Monday, July 25, 2011

"If You Control Language, You Control Thought"

From Dictionary.com:

ter·ror·ist

[ter-er-ist] –noun
1.
a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.
2.
a person who terrorizes or frightens others.
3.
(formerly) a member of a political group in russia aiming at the demoralization of the government by terror.
 

ter·ror·ism

[ter-uh-riz-uhm]
–noun
1.
the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
2.
the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3.
a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
 
Neither one of these describes an individual or group who is a brown-skinned, Muslim, West-hating entity.
 
In the wake of this Oslo attack (whose details I am not intimitely acquianted with but agree it is indeed a sad, evil occurence), every media outlet and government official is using every possible word other than "terrorist" and "terrorism."
The fact that this evil fuck did this, regardless of his motives, makes him a fucking terrorist. He perpetrated an act of terrorism. But nobody wants to phrase it that way. They want to make sure we don't get confused and think this was Al-Qaeda (which they had no problem wanting to pin the blame on at first, of course), because those brown people from the Middle East are terrorists.
 
It sickens me that people in power continue to twist and warp our language and change its meaning to change how we think. And where do we get off trying to redefine these two words? Mull this over for a moment: before the concept of terrorism was dubbed as such, the founding fathers were fucking terrorists. But we can't be associated with that word. We're Americans! So John Adams and the like would have been ruled something as stupid as crown disloyalists or anti-monarchical fanatics with a democratic agenda. Fuuuuck. As long as they aren't terrorists, right?
 
I fucking hate the media.
 
-Swift