The Moral Imperative Of Clear Language

Say That Again

from the name-it-plainly dept

I need to say something that will make many of you deeply uncomfortable: your refusal to call fascism “fascism” is not sophistication—it’s complicity.

When Donald Trump posts explicit orders for “REMIGRATION” and “Mass Deportation Operations” targeting American cities because they are “the core of the Democrat Power Center,” that’s not “controversial immigration policy.” That’s mass deportation directed against political opponents. When federal troops deploy against American civilians exercising constitutional rights, that’s not “enhanced law enforcement.” That’s military occupation. When the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions gets described as “political polarization,” that’s not nuanced analysis—it’s linguistic evasion that enables the very thing it refuses to name.

The sophisticates hate this clarity. They prefer the safety of euphemism, the comfort of complexity that never quite arrives at moral judgment. They speak of “concerning developments” and “troubling trends” while democracy burns around them. They perform nuanced understanding while fascism consolidates power through their very refusal to name it.

But here’s what they don’t understand: authoritarianism thrives in ambiguity. It requires linguistic fog to operate. It depends on our unwillingness to call things by their proper names. Every euphemism is a small surrender. Every hedge is a tiny collaboration. Every refusal to speak plainly is a gift to those who profit from confusion.

Language Shapes Reality

Language shapes consciousness. When we refuse to name what we see clearly, we don’t just fail to communicate—we erode our collective capacity to think clearly, to feel appropriately, to respond effectively. We make ourselves complicit in our own moral disorientation.

George Orwell understood this when he wrote that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” But he was describing propaganda techniques used by totalitarian regimes. What we face now is worse: the voluntary adoption of euphemistic language by people who should know better, who pride themselves on seeing clearly, who claim to defend democratic values.

We are doing the propagandists’ work for them.

Consider how this linguistic distortion operates in practice. When mass deportation operations targeting millions of people get called “immigration enforcement,” we’re not being diplomatic—we’re making state violence psychologically easier to accept. When systematic attacks on democratic institutions get labeled “political disagreements,” we’re not showing balance—we’re normalizing authoritarianism. When obvious lies get treated as “alternative perspectives,” we’re not being fair—we’re weaponizing false equivalence against truth itself.

The euphemism isn’t just descriptive failure—it’s moral failure. It changes how people process information, how they make decisions, how they understand their own moral obligations. When you call fascism “populism,” you’re not just using imprecise language. You’re making it easier for people to support fascism without confronting what they’re supporting.

Arendt’s Warning

Hannah Arendt spent her life studying how ordinary people enable extraordinary evil, and she identified linguistic evasion as one of the primary mechanisms. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, she showed how bureaucratic language—“evacuation,” “resettlement,” “special treatment”—allowed participants in genocide to avoid confronting the reality of what they were doing. They weren’t murdering children; they were “processing population transfers.” They weren’t operating death camps; they were managing “facilities for the final solution.”

The language didn’t just hide the reality from others—it hid it from themselves. It allowed them to participate in evil while maintaining their self-image as decent, law-abiding citizens following proper procedures.

Arendt’s insight was that evil becomes possible not primarily through active malice but through the refusal of ordinary people to see and name what’s in front of them. The “banality of evil” is fundamentally about linguistic evasion enabling moral evasion. When we stop calling violence violence, we make violence easier to commit.

This is what we’re witnessing now. The systematic training of a population to see clearly but speak obliquely, to understand precisely but describe vaguely, to recognize authoritarianism but call it something else. We have become a society of people who know exactly what’s happening but lack the linguistic courage to say so.

The Practice of Plain Naming

Consider how this evasion plays out in our current discourse:

We don’t say “Trump is implementing fascist policies.” We say “Trump’s approach raises concerns about democratic norms.”

We don’t say “Republicans are supporting mass deportation operations.” We say “There are disagreements about immigration enforcement strategies.”

We don’t say “Conservative media spreads lies designed to enable authoritarianism.” We say “Different sources present different perspectives on complex issues.”

We don’t say “MAGA supporters have chosen to enable fascism.” We say “There are legitimate grievances driving political polarization.”

Each euphemism makes the reality a little less clear, a little less urgent, a little less morally demanding. Each hedge creates space for people to avoid confronting what they’re witnessing or participating in. Each refusal to name plainly is a small act of collaboration with the forces that depend on confusion to operate.

When Trump orders ICE to conduct “Mass Deportation Operations” in cities he identifies as “the core of the Democrat Power Center,” that’s not immigration policy—it’s the use of state violence against political opponents. When he calls for “REMIGRATION” of millions of people, that’s not border security—it’s forced population transfer. When federal agents separate families and detain children, that’s not law enforcement—it’s state-sanctioned cruelty.

