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Saturday Morning Diversion: Right Wing Clichés
If you perused our Ricochet House Style guide, you may have noticed this item:
- Terminate all clichés with extreme prejudice. The previous sentence, for example, should be terminated. “Social justice warrior” and other right-wing clichés should be replaced. TK: LIST OF RIGHT-WING CLICHÉS ALWAYS TO BE REPLACED
TK is a traditional editorial place-marker for “missing information to come,” by the way. It’s short for the intentional misspelling of “to come.” (Tokum, get it?) The origin of the symbol is shrouded in lore, but when pressed, editors will say that TK never comes up in everyday English, so it stands out; TC might be confused with Table of Contents; and besides, that’s just how we’ve always done it.
That section will probably forever be TK. I put it there because I’d been mentally compiling a list of soul-numbing right-wing clichés that make me itch to whip out the red pen. Yes, yes, I know: Left-wing clichés are worse. But we can only control our own clichés.
And we should, for as Comrade Stalin reminds us,
Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
What clichés do you think we ought to put on that list, if ever we get around to it? I suggested “social justice warrior,” as you saw. Whenever someone uses that one, I want to throw him under a bus.
— Squealing brakes! Shriek! Whooooosh, SPLAT! … 10-4. Area of Social Justice Park, 8th Avenue, 17th Street; stand-by for the other units. Attempt to serve. 10-4, I’ll come up 19th Street onto 8th. 11-41 Ambulance needed, I repeat, 11 41 —
As I do anyone who uses the phrase “throwing someone under a bus” to mean anything but throwing someone under a bus.
— 10-53 road blocked at Social Junction, BOLO Ricochet Copy Editor … Whoa, gonna need a mop out here. Officer Justice, are those … are those … are those Human Social Warrior entrails? I mean, in the tailpipe? —
There are a million yet-unwritten ways to express conservative ideas, ways that might be inventive enough to grab someone’s attention. But every time we use a drab, overused phrase that’s lost its power to change minds, shock, compel a new thought, or even properly to give insult, a fairy dies; a terrorist wins; Orwell’s dust spins below a weathering headstone streaked with lichen, mingling companionably with the dust of Asquith under a rolled lawn of repose at the north end of the Village Green.
He is strewn, from time to time, with a few wilted red carnations.
Published in Culture, General
Respectfully disagree.
(Some non-CoC-compliant language—too bad the “start at time X” parameter isn’t obeyed.)
If “Social Justice Warrior” is to be considered cliche, then why not “Radical Jihadist?”
Put that one on the list, for sure. It should be edited on at least two grounds: clichéd and redundant.
I suppose “moonbat” should make the list, but I can’t recall the last time I saw it used at Ricochet.
Rather like “Rio Grande River.”
Clichés should be terminated with extreme prejudice.
Social Justice Warriors are a cliché.
Therefore, Social Justice Warriors should be terminated with extreme prejudice.
And “arroz con pollo chicken” (seen on a dinner menu at Hillsdale College).
Or “Border Patrol”
Silent majority.
Center-right country.
Mainstream Media.
These are not only overused, but proven to be void of substance.
“Social Justice Warrior” is not a right wing cliche. It’s the term they use to describe themselves.
Claire,
Cliches are bad when they are inaccurate or inefficient.
I disagree with your identification of SJW as an impermissible cliche.
SJW vividly and efficiently identifies a particular form of earnest leftist.
Do you have a better term?
I like SJW. It was their term, and its use in the hands of the Other Side, i.e. us, implies the necessary mockery. The replacement would have to be just as pithy and potent.
Anything-industrial-complex. On steroids. The masses (I don’t know who used that term first, but it feels Marxist and is, in any case, demeaning).
What would a non-radical Jihadist be?
I like the term SJW, too. But I still think SJWs should be terminated with extreme prejudice.
A jihadist without the means or opportunity to behead you or blow you up.
Muslim
Politically correct?
“Purist.” “Purity test.” They paint principle-focused voters as cartoon characters without a drop of prudential awareness.
“Social conservative.” What does it mean? All politics is social. “Cultural conservatism” is more descriptive.
Muslims are tolerant only when they lack the power to make their intolerance effective.
Agree. Mainstream media, especially. Too empty to mean anything.
Let’s work on it. Of what form, exactly, is that earnest leftist?
It did in the first ten million usages.
That’s why we’re here. Let’s come up with tomorrow’s cliché.
Although it is not devoid of meaning as are other cliches, I’m tired of “we don’t need a dynasty”. It has an odor similar to many progressive tropes ridiculed in ‘The Tyranny of Cliches’ by Jonah Goldberg.
These kinds of constructions often happen when part of the phrase is from another language. “Roast beef with au jus,” for example. But I don’t find them as grating, because “pollo” isn’t an English word: It’s probably useful to readers of that menu to know that what they’re ordering’s a chicken, right? Unless you speak some Spanish — and Hillsdale’s not an obviously bilingual town — that sounds like “Mexican flavored chicken.” Fair enough.
Let’s start with those who seek out offense and seem giddy (rather than truly offended) when they find it.
Politically Correct shouldn’t be shoved down the memory hole (another cliche?) Leftists used that term quite earnestly in the late 80’s and 90’s, and now that it is embarrassing to them we should use it as a reminder of how fascistic they truly are.
Open a tumblr account.
Yes. Let’s get that phrase off steroids.