MY SAY: EUPHEMISM, POLITICS AND REPORTING AND ORWELL
Of all the words in the barrage of reporting on Israel or terrorism, “moderate” is a great example of euphemism. Thus, PalArabs who invoke murder and faith driven jihad against Israeli civilians; who praise the memory of Hitler; who reward terrorists financially and honor them by naming streets and schools for them; who indoctrinate their acolytes with blatant anti-Semitism in school books, lectures and sermons; …..in Arabic are called “moderates” because in silky English they speak of a two state (dis)solution of Israel.
George Orwell phrased it well and he is quoted by By Howard Husock in an article:
Orwell Is Alive at HHS On politics and euphemism https://www.city-journal.org/html/orwell-alive-hhs-15615.html
It all comes down to the importance of euphemism as a way to minimize opposition. Orwell saw it clearly in 1946:
“Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.”
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