On Language and Meaning
Terry H. Schwadron
Dec. 19, 2023
If we’re to take words and messaging as threats, we should be doing so across the board. Our collectively coarse and combative language has made this a very threatening world.
Concern is running high in recent weeks over the catcalls, graffiti and generally threatening anti-Israel messaging that we’re hearing especially on college campuses. We have been relatively quick as a society to decry the whole class of threatening language as anti-Semitism and listened as Republican congressmen, in particular, have joined with college donors to call for the ouster of university presidents who are not stopping the speech.
The New York Times was among those running prominently placed pieces that amplified voices of fear among Jewish students at Harvard, for example. Like others, it quoted faculty and students who feel isolatd and targeted even here by pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel protest language that too often glibly use Hamas phrases like “from the river to the sea” as genocidal, anti-Jew targeting in the Middle East, and the failure of the university to dismiss protesters in the name of allowing free speech.
What the article describes is more about coarse language that could lead to deeds than about specific incidents of resulting violence. To date, other than vandalism, actual physical violence has struck more students of Palestinian descent, including the shooting of three college students in Burlington, Vt., home for Thanksgiving.
Obviously, none of this is good and ignorance of context and history involving organized violence against individual Jews and Muslims cannot be abided in a pluralistic society that claims inclusion.
In blistering the use of inciteful language, we also ought to distinguish what actions are resulting. Are we worried more about the message or the deeds? We believe Hamas when it says it would act again on its anti-Jew threats, so we believe that the international ripples will be real too.
And then, Donald Trump
What brings up this coarseness and incitement anew are the recent messages from Donald Trump, campaigning in New Hampshire by insisting that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the United States.
As CNN noted, the former and would-be president doubled down on his comparisons to the language of Nazi Germany with the comments about migrants from mostly Africa, Asia, and South America.Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” called for racial purity and said German blood was being “poisoned” by Jews.
Trump has drawn criticism over the last month for describing his political rivals as “vermin,” another term that has anti-Semitic connotations and was employed in Nazi rhetoric. The repeated use of the lines, even in the face of criticism, is a dangerous invitation to individual white supremacists and others to do something. It is the kind of inciting remarks that have led to synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh, for example.
Trump claims without evidence that migrants are largely coming from prisons and mental institutions or in armies of invading Chinese or Mexican gangs. He sees the United States as a “haven for bloodthirsty criminals,” and says he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law, to remove migrants from the country and divert military, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration to the border.
But then there are voices like Sen. Lindsay O. Graham, R-SC, telling television audiences that Trump’s words were not important. “You know, we’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right.” Fox News commentor Brian Kilmeade dismissed criticism over “poison,” saying, “He’s just trying to say we want to keep America, America,” he explained. “We want to build up the border and find out who’s coming in and out. And they tried to say that this language was the problem.”
More broadly, Trump advocates along the same lines as Christian nationalists who want interlocking legal, educational, social systems that link adoption of specific Christian leanings in our policies for justice, schooling and social services like abortion and birth control, as well as state-sponsored distaste for anyone with a competing view of the country based on identity and choice.
Yet Trump’s popularity continues to rise, despite his criminal and civil legal challenges, his constant backing of international authoritarians, including Russian leader Vladimir Putin, his promise for politicized Justice. In his view, it is Joe Biden who is a danger to democracy, not himself.
If language is message, if threat is policy, it should apply across the board.
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