Words, Words, And More Words

I haven't been writing much these days, in part due to a stubborn bug I've been battling, and in part because I often wonder if there really is much more to say that I haven't already said over the years. However, today I read an article that seems particularly germane to our troubled times, and hence, back into the fray for another go.

Ever since I was very young, I have had an avid interest in the English language, an interest no doubt fostered by my love of reading. That love of books led me into a career as an English teacher, and it was while teaching Grade 13 (OAC) that I think I began to truly appreciate the often insidious power of language. George Orwell's Politics and The English Language, about which I have written in the past, here, here and here, is especially instructive in that regard.

One of Orwell's key warnings revolved around the political use of euphemisms, words that often mask some unpleasant truths. We use them all the time without ill-intent (think, for example, of referring to the deceased as having 'passed away', or a beloved pet that has been 'put to sleep'). However, those in positions of power, whether they be, for example, employers or politicians, often use them to pervert or conceal truth. Consider, for example, the last time you heard that someone was fired, axed or terminated. These days, people are 'laid off' or 'furloughed'. Nice not to have to think too closely about the desperation that unemployment can bring, isn't it?

But the above illustration is still pretty innocuous. In his column today, Rick Salutin has some thoughts about the more sinister of use language:

Since this is the season for Word of the Year nominations, like quid pro quo and CBD, let me propose a late entry and long-shot (whoops, bad word choice): contractor. As in this report on the backstory to the assault by Iraqis on the grandiose, irritating U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad: “The U.S. carried out military strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia blamed for a rocket attack that killed an American contractor.”

Contractor? Was this person renovating a basement suite in Fallujah or reshingling a roof in Mosul? Nope. Though details aren’t given, this is almost certainly what was earlier known as a defence contractor and before that, by the perfectly adequate word, mercenary. They’ve existed since the dawn of warfare and came into major use with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has taken since then to get “defence” dropped from the term but it was worth the effort.

The omission makes “contractor” a high-value obfuscator in a league with “collateral damage” for innocent victims, “enhanced interrogation” for torture, “extraordinary rendition” for kidnapping, etc. It’s a creative area.

Why this evolution (devolution?) of mercenary?

The UN has a “convention” prohibiting mercenaries that was initiated, perhaps prophetically, in 2001, at the start of the endless, U.S.-incited wars in the Mideast. (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen). UN conventions are fairly easy to create but fade after that, since they must be signed, ratified, declared etc. Only 35 nations signed this one, not including the U.S., U.K. and Israel, the big providers of mercs. Canada signed but didn’t ratify.

But there is another reason as well, one that has allowed private companies to accrue huge profits at the public's expense:

Before the post-millennium invasions, the U.S. miltary-to-merc ratio was about 50-1. It has since dropped to 10-1. They often contract through the CIA and take up about half its payrolls.

By 2006, there were about 100,000 “contractors” in Iraq, most of them ex-U. S. military, trained on the taxpayers’ dime. They were actors in horrors like Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. When you hear about the U.S. removing its last 5,000 troops there (unlikely at best since, in fact, they’re adding forces), you should know there are still 7,000 contractors who aren’t going anywhere.

And so our 'masters' continue their rampant pillaging, public accountability becoming merely an increasingly quaint notion.

So what is to be learned from this? Perhaps only one thing: the prescience and the ongoing relevance of George Orwell's insights, almost 75 years after he wrote Politics and the English Language.

When Is A Scab Not A Scab?

When (s)he is a 'replacement worker'.

I have always loved the word 'scab'. A fitting description of strikebreakers, it is a word that conjures up ugly imagery, imagery quite appropriate for those who act without integrity by engaging in strikebreaking behaviour, which are essentially shameless public declarations of individual extollment of the self over the collective good. There can be few lower forms of human than scabs.



During his time as Ontario Premier, Bob Rae passed legislation that banned these scourges, legislation that was repealed when Mike Harris, devoid of any semblance of integrity, became the next premier. Tellingly, subsequent Liberal governments were quite happy to continue his neoliberal labour view. Scabs therefore are alive and well in Ontario.

And yet, despite the fact that we live in a time when collective-bargaining rights are under regular assault by scabs and their enablers, the word itself seems to have disappeared from our lexicon. The euphemism, replacement workers, is an anodyne that attempts to conceal the ugliness of the act of strikebreaking. One is reminded of Orwell's observations about the insidious use of euphemisms:

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.

Tamper with the language and you tamper with the reality.

Take a look at the following article, about an ongoing strike at a Goderich salt mine.

A rural community is rallying around salt mine workers who have been embroiled in a strike since April, a disagreement that has involved wooden pallet barricades, demonstrations and busloads of replacement workers.

The workers at the Goderich mine have been off the job since April 27.

Unifor Local 16-O represents the workers, and alleges Compass Minerals has been flying in replacement workers from New Brunswick to break the strike while demanding concessions that include mandatory overtime, reduced benefits and a weakening of contracting-out provisions.

In a letter to the community on June 28, Compass Minerals said it has used contractors to produce salt to fill long-term orders, and had little choice to do so in a competitive market.

The strike ramped up when workers blockaded an access road to the mining site this past week to express their frustration over the use of replacement workers. Photos posted on Unifor Canada’s Twitter showed wooden pallets stacked high in a barricade on the road. Videos also showed Unifor national president Jerry Dias walking out the replacement workers from the mine as onlookers chanted “Don’t come back!”

Representatives from local Unifor unions across the country have rallied at the picket line with the Goderich workers and flooded social media with solidarity. Lana Payne, Unifor Atlantic Regional Director, shared an open letter on Twitter that had been written to Laura Araneda, CEO of Vic Drilling, the company Payne says has been allegedly flying the replacement workers from New Brunswick to the Goderich mine.

