Balkinization: Euphemism and American Violence

Comments:

The frightening thing about such acts of renaming or euphemism, Tacitus implies, is their power to efface the memory of actual cruelties. Behind the façade of a history falsified by language, the painful particulars of war are lost. Maybe the most disturbing implication of the famous sentence "They create a desolation and call it peace" is that apologists for violence, by means of euphemism, come to believe what they hear themselves say.

Or euphemism can be made to amplify or create painful particulars where none exist...civil war, quagmire, quisling regime, broken army, death squads, extreme violence, war is lost, and of course the old chesnut of comparing US troops to Nazis.

Everyone plays this game.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 1:31 PM

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# posted by

Bartbuster : 1:52 PM

Or euphemism can be made to amplify or create painful particulars where none exist...civil war, quagmire, quisling regime, broken army, death squads, extreme violence, war is lost

# posted by Bart DePalma : 1:31 PM

Baghdad, my favorite euphemisms were "insurgency" and "looting". Remember when warmongering assholes like you mocked the people who said the Iraqis were looting. And then when shit started blowing up you mocked people who said there was an insurgency. Good times...

Unfortunately, those were the good times, and your "euphamisms" are the current reality.

Seriously, we are 5 years into a war that was supposed to last 6 weeks, and there is no end in sight. You must have a creative definition for quagmire if it doesn't describe the situation in Iraq.

# posted by

Bartbuster : 1:53 PM

Euphemisms are, by definition, substituted for the purpose of ameliorating the offensiveness of the original expression. Dysphemism is the word you are looking for, but you still wouldn't be using it correctly. You are merely describing exaggeration or, perhaps, mischaracterization.

# posted by

Nathan Taylor : 2:56 PM

Sixty dead in car bombs in Iraq today. "Birth pains"?

# posted by

Unknown : 3:11 PM

From dicktionary.com:

euphemism: The act or an example of substituting an accurate term - though harsh, blunt, or offensive - for one that is mild, indirect, or vague, and chosen to mislead or deceive: "devastate" is a euphemism for "liberate".

- Charles

# posted by

Charles T. Wolverton : 3:51 PM

Sixty dead in car bombs in Iraq today. "Birth pains"?

# posted by jslater : 3:11 PM

Explosion of democracy.

# posted by

Bartbuster : 3:54 PM

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# posted by

Unknown : 4:40 PM

Sixty in just one day?

# posted by

Asher : 6:44 PM

Let us not forget those who brought us the following bon mots:

"Operation Infinite Justice"
"crusade"
“the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
"so?"

And finally, one euphemism was already chosen, but by Bart's side "It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq".

# posted by

Fraud Guy : 9:02 PM

Thank you for this article. I want to comment on one part:

This complacency suggests a new innocence—the correlative in moral psychology of euphemism in the realm of language. And if you take stock of how little general discussion there has been of the advisability of pursuing the global war on terrorism, you realize that this country has scarcely begun to take stock of the United States as an ambiguous actor on the world stage. Those who said, in the weeks just after the September 11 attacks, that the motives of the terrorists might be traced back to some US policies in the Middle East were understandably felt to have spoken unseasonably.

What was unseasonable was assuming the identity of the terrorists before proven. I made that mistake:

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0109&L=TWATCH-L&T=0&O=A&P=179470

Japanese Diet member Yukihisa Fujita recently questioned the Japanese prime minister about 9/11 as a criminal act and premise for the "war on terror."

# posted by

dwightvw : 10:04 PM

The author uses the word "catastrophe" about 9/11. This is a euphemism, or an obfuscation, that I often see used by liberal commentators on 9/11. The word "catastrophe" obfuscates the criminal nature and agency of the acts.

# posted by

dwightvw : 10:12 PM

“the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”

This predates the Bush Administration. I first heard it from Carl Sagan. The Bushies may still use it as a euphemism, of course.

# posted by

Mark Field : 10:19 PM

Mark,

I did not recall hearing it before the most recent user; it's been a long time since I saw or read Mr. Sagan.

Thank you,

Fraud Guy

# posted by

Fraud Guy : 11:51 PM