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Words matter, even, and perhaps especially in moments of crisis. At such times, words provide us with a conceptual framework to understand the things happening around us. Choose words that are inadequate to the moment, or fail to capture its gravity, and you run the risk of letting down your guard in the face of chaos. Choose words that are hyperbolic or extreme, and you risk becoming like the boy who cried wolf or someone more interested in social media clicks than enlightenment.
As such, it’s essential to use words as precisely as possible. No, not every politician with whom you disagree, even when they do truly horrible things, is a fascist, let alone a Nazi; and they are almost certainly not the literal equivalent of Hitler. On the other side, calling everyone who believes in government-guaranteed health care a Stalinist is an abuse of language (and history) that obscures far more than it illuminates.
In the wake of the Capitol siege commenced by Trump’s hardest of hardcore supporters, there is some debate among liberals and the left about whether we should refer to the MAGA faithful there as terrorists. While the term has found easy purchase for most, some caution against its deployment, not because it might not fit in the…
