All Our Words Get Stolen And Turned Against Us

[Outinleftfield]

It seems like everytime we label ourselves anything the word gets hijacked and turned on its head.

"Anarchy" means no hierarchy, but its been made out to mean "lawlessness and disorder" and "chaos and destruction for its own sake". Even some 'anarchists' believe that's what it means. Very few people actually know that the big circle around the A is an O and stands for order. And then there's people who think anarchism is about some kind of laissez-faire capitalism based on polycentric law. The growing success of the anarchist movement in Mexico is most likely because they tend to use a friendlier term, "mutualista" and the media strangely cooperates with them on that. Given how the media twists words against the left all the time I bet "mutualism" is going to have some wrong associations in the future, especially if all Mexico goes anarchist/mutualist and then we have another cold war.

"Socialism" means worker control of the means of production, but the word got twisted around to include dictatorships ruling over the working class in the name of socialism. Never mind that these dictators also called their regimes "democracies" but nobody ever calls them "Democracies" just because of that.

"Communism" means holding all resources in common, but its been twisted to refer to countries like China and the USSR.

"Dictatorship" originally meant something that dictates (decides). As soon as Marx coined the term "Dictatorship of the proletariat" the word started to refer exclusively to autocracies even though Marx called capitalist countries "Dictatorships of the bourgeoisie".

"Libertarian" used to mean "anarchist" in the original socialist sense of the word. Then mostly former members of the YAF used the word to name their ultraright capitalist party in 1971.

Anytime we coin a term everybody else changes what it means to discredit us or to take credit from us and use it to further their own ideologies.

[Jimmie Higgins]

True and it's basically been going on since the beginning - even worse are: National Socialists, National Bolsheviks and National Anarchists or Tribal anarchists.

It's our lot when we are up against the rich and their entire system. When we are small they will try and define us; when we are effective they will denounce us in editorials and on TV and in the schools and try and turn unions against us; when we are a threat they will throw anything they can at us legal or extra-legal.

That's why we need to be the marijuana or the pre-marital sex of politics. We need to be so ubiquitous and rooted in the working class that the ruling class can try to define us and demonize us until Glenn Beck sucks all the oxygen from North America but most workers will think:

Well, the New York Times says that if I read a socialist argument, my children will be born with extra arms, I'll become a heroin addict, I will become a looser, I will go crazy, grow hair on my palms, and burn in hell... but hey, they are talking about people like Sue and Jose in my union! They're radicals and they make a lot of sense and were right about the war and the recission and the strike we had at work last year.

[chegitz guevara]

It seems like everytime we label ourselves anything the word gets hijacked and turned on its head.

"Anarchy" means no hierarchy, but its been made out to mean "lawlessness and disorder" and "chaos and destruction for its own sake".

"Anarchy" has had that association at least since the English Civil War.

[RedSonRising]

It's true, the media has historically shit on our titles. But the best we can do about it is try and use a hint of shock value by going like "Communism is not a society where 'everyone gets paid the same' and 'the government controls everything'", for example, and they will look up in interest as if you had said "the sky is in fact not blue", and there you have your opening to elaborate on the original definitions of the word. When you are speaking in a broad context, such as in a college lecture hall or a casual conversation with a group of people unfamiliar to you or you have little time to elaborate on why you think socialism as an ideological system would cure the issue at hand, try and use specific words that aren't as loaded, like "economic democracy" or "workers' self-management" or "community control" or "participatory autonomy". If you perk interest, then the walls are down and you can proceed to discuss more honestly, openly, and possibly convert.

On immigration, for example, I would say something like "The Free Trade Agreement hurts both the people of Mexico and the United States by pitting the working class against each other through decisions made at the top, so until labor is democratic and the people have a voice in the economy, the deep-rooted problems will persist." There, one doesn't scare off anyone from agreeing with you, and once you do reveal Marxist tendencies, the connotations of ignorance or blind idealism or aspirations of tyranny disappear.

This is on an individual basis, of course, but that is where it starts. Promotion of revolutionary leftism at large must include education of such terms and try to break down these Cold-War Propaganda-slogan leftovers through proper definition, and then explain why the applications of the ideology are desirable. Otherwise, you just have people walking by and reading newspaper headlines that say "Socialist Daily : Universal Healthcare for All! Down with the Imperialist War in the Middle-East!" Not that such literature is unimportant, but it often preaches to the choir and unaware citizens in many cases may turn away or even read a bit without any increase in knowledge of socialism. Without knowledge of the definition, the title becomes meaningless, and every attempt at expression becomes tainted with what the label currently implies.

*(not knocking any particular paper that may call itself the Socialist Daily, just trying to make a metaphor with an obviously-titled newspaper.)

[scarletghoul]

Most of that's true, but yes anarchy did traditionally mean disorderly and out of control. It was only later, in the 19th century that it was reclaimed and people started adopting the label (I think starting with Proudhon), as Anarchism became a proper coherent political movement.

[the last donut of the night]

There's no need to write essays on it: the large media is owned by the capitalist class. It is in the capitalist's interest to lie to us. It is in the capitalist's interest to distort reality. Because if we really knew who we are, and who they are, then I'm pretty sure Glenn Beck wouldn't get the 3 million views he gets.