Contrary to popular mythology in the West, the Bolshevik revolution did not immediately result in the establishment of a censorious police state. In between the totalitarianism of the Soviet period and the authoritarianism of the Tsarist era, a pan-Slavic spring yielded a brief period of open expression, fearless poetry, and novel art. Tragically, this Soviet renaissance was not to last. Rapidly, as the Western world sought to throttle the Bolshevik infant in the cradle, a bunker mentality took hold. Soon, the average Soviet citizen who was accused by his comrades of insufficient zeal in pursuit of socialism or, later, of right deviationism, would be compelled to critically examine their moral failings in a public venting session. Those self-criticisms eventually gave way to self-denunciations, show trials, and the camps. It was not long until an accusation of ideological heterodoxy was a prelude to a visit from the NKVD. Every New Soviet Man was compelled to speak in a language that conveyed his or her dedication to the system, and any deviation from this dictionary of Newspeak vernacular was seen as a betrayal of seditious impulses.
So, too, in our brave new world have linguistic cues become heuristic devices for divining an individual’s politics. Likewise, nonconformity reveals unacceptable ideological heterodoxy. On both the fanatical right and left, scarlet letters are affixed to persona non grata that have real world consequences for those unlucky enough to be branded.
An overt example of this phenomenon bubbling up from the parlors in which it originated to the highest ranks of public life became evident this week. At a rally, Hillary Clinton finally rewarded her most fashionable opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, for being so deferential to her at the first Democratic debate by labeling him sexist.
Sanders, who is seemingly unable to communicate at normal human decibel levels, had the temerity at that debate to issue a modest criticism of Clinton’s empty, placating rhetoric on guns by noting that “all the shouting in the world” would not keep firearms out of criminals’ hands. “I haven’t been shouting, but sometimes when a woman speaks out, some people think it’s shouting,” she signaled. Thus, a call to action for all of liberal womanhood was issued. Clinton, grasping for the least charitable interpretation of Sanders’ remarks, had accused her opponent of base misogyny. The rote performance art that will follow this shofar call to the liberal intelligentsia is predictable, and it has already begun. There is no small irony in that the left, which in 2012 had so concerned itself with GOP “dog whistle” calls to their most rabid and anti-social of constituencies, have perfected that practice.
This isn’t the first effort on the part of Clinton to reassemble Barack Obama’s coalition of ascendant minority, young, and women voters by force of shame. “Racism is America’s original sin,” Hillary wrote in early October what MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald and Monica Alba described as a “personal tweet.”
“To those I met with today, thank you for sharing your ideas,” Clinton added. The presidential candidate was referring to a meeting she held with members of the Black Lives Matter movement and its de facto leader, the activist DeRay Mckesson. Mckesson was a public school teacher who became a full-time activist after the sensationalized but justified shooting of Missouri teen Michael Brown, an event he contends radicalized him. Mckesson’s meeting with someone who might become the next president followed his elevation to the status of guest lecturer at Yale University, where he treated impressionable minds to a lecture themed “In Defense of Looting.” There, students were asked to read the work of Willie Osterweil, who wrote the following.
“The mystifying ideological claim that looting is violent and non-political is one that has been carefully produced by the ruling class because it is precisely the violent maintenance of property which is both the basis and end of their power,” he averred. “Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.” The Comintern couldn’t have put it better, tovarish.
Responsible individuals like Yale University administrators or the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee should never reward such irresponsible behavior as rioting and theft. The alternative to gifting Mckesson unwanted credibility is, however, to be labeled racially suspect (or, worse, outright racist). Like the now-branded Sanders, this is an indelible mark that cannot be so easily washed away. It is a label that licenses the accused’s banishment from polite society and sanctions all manner of attacks on his or her character. To fail to observe proper respect for the mock-academic pursuit of victimology, the punishment for which is to be marked a chauvinist of one form or another, is to be deemed pariah. This is a fate that Clinton could not risk inviting, not during a campaign, but it is also a weapon that she deploys against her enemies with remarkable recklessness.
The left is not the only end of the political spectrum wielding linguistic signifiers as a bludgeon. For the segment of conservative voters who see the threats associated with unchecked illegal immigration looming largest ahead of 2016, the specter of “amnesty” and those who allegedly support this provision are compelled to wear their own letters. This is a tragedy. The word “amnesty” has a precise legal meaning, but an ideologically rigid cast of conservatives use to mean “insufficiently zealous” has perverted it. To oppose the current immigration status quo is to oppose the de facto amnesty awarded to the families of illegal immigrants. Like Mckesson’s movement, however, the political clout of this cadre of conservatives has been so indisputably demonstrated over the course of 2015 that they can expect no reforms to the current immigration regime any time soon. It is no small irony that those aspiring illegal immigrants in Asia and Central America have anti-“amnesty” conservatives to thank for the preservation of the status quo that they seek to exploit.
Even the House Freedom Caucus finds itself the target of the right’s righteously aggrieved. Conservative political entertainers have inspired much of the ire directed at the Freedom Caucus for reluctantly agreeing to back Paul Ryan’s bid for House Speakership. They have found the most potent fomenter of angst among grassroots conservatives to be his one-time embrace of comprehensive immigration reform.
“Look, I imagine that there’s theoretically a chance that [we] all went from being radical extremist crazies to Washington sellouts in 12 hours,” said one of the Freedom Caucus’s leaders, South Carolina Congressman Mick Mulvaney, mockingly. He added that what’s more likely is that his members think they are doing what’s best for the GOP conference in Congress and that they simply needed to explain that to the public. They better move fast. Breitbart’s Julia Hahn recently averred that Mulvaney “embraces an even more progressive immigration agenda than [former House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor himself” and were secret supporters of the 2013 “amnesty plan” – e.g. comprehensive immigration reform.
This kind of posturing draws a page from a playbook once exclusively utilized by the left. The weaponization of language and the distortion of meanings in order to enforce ideological homogeneity is a dangerous sign of intellectual stagnation. Bernie Sanders isn’t a “sexist.” Hillary Clinton isn’t a “racist.” Lord knows the House Freedom Caucus doesn’t support “amnesty.” These words have definitions, and their diminution in service to the fringe political ideals of activists should be resisted.
