The Cultural and Historical Context of Words
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Last week, Senator Fraser Anning of Katter’s Australian Party gave his maiden speech in the Australian Senate. In it, he called for a ban on Muslim immigration and a return to the White Australia policy (actually a collection of policies barring people of non-European descent from migrating to the country – the policies were effectively dismantled between 1949 and 1973 and officially legislated against in 1975). That was bad enough in itself. But he then went on to say that the “final solution to the immigration problem” was a plebiscite, a non-binding and hugely expensive opinion poll of the entire Australian voting population.
The speech was widely condemned for its racist overtones and blatant lies but the two words that reviled people the most were “final solution”. I read an article about his speech only hours after he had given it and before the outcry began in earnest. As soon as I saw that he had used those specific words, I was shocked. I am by no means a Holocaust expert but even just from watching a couple of documentaries years ago, I knew that “final solution” was the euphemism used by the Nazis to that they didn’t have to call it “our plan to kill six million Jewish people”. Thus, those two words, as innocent as they are when used separately, become something to be avoided as a pair regardless of what they are being used to describe.
Senator Anning’s response to having this explained to him? “Claims that the words meant anything other than the ultimate solution to any political question is always a popular vote are simply ridiculous. Anyone who actually reads them in context will realise this.”
So I must conclude that either Senator Anning did not know that those two words already had a malicious context – in which case he is horribly uneducated (something we all love to see in the people running our countries and making choices that affect millions of lives) – or he knew about the context and chose to use them in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fury he would stir up (in which case he’s just horrible).
Words, symbols and even lives in general only have meaning because they are given meaning by the people who use the words and symbols and live those lives. And once a word, collection of words or symbol has a well-known context, it’s difficult to pry it free from that understanding and imbue it with another. The word “gay” is a good example. It originally meant “carefree” or “cheerful”. Now it is exclusively used to define a type of sexuality. The swastika symbol is another example. The word “swastika” comes from Sanskrit and denotes something that is “conducive to well-being or auspicious”. And long before the Nazis adopted it, the distinct symbol was widely used in Middle Eastern and Asian religions as well as Byzantine and Christian art.
None of that matters now because it is recognised as a representation of hate and bigotry and those who do display it today tend to be embracing Nazi ideals, not ancient religion ones. So the rest of us who don’t embrace those ideals understand that using it is considered poor form.
I’ve previously written about euphemisms – how they were traditionally used to spare people’s feelings such as saying someone had passed away instead of saying someone had died; and how they are more and more being used to pull the wool over people’s eyes, particularly in politics and the corporate world (you can read this blog post next week) – but a phrase like “final solution” falls into another category entirely. Because as Todd Haugh explains in Ethnic Cleansing as Euphemism, Metaphor, Criminology and Law (2011), the “history of mass atrocity is awash with euphemistic rationalizations”. The phrase “final solution” is the most well known of all of them. “Special treatment” is another lesser known euphemism used by the Nazis to describe Jews being gassed to death in extermination camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka.
Perhaps the most concerning part of Senator Anning’s use of the term “final solution” is that this does not appear to be a one-off from people of a particular political persuasion. In January 2018, Manfred Weber, the leader of the Centre-Right EPP group in European Parliament used it while talking about immigration as well. And in May 2017, Katie Hopkins, a British tabloid writer, tweeted that a “final solution” was needed in the wake of the Manchester bombing. She quickly deleted it and tweeted the same message again, replacing “final solution” with “true solution” but the damage was already done.
Words are ultimately the most dangerous weapon we – not just writers but all of us – possess and words like “final solution” must be used with caution, with an understanding of how they can wound.
One thing is for sure: there is not a single person unaware of the damage words can do. They are used to hurt others every day. But wouldn’t it be great if politicians and journalists and you and me used words to heal instead?
