Anybody watching TV, reading the papers or surfing the internet over the past few years will have undoubtedly noticed the increasing practice of using emotionally and politically charged words to accuse others of wrong doing. They'll have noticed that the habit of calling others fascists has become common place, calling people socialists or communists has returned to being popular, making comparisons between the politics of individuals, groups or nations up against Nazism and Hitler has gone mainstream, and accusing others of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid has become an every day event.
While once upon a time the hurling of these accusations may have caused eyebrows to raise both for their seriousness and as a point of skepticism, today these practices have become so commonplace that most people don't even take notice. Unfortunately for society, it represents a very worrying trend. Why? Because using these words as a generic means of vilifying another, words that are meant to take on a very specific meaning and which should only be used under the proper circumstances, dulls their significance. And that leads to a convoluted world in which the average person is robbed of their ability to make even fundamental judgments. It makes all bad words equal to each other with no distinction or actual meaning, breaking the world down into nothing more than simple representation of good or bad, and robbing individuals of the ability to apply empirical criteria and make critical moral judgments of right and wrong.
Some may say this is simply an academic argument or a debate about semantics. I believe it represents no less than the erosion of our moral compass. Why? Because striping the actual meaning from such words as fascism and apartheid and making them generic words to vilify others will lead us to the point where we won't be able to identify actual fascism if and when it actually becomes a threat, much like the little boy that cried wolf.
Where it all Started
The starting point from where the Western value of the spoken and written word began to lose its meaning can be found in the Arab Israeli conflict, specifically among the Palestinians. While in the Western world, the English teacher and the editor of the newspapers for generations were the gatekeepers of proper usage, applying stringent criteria to determine if words were used in context, in the undeveloped world like the Arab states they had no such gatekeeprs. In fact, when using the English language the primary goal, particularly when relating to Israel, was to cause the biggest negative reaction. This may be linked to the fact that in Islamic culture, the word is
little more than decoration, used to adorn religious shrines and households.
The main driver of this practice was the Palestinians, who used gross exaggerations to accuse Israel of everything under the sun in an effort to generate a response, much like screaming. For example, during the 2nd Intifada in their effort to stem a wave of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of Israelis, Saeb Erekat accused Israel of committing genocide, a very emotionally charged and historically significant word. He also accused Israel of burying hundreds of massacred innocent Palestinians (which were later proven not to exist) in mass graves. Both of these accusations were proven false by the UN. We can see another example with Yasser Arafat's wife Sufa who in the presence of Hillary Clinton accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian drinking water with "chemical materials." And in another example, after the backlash experienced when it was discovered that American forces used depleted uranium in their weapons in Iraq, the Arab world (specifically Prince Mansour Al-Saoud of Saudi Ambassador) accused Israel of the same practice.
The Palestinians saw that if they could latch onto popular 'buzzwords' no matter how far from the truth they were, the press would not only parrot their accusations and splash them across the front pages of the worlds largest newspapers, but would by this result be put on trial in the consciousness of the Western world. All too often these accusations are accepted as fact by an international readership whose attention span lasts little more than 140 characters. The Palestinians learned what Mark Twain's taught us long ago, A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Coupled with the explosion of the internet where accusations are repeated as news regardless of whether or not they are valid and with no attempt to verify them, Western journalists themselves adopted the unethical practice of using hyperbole in what can be referred to as "shock reporting," to draw an audience and try to obtain market share. This practice has grown to embrace the vast majority of international media outlets around the globe.
And today it has become commonplace. In Israel for example, some politicians, such as Yossi Sarid in his piece titled 'No one knows fascism better than Israelis' (linked below), and Arab members of the Israeli Knesset such as Israeli Arab MK Haneen Zoabi (the same woman that participated in attacking Israeli soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara) in her claim that the University of Haifa is 'protecting fascism' for not allowing her to hold a conference, have themselves become purveyors of this practice. And the active support of the media in not taking responsibility for what they print and refusing to calling out public personalities when misusing language to further their political agenda has facilitated their ability to do so.
The latest campaign against Israel's legitimacy using hyperbole is being waged by none other than Israel's daily newspaper Ha'aretz, who has for weeks been warning of the pending turn to fascism by the Jewish state.
You see, Israel isn't a fascist state, nor is it any closer to being one than it was thirty years ago. Fascism as defined by Webster's online dictionary is "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."
On the other hand, Israel is a multicultural and multiethnic state with an operating democracy, free market based economic system, a government that is voted into office by the people, a very active opposition, and proportionate representation of its minority Arab citizens in the Israeli government. Israel is hardly a dictatorship. As a matter of fact, the last Prime Minster was forced to resign after having been charged with multiple counts of corruption. Israel is not autocratic, nor does it exalt the nation above race. In fact, its much less of a fascist government than any of the Islamic republics or Arab run nations that indeed, define by their laws that anybody not of Muslim persuasion is a second class citizen.
Unfortunately, this practice has moved beyond the realm of the Arab Israeli conflict. We can see that it has become an acceptable practice, most likely due to media outlets lowering their reporting standards in an effort to retain market share and draw hits. In the United States for example, we can see accusations of socialism and communism being thrown around against the current Administration. Recently, Glenn Beck of Fox News has accused George Soros, a Jewish international financier, of helping the Nazis during WWII to round up Jews. And while I strongly disagree with George Soros' policies particularly regarding Israel, again hyperbole dulls our senses by framing an individual in the limited scope of good or bad, and strips the public of its ability to understand for themselves what is a much more complex issue, robbing them of their responsibility to determine right from wrong.
One can make similar comparisons between almost any two concepts and the policies and actions of any nation on earth. In all societies a government's actions can be taken out of context, very specific examples emphasized, and then a comparison can be made against a concept like "fascism," seem applicable, even if it is not. In war, so many actions can be taken out of context and compared up against the Nazis. Though of course the ones that really matter and aren't taking place, such as rounding up a people based on religion or race then sending them off to death camps are purposely ignored. But the bottom line is just because there may be similarities; it doesn't make them the same thing, or even close to being the same thing.
Using similar words completely out of context, even for the sake of argument is both wrong and destructive. Destructive to the very moral fiber of our societies, destructive to the very values we hold dear, and destructive our ability to apply the yardsticks these concepts are meant to represent, and make competent decisions.
What can be done to put an end to this practice? It doesn't seem like there's much. It would require that those in the media take up the role they once so proudly held, as the gatekeeper of language, of taking up a code of ethics, one which they would promise to abide by, commit to objective and ethical reporting, of publicly calling out mistakes or false accusations, and of refusing to reprint or repeat incorrect or unfounded accusations simply because they're "quoting" their source, which is all too often one that has requested to remain anonymous. In today's market of bankrupt media outlets and free content, of blogger opinion peddled to us as objective fact, there's very little that one can do besides use their own moral compass, post comments in articles that abuse language to make a point, and write letters to editors demanding objective reporting.
