“Left” political ideology has more regard for utility than principles. That utility is found in its language. George Orwell, this blog’s spiritual father, is the most important teacher of how politics uses the tools of language to serve it, rather than the language’s own concepts, and the Left learned his lessons well.
The title “Left Wing” is the first lie of the left wing. Left and Right were dividing lines in Europe, and have nothing to do with American political development (we inspired them to be free). When the power of the French royalty was being challenged by various People Power Movements, those who stood on the left side (wing) of the national assembly wanted to limit the royals’ power. Those on the right wanted to maintain the state’s power. To this day, a literate European understands that the American-style stance in favor of the limitation of political power, greater individual rights and laissez faire economics (or “more” laissez faire) is the entity known as a “liberal“.
The second distortion: linking conservative with right wing is a European construct, overlaid onto the American system for propaganda utility. In Europe, the right is politically retrograde (and because it lost). American “conservatives” are conservative in that they want to conserve the most left-wing political construct in the history of mankind. Which really makes them foundational liberals (standing for left wing liberalism for two and three quarters of a century). The rebrand to “progressive” was a natural evolution for American left wingers, who are really right wingers (what political movement would ever brand itself “regressive?”). The word “conservative” describes evolutions coming from 180 degree different directions, and cannot possibly mean the same things if language had not been bent to serve propaganda (even as “progressives” in Scandinavia “liberalize,” that is, restrict government’s power, more than even American conservatives do).
Confusion continues with the true concept of conservative (rather than the propaganda blot conservative): one can make an American “lefty’s” (actually righty) head spin by pointing out that conservative is a stance that can be applied to any issue, in any political framework (from monarchy to communism). “Do you support the half-century-old status quo of the education system?” “Yes?” “Then, you are a conservative, you wish to conserve what is.” I do not, I support “progress.” But that vocabulary ground has been ceded, and so the conversation cannot be had, since all the debate will be over the language itself. If I call myself a “progressive,” on education, I have too much ‘splainin’ to do.
Most of we “true” lefties (libertarians and conservatives-American-style, predating the Trump phenomenon) have long since given up this crucial fight for uniform conceptual definitions. This left the statists (the true right wingers) in control of the narrative(s). And propagandists have long known that a conceptual war can be won by incessantly repeating a lie, with refutation of the base argument lost in the fight itself. The righties (aka here, accurately: those statists branding themselves as lefties) learned these propaganda tropes in their political warfare across Europe, with the Communists doing the heavy-lifting with the Frankfurt School of deconstructing propaganda. When the Bolsheviks took control in Russia, propaganda twisting was a conjoined twin with the birth of their political power. Their very name was a lie. Communists had to master propaganda, because their ideas are not coherent. Consistent philosophies do not need framing or rebranding.
So, yes, every word claimed by a lefty; a “neo-liberal;” “a Progressive;” (a Bolshevik) or a “liberal” (think old, 70-80s style Bernie Sanders) is a lie by all objective definitions of language. And leave it to Americans to master an advertising rebrand. This has been a supreme propaganda coup for the statists, considering how many dictionaries there are out there (left unconsulted, evidently).
We of the true Left must hold open our linguistic options and keep our linguistic powder dry. We can cede no more of these crucial concepts to those who would win by making themselves too dangerous to argue with. Ground that needs contesting is the growing “Social Justice Warrior” movement. The ground they have already won is enormous (this writer is confined to writing in private groups, cowering before their power). Every concept in SJW is a straight-through-the-teeth lie:
“Social:” this means that the idea is broadly accepted by their society. This is a bald-faced lie: only about 15% percent of democrats, themselves only the narrowest majority in our society (and only in specific geographical areas), agrees with them. “Cancelling” power has never won a single election on its merits, in all the thousands of elections we have had across the nation. The idea is no more democratic than it is “social.” The most powerful SJW tactic, “cancelling,” holds sway only in the fear of challenging it, in our ruinously expensive, Kabuki-theater-archaic, interminably-taking, legal system. For clarity of definition, we must substitute “Social” with “Minority.”
“Justice:” No concept of justice in any of mankind’s enduring major cultures holds that an accusation without rigor of proof (while allowing no fair-and-square defense) is “Just.” The right word for this is “Accusing.”
“Warrior:” America had a debate about whether a drone operator who kills targets in Pakistan from a trailer in Nevada might be called “a warrior.” On the other hand, few debate that the clinicians in the front line of the COVID struggle were “COVID Warriors.” So, it follows that killing is not necessary to be a warrior, but personal risk is. The last word we would ever use to describe someone who rides a trend to attack a person on the internet, at no conceivable risk to themselves, without allowing the target a clarification from their anonymous accuser, is any kind of warrior. Even a mugger who ambushes their victim bears some sort of risk. Even a snitch at school bears the risk of carrying that stain over their entire schooling (“snitches get stitches”). I have to go with: “Tattler,” “Tattle-tale.” It better captures the cyber triviality. That word captures how ephemeral the internet and its social media are. But it’s the tattlers who are super-empowered in making the internet into a permanent record, so they can examine a past that is never redeemable. What utility comes from redemption? Notice how redemption is granted to Joe Biden, master-incarcerator, but denied to a very progressive writer like Glen Greenwald. A shift from the concept of ephemeral is needed. So: “Super-Tattler.”
Social Justice Warrior (SJW) would be “Accusing Super-Tattler (of the) Minority'” (ASTM), if not for the “everything is a lie with the left, including its names phenomenon. Good luck rebranding that.
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