Stop using the Left’s language. By Jake Scott.
The Left, for everything it gets wrong, understands one thing above all else: the power of language. As a result, politics is fought on the linguistic landscape of the Left.
Contemporary political parlance is a debate over different interpretations of equality, of social justice, human rights, descriptive representation, lived experience and so on. It is true that you can make a political argument without reference to these principles, but all one needs to do is look at mainstream discourse to see how it is so much easier when you do. …
To talk in the Left’s terms is to concede the point at the outset. …
The problem runs deeper. It is not simply that the mainstream discourse is dominated by the Left’s language; it is also that even the language the right uses to critique the Left is almost exclusively left wing. Browse through the right wing media, if you can find it, and you will see the same tired phrases appearing again, and again, and again. The left is “woke”; it engages in “cancel culture”; it is for “equality of outcome, not opportunity”. I have a particular aversion to the word “woke”.
Not only is the use of the word lazy, inaccurate and unable to capture with any precision the actual ideological enemy we are dealing with, but the word itself is a left-wing term. Originally meaning being “awake to systemic racism” and morphing into a myriad of other causes, it soon became the 2020’s answer to the 2010’s “social justice warrior” (SJW) name-turned-insult of the internet.
In conversation, many friends make the point that “woke” at least captures something about the left, and if we don’t use that word, what can we use? The question — what should we say instead — is the very point. The right needs to be prepared to have a debate about the nature of the very enemy it is facing, because there is clearly something unique about it that needs to be identified. …
If we only ever use the language of the left, we are fighting on their terms, on their ground and in their territory. …It does not matter that we are disagreeing with the left, but that we are being drawn into talking about issues they have decided are important, rather than issues that the right values. Why are we even talking about transsexual identity, for instance? …
For instance, the Right needs to stop saying it is for “equality of opportunity” — equality is a left-wing or liberal principle; it is not a principle of the Right. The Right does not stand for equality of opportunity. It actually believes in inequality and should be unapologetic about that. Inequality is a productive force, largely because it lies both at the end and beginning of competition. Of course, saying so today is anathema. …
Suggestions?
If I did not conclude by offering some alternatives, I would be the worst kind of Rightist — one who complains with no suggestions forthcoming. Again, the work of creating a Right-wing lexicon will be a difficult one. …
For one, national interest should be re-centred as a key concern of the Right. For too long the British state has talked of its “international commitments” and now is committing more and more of its taxpayers’ money to global efforts, fighting climate change more than anything.
The question of “rights” is a peculiar one, as for so long the British Right held onto the idea of the “rights of freeborn Englishmen”.
With all due respect, while the media and big tech are in control of the public conversation, introducing new terms from the right seems like pissing into the wind.
Remember “alt-right”? Originally it meant tea-party or Trumpian opposition to the left, representing the hipper, trendier, non-establishment part of the Republicans oriented towards the interests of the middle and working classes. But the media quickly redefined the term by simply using it over and over to mean deplorable and white supremacist. Their version stuck, and now the term isn’t used.
The problem always comes back to control of the media.
hat-tip Stephen Harper
