There are things we can’t say concisely and with sufficient
emphasis because too many words have been softened by political familiarity.
A good word for authoritarian politics is one we could do
with as a matter of some urgency. We have communist,
Marxist, Stalinist, Maoist, fascist and one or two others but we
already know them to be inadequate. They fail to capture the acute political danger
of centralising all decisions. They fail to get behind the fluffy velvet glove.
Communist and Marxist have been shorn of their terrors
by cartloads of fellow travellers infesting western politics and academia.
Somehow, the human horror of killing innocent people by the millions has left no
seriously indelible mark on our language. How convenient that is for modern
central planners - but surely not a healthy situation for the rest of us.
As for Stalinist
and Maoist I think the same problem
applies. Many people of a certain age once knew self-professed Maoists and
comfortable middle class faux radicals with Soviet sympathies. They were those for whom
Stalin and Mao were no more than over-enthusiastic in their ruthless
application of industrial scale murder.
As for fascist, it
has evolved into little more than a term of abuse, although very often it is
all we have. So we drift towards a kind of soft fascism because even our
language has betrayal woven into its threadbare and endlessly ameliorative
fabric.
What else can one say – without better words?
3 comments:
There are things we can’t say concisely and with sufficient emphasis because too many words have been softened by political familiarity.
Very, very true.
It is a paradox of language that with soft fluffy words we can still construct a sharp cutting edge. Irony and satire are still feared, as is intelligent analysis. Pictures, too. Just that one shot of Clegg holding that signed promise not to raise tuition fees. Deadly.
James - thanks.
Sam - true, we can construct a sharp cutting edge, but we have to do it with weakened language. To my mind 20th century horrors should have left us with something more toxic.
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