Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to You're letting the right frame the discussion

I'm doing that on purpose.

I'm using their own rhetoric, words like "welfare", "entitlement", "give-away" and "subsidy" to show how what they condemn in others is precisely what they are trying to guarantee for themselves. And of course, as you point out, "reform" falls in that same ironic/satiric category.

You can't defeat the fascists by pointing out the contradictions and inconsistencies in their speech. They are perfectly well aware of them. The only thing you can do is demonstrate to others the hypocrisy and cynicism they bring to the table, especially in how they manipulate the language.

Example: "Crony capitalism". Really, is there any other kind? Even Adam Smith remarked on that.

Marx, and his translators, brought an entire vocabulary to the discussion which is carefully avoided by his Rightist critics. Words like "capital", "bourgeosie", and "proletariat" are perfectly useful and value-free terms which describe certain politico-economic concepts precisely without taking an ideological position. But the Right replaces these terms with the more emotionally loaded "enterprise", "middle class", and "worker". Marx's simple equation variables are thereby replaced by brave merchant princes, uprighteous burghers and noble heroes of the shop floor (or is it troublesome low-lifes who always want something for nothing). The terms that go right to the heart of the issue, like "surplus value", and "class struggle" are ignored altogether. By not mentioning them, its as if they never existed.

Surely, you will recall how keen some of our former posters on the Right were that we strictly restrict ourselves to THEIR definitions of key concepts. You control the language, you control the conversation. The great English Socialist George Orwell taught us that.

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