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The Autocrat's Language

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Re: The Autocrat's Language

#51

Post by mythrwy »

nicwolff wrote: post #44
pls2halp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I could replace your “pizzagate, Benghazi, emails” with “pissgate, Russia, tax returns”. This is a non partisan issue.

And there's the false equivalency. Fake news: Pizzagate - demented and wholly made-up Benghazi - thoroughly debunked in Congressional hearings emails - no criminality and no exposure of classified information vs real news: pissgate - a well-respected expert on Russian dirty tricks claims among other things that Trump hired prostitutes in Moscow to pee on each other. Some of those other claims have been corroborated -…

LOL. Pizzagate wasn't wholly made up. The conclusions were silly and and almost certainly false, but there were real circumstances and posts that inspired it.

And you are seriously claiming pissgate is real news because "someone said"?

I understand you feel strongly, but if we can't emotionally detach when it comes to determining reality it just keeps going around and around in the same circle. Which is what I think OP was trying to say.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#52

Post by panoptispeech »

The author indicts Trump's use of language. While his speech does have a certain word salad quality, the left's use of language has been far more damaging. The proponents of academic intersectionality have been using language in a characteristic manner, the effect of which is to attach the emotional valence of an everyday English word to a politically charged concept, giving the language abuser a cudgel with which to beat his political opponents.

         Word | Meaning in 1990 English
     ---------+--------------------------
       Gender | Personality
     Violence | Critique
   Harassment | Disagreement
       Safety | Uniformity
    Diversity | Uniformity
       Unsafe | Controversial
        Equal | Identical
       Sexist | Non-discriminatory
       Racist | Non-discriminatory
  Problematic | Dissident
       Biased | Discerning
You may find the above table inflammatory, but I didn't intend it as such. My table reflects a real abuse of the language of the sort the author of the article describes. People at work have said that "violent and oppressive ideas" require physical violence as "self-defense". These people were referring to mere words. Others have claimed that to be "safe", people with disagreeable opinions must not be allowed to speak. Obviously, words are not violence (1990 term), even if some people call them "violence" (2017 academic left term).

The same shift in denotation (but deliberately not connotation) features in discussions of concepts like "decolonialism", "science", and "culture".

If that isn't authoritarian language, what is?

I don't blame the right generally and Trump specifically for playing the same game. Unfortunately, the only winning move is not to play.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#53

Post by thenewwazoo »

mannykannot wrote: post #49

This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate for having their emotions stimulated…

I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong proposition anyway. You have a concept, but when I use the word that describes the concept, I could be describing the concept or the not-concept.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#54

Post by adrianratnapala »

When writers and academics question the limits of language, it is invariably an exercise that grows from a desire to bring more light into the public sphere, to arrive at a shared reality that is more nuanced than it was yesterday.

Is the author seriously trying to suggest that the likes of Derrida was trying to do that?

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#55

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

mythrwy wrote: post #51
nicwolff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's the false equivalency. Fake news: Pizzagate - demented and wholly made-up Benghazi - thoroughly debunked in Congressional hearings emails - no criminality and no exposure of classified information vs real news: pissgate - a well-respected expert on Russian dirty tricks claims among other things that Trump hired prostitutes in Moscow to pee on each other. Some of those other claims have been corroborated -…

LOL. Pizzagate wasn't wholly made up. The conclusions were silly and and almost certainly false, but there were real circumstances and posts that inspired it. And you are seriously claiming pissgate is real news because "someone said"? I understand you feel strongly, but if we can't emotionally detach when it comes to determining reality it just keeps going around and around in the same circle. Which is what I think…

Are you equating "spy with experience on the topic making a statement in connection with a leaked document" with "fuckheads on the internet masturbate about how smart they are, spew out nonesense"?

There isn't equal weight behind those two kinda of "people saying things". One of those actually is news worthy and should be investigated.

And you're stupid of you think there isn't a difference. Your entire post is like those kids in math class who apply random formulas without a plan -- you're repeating things you've seen that sounded smart without actually thinking and creating a meaningful point.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#56

Post by [deleted] »

mythrwy wrote: post #51
nicwolff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's the false equivalency. Fake news: Pizzagate - demented and wholly made-up Benghazi - thoroughly debunked in Congressional hearings emails - no criminality and no exposure of classified information vs real news: pissgate - a well-respected expert on Russian dirty tricks claims among other things that Trump hired prostitutes in Moscow to pee on each other. Some of those other claims have been corroborated -…

LOL. Pizzagate wasn't wholly made up. The conclusions were silly and and almost certainly false, but there were real circumstances and posts that inspired it. And you are seriously claiming pissgate is real news because "someone said"? I understand you feel strongly, but if we can't emotionally detach when it comes to determining reality it just keeps going around and around in the same circle. Which is what I think…

[deleted]

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#57

Post by mirimir »

roenxi wrote: post #17

That was a pleasure to read. Pushing the politics to one side; there is a call here to use words correctly and to use clear and unambiguous descriptions. That is a coherent and entirely reasonable expectation on any political dialog. Doubly rewarding was that the writing style, while not pro-Trump, avoids the bile and hysteria that has been common since the last American election. Limiting criticism to unclear langua…

I also loved the article. However, I thought that he was too hard on Trump, in his dissection of that interview. I'm certainly no Trump supporter. And yet, his comments about the missiles in Syria struck me as honestly reflective. Trump does bullshit a lot, and it's easy to make fun of him. But that's arguably more honest than typical Presidential rhetoric.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#58

Post by adrianratnapala »

im3w1l wrote: post #10
tacon wrote: post #9

I don't speak German, so it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that Führer means "leader" (or "guide", according to Wikipedia). And that that word is essentially dead in modern German speech. So how do you refer to the "leader" now?, I asked. I didn't get a good answer to that question, but it would probably take more understanding of German as to how they get by without the obvious word. I wonder if "news"…

Leiter, I believe.

Yes, when I lived in Germany I heard "Leiter" a lot when I expected "Führer". To me it sounds like it should mean "conductor".

Can real German speakers tell me if "Leiter" was always a very common word for this usage or merely a not-unreasonable word that won out post-war because it happens to be a bit like the English word? (In fact I suspect they are cognate, maybe that's why electrical conductors are sometimes called "leads").

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#59

Post by mirimir »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #46
taurath wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversation ends up being "is is shitty? yeah its shitty. fuck it." which is the exact state of being that led to trump being elected.

But also to the one that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Yes, and arguably to every revolution.

Some were good, some were bad, and some were epically bad.

Re: The Autocrat's Language

#60

Post by adrianratnapala »

pvg wrote: post #27
tacon wrote: post #9

I don't speak German, so it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that Führer means "leader" (or "guide", according to Wikipedia). And that that word is essentially dead in modern German speech. So how do you refer to the "leader" now?, I asked. I didn't get a good answer to that question, but it would probably take more understanding of German as to how they get by without the obvious word. I wonder if "news"…

Why would 'news' become dead? Nazism had a substantial impact on German both on its way in and out - it developed/repurposed its own special phraseology and terms and those terms later fell out of use (or at least, in out of use in the contexts of their Nazi use). But this happened through focused effort, up to and including laws. Nothing of the sort has happened or is likely to happen to the word 'news'.

As far as I know, there's never been a post-war effort to ban the word "Führer", nor did the Nazis try to remove the ordinary meaning. Heck, calling Hitler "The Leader" was in no way an abuse of language. And yet the word has become uncommon because of a kind of shared embaressment.

Now I think tacon is wrong to think that "news" will go a similar way, but if it can happen to simple and basic words like "leader", then it's a reasonable thing to speculate about.

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