By FASPE Chair David Goldman
Words matter. We typically mean that oft-repeated aphorism to suggest that we should take care in our choice of words, to ensure that we mean what we say, even to encourage and facilitate the ability of others to pick up intended nuances in our writing and in our speech.
But these are not normal times. It seems that some of our leaders, yes even our professionals, are prone today to test our intelligence (or is it to take advantage of our natural cynicism?) with their cleverness, their furtiveness, with words. Most concerning, I suggest, is their mendacious use of carefully chosen words that are consciously intended to manipulate, to lie, to mislead, to cover up, to do anything other than to elucidate.
What’s worse, they are as effective and intentional in their mendacity as Webster and Roget are in their intended clarity.
Let’s go to the source, to the historical experts. Let’s examine a few of the most common cynically deployed word usages under National Socialism:
Euthanasia:
- Per the AMA: “…the administration of a lethal agent by another person to a patient for the purpose of relieving the patient’s intolerable and incurable suffering.”
- Nazi usage: Murder of those who were determined by state actors to have “lives not worth living,” i.e., those with “disabilities” and the “mentally ill.”
Resettlement:
- The United Nations Refugee Agency: “…the transfer of refugees from an asylum country to another State…to promote the health, well-being, and stability of the refugees.”
- Nazi usage: Deportation of Jews, Roma, and others to “the east” to concentration camps and other sites of murder—for the purpose of murder.
Lebensraum:
- Google Translate: “Living Space.”
- Nazi usage: Territorial conquest and forced replacement of the population, i.e., the permanent removal of populations in Central and Eastern Europe, to be replaced by German “colonists.”
Decency:
- The Cambridge Dictionary: “Behavior that is good, moral and acceptable in society.”
- Nazi usage: The same (!), except where “good,” “moral,” and “acceptable” are defined to include, for example, the murder of the Jews.
Of course this is independent of the horrors of their actions, the actions that derived from these seemingly benign words.
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We have become accustomed to applying the word “euphemism” to describe the above. Cambridge’s definition of euphemism: “a word or phrase used to avoid saying an unpleasant of offensive word.”
Really, is euthanasia merely a more pleasant way of saying “murder?” The intent of this bastardization of language was not to be more pleasant! Yes, it sought to moderate, but, more, it sought to justify and mislead. And, to be clear, it was not because they were embarrassed or thought what they were doing was wrong; they knew it was right and that the masses would not understand.
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Which brings us to today. What have we learned from the misappropriation of our language by autocratic genocidal wordsmiths of Nazi Germany?
Re-migration:
- Is that even a word?
- Certain European anti-immigrant nationalists use it to mean deportation of immigrants!
Compact (this is what the Trump Administration “offers” to universities to provide outsized funding so long as they adhere to the administration’s policies with respect to which students they accept, which courses they teach, and which ideologies they promote):
- The Law Dictionary: “An agreement or contract. Usually applied to conventions between nations or sovereign countries.”
- Current usage, thinking The Godfather: an offer you can’t refuse.
Tariffs:
- The Council on Foreign Relations: “…a form of tax applied on imports …used…to protect domestic industries…as well as to retaliate against other states’ unfair trade policies.”
- Current usage: a tool to punish countries that do not pay sufficient homage to the Trump Administration or its policies or do not agree to outsized “investments” in the US, with the result of a hidden tax on American consumers because of the increase in prices.
Self-Deportation:
- Harvard Law Review (there are limited actual definitions; like remigration it is a concocted word to reflect the times): “the…strategy of making life so unbearable for a group that its members will leave a place.”
- Current usage: The strategy of making life so unbearable for individuals who are legally entitled to be in America that as a practical matter of their livelihoods they are left with no choice but to leave America.
Rebellion/Insurrection:
- An AI Composite: “…a violent uprising against a government or authority, typically involving an organized group with the intent to overthrow it, seize power, or resist lawful authority through violence.”
- Current usage: Even peaceful political demonstrations in opposition to government policies, but not a violent attack on the US Capitol with the stated purpose to undermine or interrupt the completion of a lawful election.
These are independent of concepts like “alternative truth” which sound like something but aren’t; or “hoax” to define anything that we don’t like; or “enemy of the people” to define journalists who don’t fall in line with particular policies.
I suppose that we occasional humorists may appreciate the irony or the implicit self-knowing smugness in these words. But, we are not talking here about puns or Dad-jokes. This is not the mere self-righteous humor of the intellectual elite. This is the tool of the autocrat, the playbook of the demagogue. It is the perversion of language with malintent, an effort to hide the facts from the ignorant masses, or worse to treat the masses as malleable pawns. It is saying to the masses that, to quote the noted wordsmith Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, we mere mortals “…cannot handle the truth.” Or, at least, that the masses will have the truth redefined for them. So much for democracy.
Moreover, the danger lies in the fact that it is our professionals who are creating, marketing, and/or enabling this pornography! Lawyers use the words as part of their legal defenses; journalists have become propagandists or enablers by repeating these manipulative words as if they have their common or intended meanings; economists and business executives promote these words in presentations and papers. Clergy use them as supposed instruments of faith. What is complicity if not repeating these words without acknowledging their mendacity?
Following World War II, there was a movement among a small group of Germans to discontinue their use of German as a language; some even promoted Esperanto, the language banned by the Nazis. For some, they pushed aside German because so many words had become symbols of the pollution of their culture, not least because of the cynical euphemisms, the debasement and distortion of commonly understood words.
Professionals, all of us—do not participate in this perversion of our language. This is not a mere crime against speech or writing. It is a manipulation of our sensibilities and of our ethical frameworks. It is mendacity in the hands of the mendacious, it is manipulation and complicity in the hands of the professionals. It is the opposite of professional ethics. Words matter.
"Considering Professional Ethics" is a monthly essay shared in the FASPE e-newsletter.
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