The Mighty Euphemism

I have still not recovered my equilibrium vis-a-vis the world, so the following are not my words. I got them from a Facebook group called Films for Action. Nonetheless, they echo exactly what George Orwell said so many years ago.

Propaganda starts with the manipulation of language. The goal is to render violence morally palatable when committed by those aligned with imperial interests.

Noam Chomsky has long argued that the most effective propaganda in democratic societies is not the outright lie, but the strategic framing that defines the bounds of acceptable thought. This happens not by controlling what we think, but by controlling what we think about, and more crucially, how we talk about it.

Consider the way governments are described. Allies of empire are governed by “administrations” or “democracies,” while enemies have “regimes.” Allies engage in “preemptive strikes” or “targeted operations,” while others “attack” or “escalate.” Our allies “defend themselves”; their enemies are “aggressors.” When a powerful nation stockpiles nuclear weapons, it is “deterrence.” When an enemy pursues the same, it’s a “threat.”

These choices aren’t accidental. They signal who the audience should empathize with and who they should fear. They suggest legitimacy or illegitimacy without ever needing to make a direct argument. It’s not that one country does self-defense while another does terrorism—it’s that the label itself is a tool of propaganda, applied selectively to support imperial policy.

This manipulation of language also defines who is human and who is not. Our civilians are “families,” “children,” “innocent lives lost.” Theirs are “collateral damage.” We never “bomb a city”; we “neutralize targets.” They never “resist”; they “foment instability.”

This is how public consent is engineered—not with force, but with framing. Through decades of this conditioning, populations come to internalize the narrative: that our wars are necessary, our allies righteous, our enemies barbaric. Even when the facts are plain, the language inoculates the public against outrage.

But once you start seeing these linguistic patterns, you can’t unsee them. And that’s when the real work begins—challenging the narrative, exposing the frame, and refusing to accept the moral double standards that justify endless war under the banner of peace.

Given the Americans' involvement in yet another war, one might be well-advised to look for ongoing, even greater, perversions of language and thought.