Semantic Spin: The Political Power of Misused Words

Words are often misused by politicians to gain support for themselves and for what they want to accomplish. When I say “misused,” I mean that these politicians literally use the words with the wrong definitions. They choose words that evoke strong negative emotions in people because of the historic, correct use of those words. But they are really hijacking these words, including their emotional impact, and transferring them to refer to other things. Unfortunately, most people are not astute enough to notice, and they fall for it. This enables their minds and hearts to be manipulated by the politicians.

The truth is that not every war is genocide, and liberal-minded people don’t want bread lines.

Have you noticed that the word “genocide” has been thrown around a lot lately to describe things that are not really genocide? Genocide is when a governing force intentionally kills a group of people based on their race or religion. The Holocaust was genocide because the goal of it was to kill off Jewish people, homosexuals and other specific types of people. That would affect the gene pool, hence the word “genocide”. Not all wars between countries are genocide. Most of them are not intended to kill off a race of people. Most of them are intended to gain land, political control, or economic gains.

Killing people is usually not the underlying goal of the war. It’s just the impact of the war.

I remember when Putin first invaded Ukraine and he used a pretext justification that Ukraine had been engaging in genocide.  It wasn’t true. He used that terminology to gain support for his war among Russians and some surrounding countries that he thought would support him.

Almost all people generally recognize how abhorrent genocide is. The notion that it’s inherently not right to kill civilians based on their race or religion resonates with everybody. This gives politicians a useful way to manipulate the minds of the mass population. By using the word “genocide” to label something they want to oppose, regardless of whether it’s true, they can drum up support for what they want to do. That is what Putin did with the word “genocide”.

Now we are hearing Palestinian protesters label Israel’s bombing in Gaza as genocide. But that’s not correct. I am opposed to Israel’s bombing in Gaza because it is killing too many innocent people.  However, I don’t think that it is actually genocide. Israel’s goal is not to kill off a race or religion of people. Their goal is to defend themselves from persecution and attack.  I think that Palestinian protesters are using the word “genocide” in their protests to essentially manipulate the minds of observers into thinking that there is something morally wrong with what Israel is doing beyond that of an ordinary war.

Over the last eight years, right wing politicians have done the same thing with the word “socialism”. They have called Democrats socialists. This is just not correct. Socialism is when the government publicly owns everything, dolls out to the people what they need, and expects the people to contribute what they’re capable of contributing. It is a sort of communal living where everybody contributes what they can and, in theory, everybody’s basic needs are met, but resources are distributed somewhat equally so that there’s not a huge difference between the rich and the poor.  Therefore, there’s less incentive for people to work hard. There’s nothing immoral or inherently wrong with socialism. The problem with it is that it didn’t work as a model of society because people are not incentivized to work hard and invent things. Because doing so it doesn’t get them anything back. And that’s why socialist societies haven’t done well in the real world. But, again, they’re not immorally wrong. Actually they’re more moral than capitalism. They just don’t work because humans are selfish. But most people don’t know this and the word “socialism” has an immoral connotation to it that everybody seems to feel. Right wing politicians realize this and so they throw the word “socialist” around to describe Democrats who really don’t endorse socialism at all. Democrats want social programs that are intended to give people who have historically not had the opportunity to move up in economic class, the opportunity to do so by giving them access to education and healthcare. And they don’t want to provide these things for free, but rather just to provide them at a cost that is affordable to the group of people who need this extra help. They just want to make society more fair to everybody and give everybody an opportunity to succeed. They do not want the government to own everything and then just doll out resources like on a bread line in the old Soviet Union.

Right wing politicians are misusing the word “socialism” to essentially scare people into thinking that the Democrats want some thing horrific. They’re wrong because, first of all the Democrats don’t want socialism, and second of all, socialism isn’t immoral in the first place. It just doesn’t work as an economic model in the real world.