I hate it when right wing, PSYOPS, propagandists successfully contaminate beautiful words with specially designed malice. It reminds me of George Orwell's, 1984 where love means hate and peace means war. Take the word “Grooming.” It’s a beautiful word that according to the dictionary has five important meanings:
Groomed, Grooming, Grooms — 1. To care for the appearance of; to make neat and trim: groomed himself carefully in front of the mirror. 2. To clean and brush (an animal). 3. To remove dirt and parasites from the skin, fur, or feathers of (another animal). 4. To prepare, as for a specific position or purpose: groom an employee for advancement. 5. Sports To prepare (terrain) for participants in a sport, as by packing down new snow and leveling moguls for skiers.
I would love to know which Republifascist think tank came up with such a NAZI-like stroke of evil genius by making the word GROOM synonymous with hate and fear! We on the Left and in the LGBTQ+ community need to confront these losers face-to-face with some clever language of our own! We need to fight hateful concepts with the painful truth! And we certainly can’t afford to surrender to the war taking place on our beloved English language by Republifascists!
I’m worried we on the center-left are lagging far behind in capturing the public’s imagination. How do we come up with clever concepts to counter such such propaganda as turning words like grooming and snowflake into different flavors of hatred and malice? How do we capture innocents words and turn them into powerful concepts and use them against our Republifascist enemies?
Here are a two of my ideas: Call Donald Trump, Donald Trumpolini after one of his favorite heroes dictator Benito Mussolini. We need to remind people that dictatorship is no joke and lots of people are gonna get badly hurt by psychopaths like Donald Trump if they get political power.
On Daily Kos and other websites I have seen the word “Repubthug” used as a substitute for Republican. In my opinion the word “thug” is way too mild. Thug brings up images of muggers and guys who like to engage in assaulting people. The word “thug” also screams uneducated and unorganized. Unfortunately for us way too many Republifascists are just the opposite of uneducated and unorganized. In my humble opinion most educated right wing extremists don’t like being called fascist. The word has too much baggage for most people, and it doesn't do a very good job of normalizing their extremism. It’s important that we remind those who don’t read progressive websites like Daily Kos what the Republifascists want to change our society into! 1930’s Germany and Italy are a very good examples!
Those are two of my ideas. I’m painfully aware they will in no-way be as successful as the Republifascist weaponization of groomer or snowflake. But maybe you can capture some innocent words of your own and weaponize them against our fascist loving enemies! It’s something we all have the power to try and do!