“By crossing the strike line and doing the work of striking miners, Laura Araneda’s replacement workers are undermining the bargaining power of fellow miners,” she wrote. “The fact is, there is always somebody willing to do your job for a lower wage in more dangerous conditions.

Now do a quick reread, this time replacing the term replacement workers with scabs.

You can see how language choices have a great impact on how we perceive things.

Perhaps the ugly reality about scabs is best reflected by Unifor national president Jerry Dias:

“Crossing a picket line is shameful behaviour that cannot be tolerated,” ... no job is worth stealing food from another worker’s family.”

I close with a video that should leave anyone who has ever crossed a picket line feeling deep, deep shame.

Toward A New Clarity Of Language

With conventional media fighting an ever-growing juggernaut of fake news, news that is either outright lie or gross distortion, two national journals have joined a growing chorus in refusing to use the euphemism alt-right: The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.

After much discussion and input, Kathy English, The Star's Public Editor, reports the following:

... several senior Star editors met to discuss this issue. In order to seek some measure of consistency, we decided to consult further with our main wire services – The Canadian Press and the U.S. based Associated Press.

This week, both services issued “style notes” on how to refer to the self-labeled alt-right....

The main points to guide Star journalists in writing and editing:

Avoid using alt-right generically.
“We should strive to be accurate and precise, and at least for now, the term ‘alt-right.’ is neither. Terms like ‘white nationalist’ or ‘white supremacist’ are known, accurate and much clearer to readers.”

If you use the term alt-right, define it.
“Phrasing like ‘the ‘alt-right,’ a white nationalist movement’ is appropriate.”

... the Associated Press provided a clear definition of the alt-right, telling us that it’s a name embraced by “some white supremacists and white nationalists to refer to themselves and their ideology, which emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race in the United States.”

And, it adds, “the movement criticizes ‘multiculturalism’ and more rights for non-whites, women, Jews, Muslims, gays, immigrants and other minorities. Its members reject the American democratic ideal that all should have equality under the law regardless of creed, gender, ethnic origin or race.”

With all that’s at stake here, journalists must not rely on euphemistic words that gloss over racism and hate. As the AP rightly tells us, be specific and call it straight: “We should not limit ourselves to letting such groups define themselves, and instead should report their actions, associations, history and positions to reveal their actual beliefs and philosophy, as well as how others see them.”

Language matters. It is our job as journalists to provide readers with accurate, clear and precise words that tell it like it is, not veil reality. We should not serve as unquestioning heralds for those who espouse ideology abhorrent to universal values of equality.

To be clear: the so-called alt-right stands for white supremacy. By any definition, that is racism.

In an abbreviated form, The Globe's Sylvia Stead says essentially the same thing.

While I regularly consult a number of alternative news sites, all of which enjoy sterling reputations, it would be foolish to suggest that the days of mainstream media are over. Now, more than ever, journalists toiling in conventional media may be our last highly visible bulwark against a rising tide of darkness, division, and devolution.

UPDATED: Words Are Important

Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

- Excerpt from George Orwell's Politics and the English Language

As a reader, writer and retired English teacher, words have always been important to me. Words rarely exist in a vacuum; they are almost always laden with context, either implicit or carefully spelled out. They have the power to convey meaning and truth, but they also have tremendous power to either help to heal or to destroy. Words need to be respected.

It is within this context that I was very happy to see ThinkProgress offer this note from its editors:

You can learn everything you need to know about the “alt-right” by looking at the man who popularized its name. Credit goes to Richard Spencer, head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI), and one of the country’s leading contemporary advocates of ideological racism.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Spencer keynoted an NPI conference in Washington, D.C. Over the course of his speech, he approvingly quoted Nazi propaganda, said that the United States is meant to be a “white country,” and suggested that many political commentators are “soulless golem” controlled by Jewish media interests.

... ThinkProgress will no longer treat “alt-right” as an accurate descriptor of either a movement or its members. We will only use the name when quoting others. When appending our own description to men like Spencer and groups like NPI, we will use terms we consider more accurate, such as “white nationalist” or “white supremacist.”

We will describe people and movements as neo-Nazis only when they identify as such, or adopt important aspects of Nazi rhetoric and iconography.

The point here is not to call people names, but simply to describe them as they are. We won’t do racists’ public relations work for them. Nor should other news outlets.

An article by Lindy West in The Guardian makes a similar point:

In my column last week, I wrote: “One defining aspect of alt-right white supremacy is that it vehemently denies its own existence … This erosion of language is an authoritarian tactic designed to stifle dissent. If you cannot call something by its name, then how can you fight it?”

So I was heartened yesterday when KUOW, a public radio station in Seattle, released a statement announcing that they will be substituting “white supremacy” or “white nationalism” for “alt-right”. The reasoning, laid out in a memo to staff: “‘Alt right’ doesn’t mean anything, and normalises something that is far from normal. So we need to plain-speak it.”

Such measures as described above are all to the good. As I wrote in a recent post, New Yorker writer David Remnick points out the fact that the media are now beginning to 'normalize' Donald Trump and his ilk. This must not be allowed to continue, and it is to be hoped that more news agencies will find the courage and integrity to tell things as they are, not the way their corporate masters and Trump racists want us to believe.

I leave you with one final warning from Orwell:

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

UPDATE: At noon, CBC's Ontario Today had a show about words that hurt. It is painful to listen to, but also a sobering reminder that Canada is hardly free from racism.