As “migrant activity” brings chaos to Calais on an almost daily basis, costing our economy hundreds of millions a day, the Left, of course, offers no solution other than empty platitudes. We need “solidarity,” they say; “no human is illegal,” they cry; we should “do something,” they wail. But what, exactly? Silence.
Rather than offer an alternative to those thousands of truckers sweltering in their cabs, or the British businesses brought to their knees, or the asylum centres bursting at the seems, the perpetually aggrieved Left simply indulges in classic displacement tactics.
“Cameron’s use of the word ‘swarm’ was carefully thought out; he avoided the word “plague” in case it implied God had sent them,” declared Frankie Boyle in The Guardian.
Last time I checked, “swarm” was a metaphoric adjective used to indicate large numbers on the move. “The protesters swarmed into the building,” you might read in The Guardian. But apparently when used by anyone to the right of Owen Jones, it must be taken literally. How “dehumanising” they are “humans, not insects,” was the much-repeated riposte.
Next to fall foul was Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond when making a perfectly reasonable point that Europe absorbing half of Africa’s population would be good for neither Europe or Africa. He described migrants at the Eurotunnel as “marauding,” which literally means “to rove and raid”… like, precisely what migrants are doing near the tunnel entrance?
But no, this is a new level of PC. This is a speech code that not only dictates what words everyone is permitted to use, but permits only certain people, of the correct political persuasion, to describe only those of the correct creed. We used to have a word for that type of discrimination, didn’t we, until the Left made the term meaningless.
Much of the language policing has indeed been mere displacement and distraction. But more tragically, though, many who indulge it really do suffer the delusion that they can change the world by changing language and culture.
Take Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the post-Marxist Frankfurt School – the “study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice.” It’s what Anita Sarkeesian studied and what fuelled Gamergate. She really thought she could help real life women by making sure women in video games weren’t sexy.
This thinking permeates the entire Left.
See, we can help Africans by making sure many of their brightest, educated young minds stay in Africa; to innovate, enterprise, invest in and build their continent. We harm Africans by discussing them as children. Putting them in boxes and telling politicians to talk about them in code, rather than speak the truth.
But none of this matters to the Left. Professor Sir Paul Collier, a government adviser and Oxford don (who has written an excellent new book on this topic), tries to discuss how mass immigration harms receiving and exporting nations with one Mehdi Hussain. All Hussain can do, however, is play word games to score cheap points and imply racism.
Deluded as they are, the fact is, those on the Left will continue to “call out” and “shame” those they disagree with, because it’s so much easier that actually debating us.
