank you very much for your perspective. This gives me a lot to think about.

vidarh 6y ago

I think the shift you describe has been more general. The US right single-handedly rehabilitated the term "socialist" by using it on Obama - without that Sanders would not have had the chance he had. If anything I think that the conservative messaging has been decidedly of the foot-shooting variety by overreaching. I think they really damaged themselves that way in the long run. I find it interesting that you find the term "leftist" to be so loaded, because to me (living in the UK), the main issue with this term is that it does not make clear that this is a party to the left of the social democrats, that considers themselves explicitly democratic socialist. That said, I'll note the NPR article now has the headline "Opposition Wins Elections In Greenland, Casting Doubt On Future Of Rare-Earth Mine", and I actually find it more disturbing than that they initially used "Leftist" that they've managed to avoid even once mentioning that this is a socialist party. Not mentioning the views of the larger party in an article about an election is really odd. It feels like they want to downplay how left-wing the Greenland electorate is. It's just mentioned that they're the main opposition to the social-democratic party, but it's worth noting that the social-democrats and socialists combined now have 2/3's of the Greenland parliament, and the rest are mostly centrist liberals. It's also worth mentioning that this also means 26 of 31 seats are held by parties favouring independence from Denmark (though not necessarily immediately), but that the opposition to the mine on environmental grounds beat out the argument that the mining project would improve the prospect of independence by providing increased revenues and jobs. It's a remarkably vapid article.

consumer451 6y ago
Thank you very much for your perspective. This gives me a lot to think about.