> The thing more of us need to understand is this has never been about "safety", it's about power and control.
Precisely.
It's an attempt by some groups to have others jump through hoops that they define. The end goal is never language, but the ability to control what others do and be the one calling the shots.
I can't remember the book it came from, but there was an author who wrote about his time growing up in an Eastern European communist country. During "Independence Days" his dad had to put a flag up in his store window. It wasn't optional. If he didn't do it, the police would stop by and ask why he didn't have a flag in his window.
If he refused, he's be on the "naughty list" with the authorities which could impact his employment, his housing, his kids schooling.
Putting the flag in the window was never the goal of the government. The goal was to show citizens they had no choice. The author talks about how capitulating the demand was dehumanizing and just ground down any resistance to authority that may have existed. "If I don't have the choice as to fly a flag or not, what choice did I have with more important aspects of my life?"
It's like putting stars of David on Jews in Germany. It wasn't just to identify them in public (though that was a goal) it was also to show them "who was in charge".
> During "Independence Days" his dad had to put a flag up in his store window. It wasn't optional. If he didn't do it, the police would stop by and ask why he didn't have a flag in his window.
Václav Havel is really an incredible figure. From a political dissident repeatedly imprisoned for his writings and advocacy, to first President of Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism and the country’s first free elections.
> It's an attempt by some groups to have others jump through hoops that they define. The end goal is never language, but the ability to control what others do and be the one calling the shots.
Nicely put. Living in a Eastern European country we've just swapped a word "communism/socialism" with "democracy", so in effect very little changed. Ironically, not putting the flag out in towns an villages will now brand you as a anti-Croat and a communist sympathizer which can have very serious consequences if you ever want to get employed by the local government (usually the only source of employment in a lot of places).
Slightly related to the control of languange. One of the first editions of the National Geographic Magazine in Croatia (in Croatian language) featured a big article about a deadly disease spreading mostly in Africa, and how you could be born infected and it was terrible and everything. I've read that article and the disease was called "kopnica". I've never heard about it before, but it sure did seem nasty.
A month later (or could be two, doesn't matter), there was an angry letter to the editor which accused the magazine's proofreader of inventing a new word for AIDS (a word which everyone on the planet knows about). That proofreader in the reply thinly accused the reader of harbouring anti-national thoughts and some other horrible sentiments. I was shocked and wowed never to buy NGM in Croatia ever again.
Similar thing happened in IT magazines over here which started to "translate" English words by means of just inventing Croatian sounding ones. That made no sense to me, but it did make some proofreader's and academia careers.
Once I was on a public consultation "conference" about drone regulation in my country and had
some polite technical questions on the end of one talk. The government official berated me for "using foreign words [english] when we have such nice [newly invented] Croatian words" and then didn't bother to answer any of my questions. Half of the audience laughed how clever the official sounded. Also it was a bit sad that consultation was just a formality, but thats a different story.
So you're completely right. Language can be molded into small hoops for your enemy to jump through first. In general, a set of rules you create, and your enemy has to abide with making the communication asymetrical easing the control one has over the other.
Precisely.
It's an attempt by some groups to have others jump through hoops that they define. The end goal is never language, but the ability to control what others do and be the one calling the shots.
I can't remember the book it came from, but there was an author who wrote about his time growing up in an Eastern European communist country. During "Independence Days" his dad had to put a flag up in his store window. It wasn't optional. If he didn't do it, the police would stop by and ask why he didn't have a flag in his window.
If he refused, he's be on the "naughty list" with the authorities which could impact his employment, his housing, his kids schooling.
Putting the flag in the window was never the goal of the government. The goal was to show citizens they had no choice. The author talks about how capitulating the demand was dehumanizing and just ground down any resistance to authority that may have existed. "If I don't have the choice as to fly a flag or not, what choice did I have with more important aspects of my life?"
It's like putting stars of David on Jews in Germany. It wasn't just to identify them in public (though that was a goal) it was also to show them "who was in charge".