Invasion of Europe news….
We’ve seen this coming for some time—the word-police are out in force and want to be sure you stop using certain words to describe the “invasion” of Europe.
By the way, “invasion” is one of those words you are NOT to use, which is precisely why we won’t stop using it!
According to Al Jazeera, any “migrant” on the move even for economic reasons or for nefarious reasons is to be called a “refugee.”
We are seeing it right here in America as the illegal alien kids are rushing (LOL! swarming!) the US southern border and the Obama Administration and the resettlement contractors refer to them as “refugees” or “asylum seekers.”
Here is the Washington Post telling us about Al Jazeera:
Reading a British tabloid newspaper in 2015, you might wonder if Europe was again at risk of being conquered by the Mongol Empire. The continent is under “siege,” the papers report, facing an “invasion” from a “horde.” Parts of Europe have become like a “war zone,” they say, as “marauding” foreigners “swarm” the borders. The reality, of course, is that there is no army at the gates. The migrants that cause Europe such angst aren’t arriving in warships. Instead, most arrive in a human trafficker’s dinghy, if they arrive at all.
It’s not hard to see that using sort of language could have a dangerous impact on the discourse surrounding migrants. “Words that convey an exaggerated sense of threat can fuel anti-immigration sentiment and a climate of intolerance and xenophobia,” Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University, told WorldViews recently. Critically analyzing the derogatory words used to describe migrants is clearly prudent, but some want to go even further: Last week, Al Jazeera English broke with other major news organizations to announce that it was ditching the word “migrant.”
“The umbrella term migrant is no longer fit for purpose when it comes to describing the horror unfolding in the Mediterranean,” Barry Malone, the online editor of Al Jazeera English, explained in a blog post. “It has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises and distances, a blunt pejorative.” Instead, Malone wrote, his news organization would use the term “refugee” to describe those crossing the Mediterranean. “Migrant is a word that strips suffering people of voice,” Malone concluded. “Substituting refugee for it is – in the smallest way – an attempt to give some back.”
For more and for embedded links go here.
By the way, the word “refugee” holds an even greater meaning when one understands that in much of the first world it entitles those so designated to be given welfare goodies of all sorts.
I kind of like some of those words in the first paragraph, words like “swarm!” I’ll have to remember that one for future use.
