Language trend I noticed on the radio this morning...

[LynzM]

I was listening to a story on the treatment of "detainees" and "suspects" in regards to Gitmo and extradition. I noticed that not once in the story were there people referred to as people. They were the abovementioned, or "the individual," etc. The really cynical part of me says that this is just one more way to dehumanize anyone who is not "us." What do you think?

[ClassWarrior]

1. On top of which, they're PRISONERS, not...

..."detainees," a Luntzified word meant to distort perceptions of this crime.

NGU.

[hedgehog]

2. The first thing we do to people we hate is to re-name them as not us.

Bush and his buddies do it to the people they perceive as the enemy. Too many Du'ers do it to notorious criminals to justify judicial or extra-judicial execution. (Just check out the threads suggesting that pedophiles should be murdered in prison.)

[Ellen Forradalom]

3. Exactly.

Ever notice how ethnic groups in Africa are "tribes", but in Europe they're "nationalities" Oh, there are all kinds of ways of trivializing people.

[Sal Minella]

4. If this was the NPR story....weren't you also struck by him saying that the U.S. "expects"

other countries to treat these people humanely, that's the "expectation," when we send these prisoners on rendition flights to Egypt or Syria, we "expect" them to be treated humanely when they get there?

A little hard to believe that the "humane" questioning technique of Egyptians or Syrians is so much superior to the humane questioning technique of our own questioners, innit?

But this guy had been CIA intel and he sounded like he believed the stuff he was saying, didn't he.

That whole story just left me asking, why the hell are we wasting the gas to fly them to Egypt or Syria if the treatment they get there is the same as they get here? CIA pilots need to be kept busy or something?

[LynzM]

6. Yes, that, too.

He definitely sounded like he believed it, it just struck me how many times he used the phrase "the individual" when "person" would have been so much easier. Gotta talk the talk to be CIA intel, though, right?

Ugh. The whole torture thing makes me ill to my stomach. I had to turn the story off after a bit.

[Sal Minella]

9. I listened to the whole thing, partly because he had such internal verbal momentum built up to keep

himself going, like a gyroscope on a table-edge. I felt as though if he stopped talking for a moment and actually thought about what he was saying, he'd just fall apart......

Hearing the review of the new movie about the guy falsely accused and questioned made me ill too

"I want my clothes back and I want to talk to a lawyer."

"Of course you do. Now, we have a few questions for you."

[supernova]

5. They've always called Gitmo prisoners "detainees"

anything other than human beings. that was the whole point of saying the Geneva convention didn't apply to the WoT.

But you are spot on, it's designed to keep the american public from thinking of them as human beings with equal rights and needs.

[trusty elf]

7. Absolutely it's a way of dehumanizing people.

I recently saw a clip of a press conference with Dana Perino where she was asked about torture. She was going on and on about how the US doesn't torture, and it was "terrorists" this and "detainees" that. At one point she (accidently) refered to them as people and quickly corrected herself,
saying something like " "people" (scoff, sneer), I should say "the terrorists"."

Language has an amazingly powerful way of packaging and spinning reality.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Bingo

the creation of the other

A classic in any totalitarian state when you want that to be the new normal