We Must Use True Words To Describe What Is Happening Right Now

It's not the time to be squeamish about saying what we see: authoritarianism, fascism, threats of annexation, and more.

Good advice. Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash.

It’s an extraordinary time, and that calls for the courage of plain-spoken truth. The news descends on us as a pounding rain, each day bringing some new, boundary-breaking manoeuvre from Donald Trump, some bit of collapse from a longstanding institution, some unwinding of an alliance taken for granted, some further warning that we’ve cooked the planet near the point of no return. As a species that prefers stability and predictability, as individuals and households already pushed to the brink of breakdown by punishing work weeks and too low wages and an ongoing affordability crisis, it’s enough to drive you way from uncomfortable truths. When you’re exhausted, physically and mentally, and encounter the next wretched news item, it’s entirely reasonable to say “Dear god, please, not another thing that will make me feel like shit” and move on.

And yet, we still need to say true things out loud.

When Trump won the presidency in 2016, I suggested he was an authoritarian. Because he is an authoritarian. It is taking some time for people to get used to the notion of an American president adopting, overtly, the traits and practices of autocratic leaders they associate with countries most Americans (or Canadians) couldn’t pinpoint on a map. Last summer, I followed this up with an argument in favour of accepting, out loud, the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. Some folks were having a tough time with that one, too. But it serves no useful purpose to hide from reality. Denial does nobody good any good.

Today, there are far more elements of a harsh reality that we must confront. Trump is an authoritarian and a fascist; his administration is undertaking an executive branch coup — running roughshod over the Constitution, the powers of Congress, and the authority of the courts. We need to use that word, “coup.” We may qualify it for the sake of nuance and distinction with “executive branch.” It is, after all, Trump’s second kick at the coup can, after he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and fomented an attack on the US Capitol.

In Gaza, Trump is planning genocide. That’s another word we must say. Genocide. Trump’s plan to “take” Gaza and forcibly displace its residents is genocide — not merely ethnic cleansing, as it is more often referred to in the press, when the press is even that critical. Trump’s plan seeks to destroy the Palestinian people as a people, forcing them from their homes and land with no right of return.

Closer to home, Trump is planning on annexing Canada, one way or another. It’s not a joke. It’s not a mere negotiating position. It’s a threat to the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and one that we must confront directly.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

There are critics who say the words “authoritarian,” “coup,” “fascist,” “genocide,” and others have become, or risk becoming, meaningless from overuse. In the digital and social media era, these words have become epithets more than descriptors, as if one now reaches as quickly for “fascist” as they would have previously conjured up “bastard” every time some political opponent offends their sensibilities. I think there’s something to this critique, that, indeed, we’ve become committed to imprecision as a function of our anger, frustration, fear, polarization, and access to technologies that permit us to share our thoughts in real-time without incentive to pause and reflect before hitting send. It’s the boy who cried wolf, say critics, but with the most damning accusatory words in our collective vocabulary; it’s like shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre when someone turns on their smartphone flashlight.

The fact is, however, that as over-used as these words may be, there are now many fires burning. That we have removed the power of these words by casually throwing them around is a problem, but now is the time to remedy that by using them precisely and appropriately on social media, in the press, at the pub, and around the dinner table. In the future, we might consider being a bit more careful in how we deploy these terms, reserving them for when we need them. There are plenty of other words to describe various phenomena and qualities, some of which are more than colourful enough for purpose. But now, we must tell the truth by using true words to describe what we see, to explain what we are living through.

Using true words requires us to understand what these words mean, and to accept that the horrors we’ve read about in history books or in stories about far-flung places we’ve never thought of visiting are happening much closer to home and in real-time. In the United States and Canada, we’ve been conditioned to expect a kind of exceptionalism, a special-ness that sets out countries apart. That exceptionalism is a make-believe story that teaches that the horrors of our history are long-gone and, alas, if they did indeed happen (it’s complicated, you see), and if they did indeed happen to be rather bad, they were regrettably necessary — progress and all that.

This exceptionalism teaches that whatever nasty, brutish things that may have occurred in the past, or may be occurring elsewhere right now, they cannot and will not happen here and now. Confronting reality and describing what is happening to and around us begins with disabusing ourselves of what has been to date a congenital credulity.

After this overcoming, using true words requires us to have some broad agreement about what these words mean — which is a struggle itself that reflects power dynamics, particularly the power of who gets to decide what means what, and when it applies. You can’t simply point to a dictionary and say “See! It says so right here!” Terms are contestable and contested, in good faith and bad. That doesn’t mean there is no way to use them or that we should pretend there are no facts that matter nor standards that may be applied to describe reality; it does mean that reaching agreement on deploying terminology requires a struggle, and we ought to be ready to discuss and deliberate over terms when we can, and fight for words when we must.

We should also ignore or overcome worries about what using true words will do to friendships or follower counts or click rates or advertising buys. The worst people among us are relying on our fear, on our on perceived isolation, and on our cowardice to get away with the heinous undertakings they’ve committed to. They will, along with their minions, howl when we call them what they are; they will come for us however they can.

Let them. We must nonetheless tell the truth. It’s the right thing to do. It’s also the smart thing to do. To lie to oneself and to others in the face of injustice is to appease the worst among us. As Winston Churchill — a man about whom we could use many colourful and true words — said of appeasers, “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, it will eat him last.” But left to its own devices, the crocodile always gets its meal.