As we enter 2024, many conservatives see the coming election as the last best chance to save our cherished republic from irreparable leftist destruction. We know from history that four more years of Democrat political control and neo-Marxist cultural domination may well be more than the America we love can bear. But we’re also aware that leftist DNA requires its woke adherents to employ every conceivable scheme and ploy to retain power. So we must be fully-equipped to counter each falsehood, each gas light, and each dirty trick the left desperately will throw against the American people over the coming months.
Among the left’s worst chicanery is its incessant manipulation of language. Like the totalitarians envisioned by George Orwell, the left today uses language for political and social control. Leftists regularly coopt benign-sounding words and infuse them with woke meaning that eludes many Americans who aren’t paying close enough attention to discern their duplicitous sleight-of-hand. My goal here is to reveal some of this linguistic chicanery so Americans can be crystal clear about what the left really means when it uses these opaque terms. Here’s a humble start to help readers accurately translate from woke to English in 2024:
Antiracism: Opposition to people of European descent. Leftists argue that hatred of people not of European descent is baked into those who are. By leftist definition, therefore, those who oppose such deplorable people are antiracists. In other words, antiracism as used by the left has nothing to do with opposing racism.
Antizionism: Jew-hatred. The claimed distinction between antizionism and antisemitism is merely the latest fraud on the part of Jew-haters to mask their true animus. Dennis Prager recently explained this. We must be prepared to counter this odious deceit.
Equity: Marxism. The crux of every political system derived from the writings of Karl Marx – whether denominated communism, socialism, national socialism, democratic socialism, fascism, progressivism, leftism, or just plain Marxism – is aggressive centralized control by self-anointed experts purportedly to manipulate desirable societal outcomes. With their “equity agenda” modern leftists simply have devised new terminology for the same old Marxist drivel. Worse, they deceptively picked a word that sounds like “equality” – a pillar value supported by all Americans – so many folks don’t realize that these homophones actually are antonyms.
Existential: Threatening to leftists. Leftists often accuse their opponents of posing an existential threat to this or that. Although these prognostications sound stark, they’re sometimes meant quite literally. Thus, for example, when leftists argue that “climate change” poses an "existential threat” they really mean that those of us who challenge their sham climate hysteria pose an existential threat to themselves and their livelihoods.
Occupation: Israel. Many Americans – including my fellow Jews – naively cling to the absurd notion that the throngs of Jihadists, leftists, and other assorted Jew-haters violently clamoring against “the occupation” merely object to Israel’s continued control over parts of Judea and Samaria captured during the June 1967 war. In other words, they believe these decades of bloodshed can be boiled down to a border dispute – and, in fact, many self-righteous American Jews also (foolishly) oppose Israel’s continued “occupation” of Judea and Samaria. Moreover, the clueless Biden administration claims the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved merely by turning Judea, Samaria, and Gaza into a Palestinian state – their so-called “two-state solution.” But this is absurd shadow boxing. Those marching against Israel are not demanding a second state in the region; rather, they explicitly are calling for Israel’s annihilation. In fact, they’ve been shouting it for years: “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free." And, prior to October 7, Gaza had not been under Israeli control for nearly 20 years. One can have eyes, ears, and a brain but willfully may choose not to see, hear, or think.
Voter suppression: Voter identification. It’s difficult to imagine any legitimate voting system that doesn’t require reasonable proof, through self-identification, of one’s qualification to participate. Yet this is precisely the state of our elections in many places. When responsible legislators work to correct this outrage they’re invariably accused of “suppressing” citizens who truly want to exercise their God-given franchise but just can’t seem to identify themselves. Ever notice, however, that these bald accusations never come with evidentiary support?
White supremacy: Western Civilization. This one admittedly can be challenging to discern. We’ve long wondered what leftists are talking about when they claim that “white supremacists” pose the most profound threat – indeed, an ”existential” one – to the internal security of our country. No doubt we’ve all seen a few neo-Nazi and KKK kooks emerge from the shadows every once in a while to spew their vile asininity. But those reprobates have zero political power so obviously can’t explain the leftist meltdown over “white supremacy.” Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear our confusion is definitional. Certainly, Western Civilization has placed its supreme value – at least historically – primarily on the thoughts, ideas, writings, philosophy, theology, art, music, literature, architecture, inventions, and creations of Europeans and those of European descent, i.e., upon “white people.” So this is what the left actually means by “white supremacy.” Read carefully the words of choreographer Michelle Dorrance, whose leftist dance troop recently performed at the Biden White House: “I am a white tap dancer with Black cultural ancestors in a society that privileges white people and whiteness. . . . It is imperative for us to fight against racist norms that have defined American culture since its very origin. If we do not do enough, this story will not change. It is from this place of white privilege that I invite you to join me in my lifelong antiracism work. Understanding how deeply embedded white supremacy, racism, and colonialism is in our culture is paramount to understanding our role (as white people) in perpetuating it, and embracing our job to dismantle it.” When leftists such as this argue that “white supremacy” is “deeply embedded” in “our culture” they are attacking Western Civilization – every bit of it – as the despised fruit of “whiteness” and “white people.” Thus, for the left, Americans of every background who cherish the cultural and civilizational foundations of our great republic are “white supremacists.” But in one sense they are correct: Western Civilization does indeed pose a dire threat to leftism – in fact, an existential one.
Leftists crow a lot about colonialization. In my view, the most egregious colonialization today is the left’s takeover of the English language. So let’s decolonize our mother tongue. Bearing in mind that leftists are not deep but certainly are facile we must tirelessly work to expose their endless perversions, prevarications, and distortions of our language. Feel free to add your own woke-to-English translations in the comments below. Leftists are squatting on our words. Let’s end the occupation.