WIN BACK THE LANGUAGE

Don’t political strategists read Marx or Mein Kampf?

I can honestly state my absolute astonishment that Labour strategists, and those for other opposition parties, are getting so badly out-manoevred by the Tories, and their right-wing allies in the press.

Marx outlines exactly how this happens in numerous works, not least those dealing with the French revolution of 1848 and the various manoevrings in its aftermath that eventually led to Louis Napoleon’s coup of 1852.

Hitler in Mein Kampf has as his starting point that the Social Democrats do this, do that, succeed in it, and that the Nazis must learn from this, do it and do it better. He then outlines how to do this, including incrementally moving the argument by small steps whilst nobody notices how it is being moved, and the use of language, and invective, in propaganda and in leading a debate.

This is so absolutely what the Tories are doing, that I cannot understand any left-wing strategist who does not understand what they are doing. But these strategists are falling exactly into this right-wing trap, adopting their language and losing the argument form the get-go.

They don’t call them asylum-seekers because that implies they have a right to claim asylum. They call them migrants because that sounds like a huge swathe of humanity, sweeping down on unsuspecting populations.

They don’t call them unemployed because that implies that they have a right to be employed. They call them jobseekers, because that puts the onus on them, makes them sound like shirkers if they haven’t got a job.

They don’t call them disabled, low earners, working poor or people in poverty. They call them benefits-claimants because benefits sounds like something that is given, not earned nor deserved, and claimants makes them sound like takers, not receivers.

And there’s another one – people used to receive benefits, and be benefit recipients, now they claim them and are benefit claimants. Another instance where language has been subtly altered to give a more negative message.

But Labour and other opposition parties fall so easily into this trap, using Tory language whilst trying to defeat Tory lies, without understanding that the use of Tory language undermines, if not destroys, their own arguments.

WIN BACK THE LANGUAGE. Change the words in the debate. Its not enough to win the argument, but it is a good start to preventing one losing it before they’ve started

 

Winds of Change
10th August 2015