One of us recently came across a book at our local bookstore called The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change. The work’s eye-catching cover, showing coal dust falling through an hour-glass, stood out from the other less urgent titles lining the shelves. The synopsis on the back described an in-depth exposé on Big Oil that reached back decades. Drawing on documents going back to the 1950s, the author, an investigative journalist, “tells the story of how the American oil companies that founded the tar sands in Alberta, Canada—home to the third-biggest oil reserves on the planet—ignored warnings about climate devastation.”

No surprise about Big Oil resisting its own demise, was our colleague’s first thought. It then struck him as odd that the author and/or publisher chose to use the term “far-right” to describe the motivations of business executives, implying their behaviour was more ideologically-driven than about money or organizational survival. Similarly, the top line of the book synopsis on the publisher’s website hyperbolically read in bold: “Investigative reporting reveals for the first time the far-right conspiracy that’s stopped the world from preventing the climate crisis.”

Of course, a book’s title is key to a work’s success in the publishing world. Titles need to be made to be as current, relevant, and provocative as possible, down to the very last words in the subtitle. So, the sensational spin was to some extent understandable.

But then something else hit home: the bookmakers didn’t just use the milder term “right-wing” in the subtitle to generalize and describe the perspectives of Big Oil corporate types. Instead they used the term far-right—a very different designation, and one apart.

For people who’ve studied political science formally at school, worked in politics, or covered the political beat as journalists, as some of us have, the problem with the above might be more or less obvious. Up until recently the term “far-right” had always applied to groups that were somehow off the legitimate political spectrum: either espousing violence or extreme and intolerant views that could easily lead to it: think the KKK, “skinheads”, and neo-Nazis. It was a designation for dogmatists and ideologues. The term was definitely pejorative, indicating illegitimate outliers in the political process.

To call the oil industry’s resistance to societal voices warning about climate change as being attributable or indicative of a far-right conspiracy, doesn’t strike as realistic or responsible—and likely doesn’t hold water.

But this is the situation we find ourselves in today. In our polarized 21st century world in which the indoctrinating influences of social media have wreaked havoc to all rules and norms, we’ve become habituated to using language gratuitously and out of context to suit our political arguments. For anyone old enough, and with an education or occupation in the wider field of politics, it’s hard not to notice that the term “far-right” is ubiquitously and incorrectly used to designate anyone on the centre-right, or right end of the political spectrum, a political pariah.

Other terms, with specific, concrete, and contextual meanings like ‘hate’, ‘racism’, ‘genocide’, ‘communist’, ‘white supremacist’, ‘terrorist’, ‘Nazi’, ‘tyrant’, ‘oppressor’, ‘tyranny’ and ‘fascist’ have been misappropriated as slurs to hurl at an opposing ideological camp. Even much more anodyne words like ‘capitalist’, ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, and ‘socialist’ can serve as value-laden rhetorical grenades that can tarnish and maim.

Anyone who express opinions contrary to popular dogmas or bumper sticker platitudes, regardless of their political orientation, can face such labelling. This name calling is perpetrated not just by culture warriors, activists, and trolls on social media, but also by politicians of all banners, and by both the right and left-wing media. Fox News is just as, if not more, enamoured with the use of inaccurate political pejoratives, as their ideological counterparts, CBC News in Canada or The Guardian in the UK.

To give an example of this decontextualization, take the term “fascist,” which is bandied about willy-nilly by the bickering masses online to designate any populist leader, usually on the right, but also, oddly, sometimes on the left, who holds or displays illiberal opinions or tendencies. Some Republican and Democratic politicians in the United States have been referring to each other by this epithet for the last few years. It has also most recently been used to describe not just Donald Trump, but also Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Marine Le Pen in France (both of whom have held individual policy positions more reflective of the left).

For those who understand its implications, “fascist” and “fascism” are heavily loaded words with much contextual meaning. Historical arch-scoundrels and war mongers, Hitler and Mussolini, whom the allies fought against in World War Two, are considered classic embodiments of fascism. As have a number of other smaller regimes and juntas around the world that had taken power since. In the most general sense, fascism is a political system that encompasses ultra-nationalism, dictatorialism, and militarization of society as its the hallmarks.

