Patrick Fagan told me that in an analysis of the Rwandan genocide, one of the first linguistic predictors was the tendency to look backwards, to blame, and to focus on past wrongs and injustices, and he had noticed similar precursors in the language of blame during the Covid epidemic. This sounds extreme, but it’s important to at least be aware of these linguistic signposts – they have always led us down the ugliest roads in human history.
