
The Autocrat's Language - ryan_j_naughton
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/05/13/the-autocrats-language/
======
roenxi
That was a pleasure to read. Pushing the politics to one side; there is a call
here to use words correctly and to use clear and unambiguous descriptions.
That is a coherent and entirely reasonable expectation on any political
dialog.

Doubly rewarding was that the writing style, while not pro-Trump, avoids the
bile and hysteria that has been common since the last American election.
Limiting criticism to unclear language does the author a lot of credit.
Limited changes are needed to apply this article to many political statements.

Trumps pronouncements are particularly entertaining examples though. His
speech can make it so clear that he isn't using specific facts. Watching his
opponents trying to deal with something so audacious can be very entertaining.

~~~
mirimir
I also loved the article. However, I thought that he was too hard on Trump, in
his dissection of that interview. I'm certainly no Trump supporter. And yet,
his comments about the missiles in Syria struck me as honestly reflective.
Trump does bullshit a lot, and it's easy to make fun of him. But that's
arguably more honest than typical Presidential rhetoric.

~~~
andrewem
(As was noted elsewhere in the comments on this submission, the author is a
woman, and quite well known -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen))

It's hard to know how to criticize your comment constructively, though one
might say that it's not that "Trump does bullshit a lot", it's that he cannot
escape bullshitting in any situation. He exists outside facts.

If you think the author's criticism of Trump is too harsh, then you should
read her earlier piece published just after the election:
[http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-
autoc...](http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-
rules-for-survival/)

~~~
mirimir
As I said, I'm _not_ a Trump supporter. He's a demagogue. And worse, he's
arguably the first "Reality TV" president, in that he honed his public persona
for "The Apprentice". If Stephen Colbert wins in 202, he'll be the second.
It's a strange world.

Anyway, it is refreshing to hear a US President reflect on the enormity of the
power at their command, and on the risks of using that power. No matter how
incoherent they may be.

I don't know whether Trump could escape bullshitting, if he wanted to. It
could be entirely an act, designed for his target audience. But either way,
what concerns me is that such a persona is so evidently popular.

------
adrianratnapala
_Then something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared
reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the
thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share
that experience, because they had no language for doing so._

This is a very good point, but is I think a bit obscured because it seems to
mistake the map for the territory. I think what the writer is getting at is
that without a shared language it's harder to build up common knowledge. Which
means more than just everone knowing something. It also means that they all
know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, _ad
infinitum_.

Each person can see the Emperor has no clothes, but without sufficient
communication they cannot all know that it is safe to laugh at the Emperor.

~~~
rdtsc
> It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone
> knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum.

Well not ad-infinitum. Just 3 levels needed:

1\. I know (think of a graph with one node A)

2\. I know that the other knows (A -> B)

3\. I know that the other knows, that I know (A <-> B).

That's basically how common sense works, and it helps groups of people work as
a group (solve problems, achieve a common goal). But first this bootstrapping
is necessary.

Anyway, in this particular case it is like political or ideological common
sense ("the emperor doesn't have clothes"). That's why large gathering of
people were looked at with suspicion or were outright illegal, because it
might start this bootstrapping process. Then before you know it, people start
to act.

This is probably one reason that gatherings protests are useful to -- achieve
this effect. It can be done online, but a lot of communication is non-verbal,
it's how people say things, how they act, dress, tone of voice, etc.

~~~
vehementi
The "common sense" part means that I know that you know that I know that you
know that I know that you know...

------
musage
> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing
> as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the
> exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep
> people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if
> he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two
> are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make
> four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two
> or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and
> two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is
> the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the
> process is reversible.

\-- George Orwell, letter to Noel Willmett (1944)

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-
orwe...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwell-s-
letter-on-why-he-wrote-1984.html)

------
tacon
I don't speak German, so it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that
Führer means "leader" (or "guide", according to Wikipedia). And that that word
is essentially dead in modern German speech. So how do you refer to the
"leader" now?, I asked. I didn't get a good answer to that question, but it
would probably take more understanding of German as to how they get by without
the obvious word.

I wonder if "news" may be dead in English in the near future.

~~~
pvg
Why would 'news' become dead? Nazism had a substantial impact on German both
on its way in and out - it developed/repurposed its own special phraseology
and terms and those terms later fell out of use (or at least, in out of use in
the contexts of their Nazi use). But this happened through focused effort, up
to and including laws. Nothing of the sort has happened or is likely to happen
to the word 'news'.

~~~
adrianratnapala
As far as I know, there's never been a post-war effort to ban the word
"Führer", nor did the Nazis try to remove the ordinary meaning. Heck, calling
Hitler "The Leader" was in no way an abuse of language. And yet the word has
become uncommon because of a kind of shared embaressment.

Now I think tacon is wrong to think that "news" will go a similar way, but if
it can happen to simple and basic words like "leader", then it's a reasonable
thing to speculate about.

~~~
schoen
I want to suggest that "Führer" did have an unusual specific ideological
connotation in the Third Reich that is very different from just saying "Adolf
Hitler was the leader of Germany and FDR was the leader of the United States".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip)

~~~
adrianratnapala
Correct, but that is still in line with it being an appropriate use of
language.

In Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has the unofficial title of "Supreme Leader". This
is a very specific title within Iran, and has a specific ideological
connotation. And yet it is also a perfectly normal and accurate use of the
word "Leader".

------
emartinelli
This reminds me of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"[1].

A timeless work about language misuse in Politics.

[1][http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...](http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/)

------
bushin
In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, thou alone
art my stay and support, mighty, true, free Russian speech! But for thee, how
not fall into despair, seeing all that is done at home? But who can think that
such a tongue is not the gift of a great people!

------
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6
Regarding NPR's choice of words: it is in fact quite common to avoid very
direct accusations in politics and news. I really doubt the author came about
this for the first time ever, but rather wonder if he detested it as much each
and every time earlier.