Is it correct to throw these terms around so casually in our own political milieus?

Addressing this question, British American historian Niall Ferguson, wrote a piece in The Daily Mail, “Just to remind you, fascism was all about state control of the economy and militarisation in preparation for war, pretty much the opposite of Trump’s philosophy.”

Even former Greek finance minister and economist Vanis Varoufakis, an espoused socialist, takes great exception to the loosey-goosey use of this moniker. In an interview on UnHerd, he explained that at one important level, past manifestations of fascism all involved authoritarian leaders attacking capitalism and taking measures to protect the working classes in exchange for the loss of their democratic rights and political expression.

“It’s always a mistake, especially for progressives, to call somebody a fascist as a swear word,” Varoufakis says. “Because fascism is a very specific ideology, is a very specific movement, and it is a very specific agglomeration of vested interests and ideology. What made Mussolini a fascist, for instance? Not that he was a bad man and killed people. There were lots of bad men in power, in Uganda, in various parts of the world, who killed people. Stalin killed a lot of people. But to call Stalin a fascist is simply a category error.”

The same thing can be said about the use of the term “communist” and “communism” when it is applied derogatorily to progressive and left-of-centre thinkers and their ideas. There may be aspects which overlap or bear resemblance between someone who holds socialist views, and a communist. But just because a person may look like another thing, meet part of the criteria for its definition, or be influenced or inspired by it, doesn’t necessarily equate the two. Blanket categorizations that wrongly conflate unique and differing things do damage to the precision of language—and ultimately to our ability to discern and express truth.

As one expression has it: “Just because it is round doesn’t mean it’s a cake.”

There sometimes is a point when two things bear close enough resemblance that they can be reasonably conflated. This is what some of the current abusers of political language likely think that they’re doing, when in fact they’re drawing a more or less false equivalence.

So, why is this happening at all?

At one level it is a human tendency that when we conflict with others, especially when we are roused to frustration or anger by them, and see things in black-and-white, to exaggerate what we take to be their perceived negative qualities and transgressions. That helps to delegitimize them and their positions: it’s a gambit to “win” arguments. We do it frequently when we get into heated arguments with loved ones. It makes us feel in the right.

It’s much the same thing in the public and political spheres: if you can label someone with a term or category considered derogatory, abhorrent, or morally or politically bankrupt, then you win and they lose. Your opponent has no ground left to stand on. It is all the more easier to do so with faceless strangers online, and who are not physically before us.

In their book, The Cancelling of the American Mind, authors Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott argue that the point of political demonization by the right or left against the other is to show that you don’t have to listen to your opponent if you can demonstrate that they fall into a category which is devoid of legitimacy.

“Too much of modern discourse is focused on a moralistic evaluation of the speaker,” the authors write. “And, according to this Great Untruth, if you can show someone to be ‘bad’ by any measure, you don’t have to listen to them anymore. Today, basically anything can be used to dismiss someone as ‘bad’ depending on your political orientation—from dubbing them “conservative” to accusing them of being ‘woke.’ Of course, we all know on a logical level that a good person doesn’t strictly have valid opinions and a bad person doesn’t.”

What can be done about this?

In some ways, we have a chicken-and-egg situation here: our emotions resulting from our pre-existing polarized differences cause us to mislabel to extremes; while at the same time, this misappropriation of language itself furthers and deepens the polarization that actually exists.

Perhaps by learning to be more aware of this lazy and oversimplistic tendency to mislabel others we don’t agree with, and by resisting its tactical allure (or even calling it out when it happens), we might begin to help take some of the steam out of this seemingly deepening polarization process we find ourselves in. This would be one small, but important action, or change, taken in conjunction with others, that could stem the tide of this spiralling and ever-dangerous disunity we face.

The Need to End the Misuse of Political Terminology

RELATED STORIES