George Orwell’s most famous essay is “Politics and the English Language,” written in 1946.* He wrote out of concern that “the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language” and in hope that “one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. . . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
The workings of euphemism are wonderful: “pacification” has the root meaning “making peaceful”; “rectification” has the root meaning “making right.” Who can oppose such claims? And surely “elimination” of the “unreliable” has to be beneficial.
Euphemism is from a Greek word meaning "good speech.” The substitution of nice terms to cover up nasty deeds (as exemplified above) is one way to accomplish that mind trickery. Another way is the use of very general and/or abstract words to deflect audience’s attention from the dirty specifics.**
Putin’s war against Ukraine can serve as an object lesson in euphemism. For one thing, the word “war” has been outlawed in Russia; Putin has called his invasion a “special operation.” What can be vaguer than something called “an operation”? What exactly goes on in “an operation”? The use of the term when applied to a surgical practice (probably the most used application of the term), although describing an action that is designed to have a beneficial outcome, is still a cover-up of the nasty work of cutting into a patient’s body. Beyond medicine, the vagueness of “operation” can denote any kind of action: the “operation” of a motor vehicle, for example.
And the modifier “special”: the “operation” is not indiscriminate or ordinary, but purposely focused, like a “special” gift for a “special” person.
Meanwhile, shells are landing on civilian targets, millions are fleeing their homes, or hiding out in improvised shelters—and the death toll mounts.
*
Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB man, may be an expert in spycraft, but he is no historian. His arguments about the relationship of Russia and Ukraine (and Russians and Ukrainians) is fraught with error. In a speech in February, Putin asserted that
Ukraine and Russia are, in historical terms, essentially inseparable.
“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said. . . . “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians.”***
Ok, let’s for the moment forget that what Putin said is not historically correct. Let’s instead consider that that is what Putin sincerely believes. Which is the real interesting thing. If Putin can unleash a war against a populace he believes to be his own people—that is native Russians—what carnage and destruction would he unleash against the natives of Ukraine if he believed that they were really Ukrainians?
***
* https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
** Consider here these two examples of Nazi euphemism:
“As part of the final solution…Jews fit for work” would be separated by sex and forced to do road construction, “in the course of which the majority will doubtless succumb to natural wastage.”
Dear Party Comrade Rademacher! On my return trip from Berlin I met an old party comrade, who works in the east on the settlement of the Jewish question. In the near future many of the Jewish vermin will be exterminated through special measures.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/03/24/wannsee-the-road-to-the-final-solution-peter-longerich/
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End Note:
"The war is framed in Russia in terms of forcing peace upon Ukraine."
Masha Gessen
The New Yorker