The defenders will say “the law is the law”—as if legality were equivalent to morality. But slavery was legal. Segregation was legal. Japanese internment was legal. Every authoritarian regime in history has operated through law, not despite it. “The law is the law” is not a moral position—it’s moral abdication disguised as principled governance.

Law without moral foundation is just organized violence. Rules without ethical grounding are just systematized cruelty. When your only defense of a policy is that it’s technically legal, you’ve already admitted it’s morally indefensible.

The Sophisticates’ Resistance

The sophisticates will tell you that such plain language is “inflammatory,” “divisive,” “unhelpful to productive dialogue.” They’ll suggest that calling fascism “fascism” alienates potential allies, shuts down conversation, makes compromise impossible.

But here’s what they’re really saying: they prefer the comfort of ambiguity to the responsibility that comes with clarity. They’d rather maintain the illusion of reasoned discourse than confront the reality that one side has abandoned reason entirely. They want to keep playing by rules that the other side has explicitly rejected.

This isn’t sophistication—it’s cowardice. It’s the intellectual’s version of appeasing authoritarianism through linguistic accommodation. It’s the belief that if we just find the right words, the right tone, the right approach, we can somehow reason with people who have chosen unreason as their governing principle.

But you cannot have productive dialogue with fascists about the merits of fascism. You cannot find common ground with people who reject the premise of shared reality. You cannot compromise with those who view compromise as weakness and good faith as stupidity.

What you can do is name what they are doing clearly enough that people understand what’s at stake and what choice they face.

The Power of Clarity

The power of plain naming is that it forces moral confrontation. It makes people choose sides. It strips away the comfortable distance that euphemism provides. It demands that people acknowledge what they’re actually supporting rather than hiding behind sanitized language.

This is why authoritarians work so hard to control language. They understand that linguistic precision is the enemy of moral confusion. That clear naming makes their projects harder to defend. That euphemism is their friend and clarity is their enemy.

They want us to call their fascism “nationalism.” Their lies “alternative facts.” Their cruelty “tough love.” Their mass deportations “border security.” Their authoritarianism “law and order.”

Every time we adopt their language, we do their work. Every time we refuse to name their actions plainly, we make those actions easier to defend, easier to rationalize, easier to continue.

When we refuse to call fascism “fascism”, we don’t make fascism less dangerous. We make ourselves less capable of recognizing and resisting it. We participate in our own disorientation. We become accomplices to our own confusion.

The Courage to Act

The courage to name things plainly is not the courage to be harsh or inflammatory. It’s the courage to accept the responsibility that comes with seeing clearly. It’s the courage to abandon the comfortable illusion of neutrality and acknowledge that some things cannot be straddled, some positions cannot be hedged, some realities cannot be euphemized away.

To say that systematic deployment of federal troops against American cities constitutes military occupation is not inflammatory—it’s accurate. To say that mass deportation operations targeting political opponents constitute fascist policy is not hyperbolic—it’s precise. To say that obvious lies designed to enable authoritarianism are lies is not divisive—it’s necessary.

The alternative to plain naming is not diplomatic nuance—it’s moral blindness. It’s the systematic erosion of our capacity to recognize authoritarianism when it appears in familiar forms, speaking familiar languages, wearing familiar clothes.

Evil depends on our unwillingness to call it evil. Fascism depends on our refusal to call it fascism. Lies depend on our treatment of them as “alternative perspectives.” State violence depends on our description of it as “tough policy choices.”

The moment we name these things plainly, we restore the moral clarity that makes effective resistance possible. We acknowledge what we’re actually facing. We accept the responsibility that comes with seeing clearly. We choose truth over comfort, accuracy over diplomacy, moral clarity over intellectual sophistication.

This is not just a linguistic choice—it’s a moral one. Every time we speak plainly about what we’re witnessing, we strike a blow against the forces that depend on confusion to operate. Every time we call fascism “fascism”, we make fascism a little harder to defend. Every time we name state violence as state violence, we make such violence a little less acceptable.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And Trump’s mass deportation operations are fascistic displays of state violence targeting political enemies whether we have the courage to call them that or not.

The difference is not in the reality—the difference is in our capacity to respond to reality appropriately.

Name it plainly. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s true. Not because it’s comfortable, but because comfort in the face of authoritarianism is itself a form of collaboration. Not because it’s diplomatic, but because diplomacy with fascists is enabling fascism.

The revolution is linguistic honesty. The rebellion is calling things by their proper names. The resistance is refusing to participate in the euphemistic erosion of moral clarity.

Say what you see. Name what you know. Call fascism fascism.

Every minute of every day.

Remember what’s real. Because the alternative to naming fascism clearly isn’t moderation or diplomacy—it’s surrender.

Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.

Filed Under: ambiguity, complicity, fascism, language