Posted on 10/10/2014 7:09:31 AM PDT by relictele
LANGUAGE matters and every day our lives are governed by things we are told.
And language means the use of words. That is why propaganda is the first weapon of the dictator - the power to bend the real meaning of words in order to bend the listener/reader's mind.
The two weapons of the propagandist are the misnomer (the wrong word with the wrong meaning) and the euphemism (the wimp that dare not say what it really means.) Way out in the lead for both categories is the BBC. Listen to the news and you'll see what I mean.
The Beeb will never under any circumstances use the word 'terrorist'. It says 'militant' instead. Len McCluskey of Unite is a trade union militant. But he does not torture prisoners, massacre villages of men, women and children, or crucify opponents. ISIL, Al Qaeda and Al Shebaab do that. They are terrorists. Why not use the right word?
The same applies to 'radicalise.' To convert a young person with a normal Muslim upbringing to a culture of murder and suicide is not to 'radicalise.' It is to brainwash. The word radical comes from 'radix' the Latin for root. But a person seeking the root of Islam will study the Koran which nowhere advocates mass murder and suicide; indeed it denounces both. The young people going out to Syria to join ISIS have not been radicalised but brainwashed, so let us say so.
The Beeb (and most of the media) will never say 'the EU' if they can say Europe. But there is a huge difference. Europe is a continent, a landmass. It cannot be consulted so it cannot have a collective opinion. The EU is a political project now in deep trouble and a governmental system based on nonconsultation and contempt for the people.
It is perfectly principled to be opposed to the EU, but to be anti-European is clearly xenophobic. And Britain can no more 'leave Europe' than India can leave Asia. To keep confusing the two, and deliberately, is propaganda, not reportage.
And in the entire Scottish referendum the constant word was 'independence.' No, what Alex Salmond and the SNP wanted was to secede from the Union. The noun is 'Secession.' A separated Scotland would never have been independent. Tiny and impoverished, it would have been ruled by foreign tycoons and faraway bankers. In the modern world you need fifty million inhabitants and massive assets to have the muscle to protect your national interests - if you have the bottle to use that muscle. Yet not once was the word 'secede' used.
No nation can be well-informed if its people are constantly fed misnomers and euphemisms - i.e. propaganda. So, fellow journos, study your dictionary, then write. The right word is important.
Obviously his focus is on the UK, the BBC and the EU but the constant propaganda battle rages in the US as well, especially with leftists in power.
The gay marriage controversy has, regrettably, kicked into high gear again with all manner of self-regarding individuals boring us to death with their weepy diatribes about love and rights and discrimination etc. They have absorbed the 1.5%'s propaganda so completely that they are now repeating it verbatim.
But the state's role in marriage i.e. licensure has nothing to do with love. There have been untold numbers of marriage licenses issued to couples who aren't in love. The only requirement - and rightfully so - was that they were male/female couples.
Propaganda is effective because it appeals to inner conceits which the weak-minded are eager to convert to outer conceits. And so we have politicians saying they 'don't want to stand in the way of love' without realizing that they are confirming they neither know nor care about the historical, biological, cultural, practical and religious aspects of marriage. The puppetmasters care about gays about as much as they care about the Van Allen Belts; it is simply another method of undermining civilization in favor of a new construct with government having a seat at every table in every household.
The Left has been trashing marriage for decades. They only warmed to the topic when gays wanted to get married.
Really? </S>
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