~~~
elgenie
The author is a woman; Masha is the Russian diminutive for Maria.

~~~
adrianratnapala
Is there any phonological rule that can help tell? For the last name you can
check "-ov" vs. "-ova", but what about given names?

In school I knew a boy named "Misha" (so assuming I am remembering his
nationality correctly) it would seem that "-sha" can go with either sex.

~~~
wruza
Diminutives are all the same, -a, -ya, -ik because of diminutive suffix
replacing the ending. Full names usually end on -[y]a for women and on
consonant for men. So there is no general rule, I think. (native speaker)

Edit: added -ik

------
theyregreat
As an aside, some of my favorite words to say: chatoyance and conchoidal.

------
dropit_sphere
> Witch hunts cannot actually be carried out by losers, big or small: the
> agent of a witch hunt must have power.

Aaaaay, and now the public conversation has finally advanced.

The contention of the far right is that this statement is exactly right, but
not in the way the author means. That is: there is no coherent rightist
opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified
by checking for who is doing the hunting.

From he-who-must-not-be-named:

>Think about it. Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they
wouldn't waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan
and cursing cows with sour milk. They're getting burned right and left, for
Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn the tables and lay some serious
voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who speaks out against
the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with
his head _shrunk to the size of a baseball_ , we won't see a lot of witch-
hunting and we know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-
hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed
by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches
worth a damn.

~~~
jmcqk6
I've been rereading this trying to see a coherent argument, but I honestly
have no idea what you're trying to say. The thing that you quote seems like it
could win an award for stretching metaphors.

~~~
ogre_magi
It's part of the charm.

The issue of course is that if you don't flit in a distant metaphor, you tread
disrespectfully upon _sacred ground_.

To toe the line a little for you, the witch-hunters are activists (good, noble
ones) looking for sinners (bad, evil ones) and preaching about a world where
the sinners have all the power.

In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?

~~~
forapurpose
> a world where the sinners have all the power.

> In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?

Because neither group has all the power (and there are many other groups too).
The allegory, as someone pointed out, and the reasoning are both stretched
past breaking.

~~~
rhizome
_Because neither group has all the power_

About 45 years ago there was a chance that they might, but Nixon saw to that
by inventing the War on Drugs.

~~~
forapurpose
> _Because neither group has all the power_

> About 45 years ago there was a chance that they might

There was no chance. In the 1972 election, Nixon was re-elected winning 49
states (not a typo - he won 49 of 50 states) and won the popular vote by 23%.

And that was while the Watergate scandal was exploding. Per Wikipedia, not
long before the November election, "On October 10, the FBI reported the
Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and
sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee."[0]

There was no chance that the Democrats or anyone on the left was going to take
"all the power".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Cover-
up_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Cover-
up_and_its_unraveling)

------
mannykannot
This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your
language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in
general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language
that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem
in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate
for having their emotions stimulated without regard to facts. To put it
another way, the author had no difficulty in refuting those inconsistencies
and lies; his problem is that not enough people care about it.

~~~
thenewwazoo
I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If
the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the
sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want
to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into
doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong
proposition anyway. You have a concept, but when I use the word that describes
the concept, I could be describing the concept or the not-concept.

~~~
pizza
Yeah, this makes sense to me according to my experience of people's
perceptions of loaded words. When a word may seem like it has e.g. five or six
meanings

\- it conveys more bits of information

\- plausible deniability -> capacity to retroactively compress the word's
meaning

\- people 'analyze'/recognize simpler words (only one meaning, i.e. GitHub)
differently than they do loaded words (multiple meanings, i.e. dream)

\- people take their own personal uncertainty (over which meaning is the
correct one that they need to interpret the word as) as a sign that if they
share their recognition, it's more likely to make them look like a fool in
public

Observers realize that the original speaker's (e.g. Trump or Stalin) plausible
deniability is a kind of insurance policy against audience members calling
them out

~~~
mannykannot
I am not sure that plausible deniability is much of an issue, because the
people making such statements don't seem to care if they are caught in a
contradiction or lie. Why don't they care? Because their supporters, and those
who are close to being their supporters, don't care. It's not so much about
deceiving the skeptics (who are not likely to be deceived anyway) as it is
about giving those who incline to one's views an excuse for believing that
their instincts were unquestionably right, and to get them worked up about it
(this applies to Trump et. al. rather than Stalin, because the latter had
other means of getting his way, and whatever you think of Trump, he is no
Stalin.)

~~~
pizza
I agree, but what I'm saying is that perceived plausible deniability makes
speaking out against quadruple-entendres seem more futile, as any supporter
can say it meant something else

------
adrianratnapala
_When writers and academics question the limits of language, it is invariably
an exercise that grows from a desire to bring more light into the public
sphere, to arrive at a shared reality that is more nuanced than it was
yesterday._

Is the author seriously trying to suggest that the likes of Derrida was trying
to do that?

------
hugh4life
Every side treats with ironism the terms defined by their enemies.

[http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetole...](http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm)

~~~
adrianratnapala
But some sides are sillier than others.

