Mediating Evil

Language and Fascism

Perhaps the best example of the deterioration of language and its use to
reinforce power, arrogance, and domination in political conflicts is the rise of fascism
in Germany. As Victor Klemperer brilliantly revealed in The Language of the Third
Reich, the Nazis deliberately manipulated language in order to change the way people
thought about politics and daily life. By using repetitive stereotyping, emotional
superlatives, and romantic adjectives; hijacking or poisoning formerly positive terms
such as “collective,” “followers,” and “faith;” transforming formerly negative words
into positives, such as “domination,” “fanatical,” and “obedient;” militarizing and
brutalizing common speech; discounting reason and elevating feelings; using “big
lies” and doublespeak; and generally debasing and “dumbing down” ordinary
language, the Nazis fundamentally altered the way people thought and behaved.

This led Italian novelist and semiologist Umberto Eco to brilliantly define fascism
as “the simplification of language to the point that complex thought becomes
impossible.” This simplification is revealed not only in the crude sloganeering and
stereotyping of fascist rhetoric, but in the minor ways ordinary speech is transformed
into sermons, prepared scripts, and propaganda, as can be seen, for example, in
media coverage following the deaths of political leaders.

In Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, Franz Neumann
analyzed the Nazi’s transformation of ordinary speech into fascist propaganda. He
began by profoundly defining propaganda as “violence committed against the soul,”
writing:

Propaganda is not a substitute for violence, but one of its aspects. The two
have identical purposes of making men amenable to control from above. Terror
and its display in propaganda go hand in hand…. The superiority of National
Socialist [Nazi] propaganda lies in the complete transformation of culture into a
saleable commodity.

In Neumann’s view, democratic arguments could never compete with Nazi
propaganda, not only because the latter was simpler and appealed to more primitive
instincts, but because the Nazi’s were willing to use any contrivance, including
deliberate lies, in order to succeed. As Adolph Hitler made clear in Mein Kampf:

Propaganda must not serve the truth.... All propaganda must be so popular and
on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it
is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda
must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by
it…. The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the
vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived
than they are consciously and intentionally bad.

It is precisely this transformation of confession into accusation, analysis into
propaganda, and fact into lie and doublespeak; this use of language as a mere means
that does not count, and can therefore be distorted with impunity; this huckstering
salesman’s approach to truth, that allows it to hide and justify all manner of political
and personal crimes. As George Orwell wrote, in “Politics and the English Language,”

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian
purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed
be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to
face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging
and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombed from the air, the
inhabitants are 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 simplification, distortion, and abuse of language by turning it into propaganda
is not restricted to fascist or Stalinist states, but is responsive to a far deeper
problem, which is the forced, impossible effort to suppress half of a paradox or
polarity, deny part of a contradiction, and obstruct inevitable changes. Alex Cary, for
example, attributes the widespread use of propaganda to increasing conflict between
democracy and corporate power:

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great
political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power,
and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power
against democracy.

Yet the same distortion of language into propaganda can be heard in statements
made by US political leaders prior to the war in Iraq, falsely collapsing Iraq into
Saddam Hussein, accusing him of hiding weapons of mass destruction that could
threaten US cities, linking September 11 to the Iraqi government, stereotyping Arabs
as terrorists, demonizing international opposition to the war, and making “preventive
war” seem necessary and inevitable.

Similar distortions can also be recognized in ordinary conflict stories, which
routinely demonize and stereotype our opponents, link them with events beyond
their control, make them seem more powerful than they actually are, ignore the
systemic sources of our suffering, personalize our problems, and trigger the fear and
anger that make our stories successful. For this reason, it is important to recognize
that evil is not something “out there,” inside someone else, beyond our reach, or in
poorer nations, but also something “in here,” inside ourselves, within our reach, and
happening every day in wealthier nations, including the US.