 When words kill
Here, the word doesn't tolerate criticism; it censures
See French text
Reza Zia-Ebrahimi
May 17, 2002
The Iranian
There is a general tendency to underestimate words and their demagogic power in the
present political discourse. We live in a moral universe in which some words have
more weight and impact than the person who uses them or the actual idea they tend
to express.
Words have this peculiarity that they directly appeal to an image, an unconscious
symbol. Those who understand that -- shady politicians and demagogues of all kind
-- can easily channel the latent and terrifying power of words and abuse ethical
values and myths in order to make themselves heard, elected, and their acts justified.
It will be eye-opening for anyone to think about words such as "democracy",
"liberty", "justice" and more recently, in the aftermath of September
11, "terror" or "good and evil". Since the French Revolution,
abusing words has become an art, a science. Like an orator at his desk, the rostrum
holder must use his wit, eloquence and rhetoric in order to galvanize or simply convince
his audience.
 Who could in a moral universe sterilized by "political
correctness" come down against democracy for instance? Democracy is far from
perfect. It is not an achievement, it must be surpassed; as Churchill used to say,
it is the worst system of all bar all the rest.
What would happen if a politician today takes a stance against democracy, in Afghanistan
for instance? He could argue that in a country where education is so rare and economic
prosperity so tragically absent, a democracy wouldn't function correctly.
One cannot objectively pretend that such a discourse is totally unreasonable. Twentieth
century history is peppered with examples of failed democracies. Hitler and Mussolini
were elected democratically. Sudan, Pakistan and others experienced brief democracies
that ended in fiascoes
Yet such a discourse would cause a general outcry. It would create waves of consternation
in our Western world where democracy has become a supreme value, sacrosanct, and
indisputable. The holder of such a position would be accused of defying liberty and
humanism. He would be asked if he has a better solution! Here, the word doesn't tolerate
criticism; it censures.
Today we try to install democracy or other "civilized" values in other
parts of the world, by force if necessary. We invade Vietnam, sustain the Contras
in Nicaragua, starve Iraq and slaughter Chechens (nevermind the Palestinians) in
the name of liberty, justice, and democracy, or even fight terror.
Words that are supposed to denote a positive emotional load are hijacked, emptied
of their meaning and used to justify political acts that are not anything else than
ideological struggles or obvious defense of economic and strategic interests -- perhaps
too obvious.
 When in the media one hears about "struggle between
good and evil", this grotesque and Manichean instrumentation of ethical values
revives cheap Western movie lines and shocks any levelheaded soul.
Moreover isn't it shocking that the only power in the world that has actually used
nuclear weapons on civilian populations tries to justify a possible attack against
Iraq (with all the killings it constitutes) by a so-called desire to limit the proliferation
of these very weapons of mass destruction?
Ever since the usage of the word "terrorism" became fashionable, and almost
obligatory for political orators on all sides, it has given a powerful justification
for suffocating totally legitimate movements (if there is the will to look at it
objectively) that lean toward national
liberation.
From Grozny to Jenin, the words "war against terror" kill. Here, the word
devours its creators. And the state that has imposed this so-called "war against
terror" has become the ultimate historical irony: the only state in the world
that has been found guilty of terrorism by the International Court of Justice.
Nowadays a discourse against "political correctness" in an openly shocking
fashion, paradoxically has a disproportionate impact and audience. When Ayatollah
Khomeini, with the habitual and efficient simplicity of his verbiage, declared that
one should kill Salman Rushdie for slandering Islam and its prophet,
it had the effect of a genuine political bomb, increasing its impact tenfold. This
perverse side effect is most undesirable. Here, the shocking word finds an amplified
audience.
 What is even more shocking is when former presidential
speech writer David Frum (he supposedly coined the term "axis of evil")
quietly prompts the U.S. president to classify three states under "axis of evil".
Frum is not only responsible for drawing a misplaced, inopportune and intolerable
parallel with the Germany, Italy and Japan of the Second World War, but also gives
himself the right to judge what is good and, consequently what is evil. (Things are
no more as simple as during the glorious times of the Garden of Eden).Worse, he places
the U.S. president at the same moral level of mullahs in Tehran who call America
the "Great Satan". Such a similarity of discourse is, at the very least,
disconcerting.
So far, we thought such devastating abuses of language work only on poor, frustrated,
uneducated and, perhaps, jobless masses. But when such language invades our prosperous
and "civilized" lands, and demagogues are not Hitler, Khomeini or Bin Laden
but Le Pen, Haider, Blair and Rumsfeld, there is reason enough to assume realistic
concerns for the future of "democracy" and "justice". See
French text
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