Who Controls the Langauge?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 3, 1999 | by Eli Lehrer

David Horowitz, who heads the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture, hopes to expose the left's domination of politics and culture via the language.

Conservative activist David Horowitz is running advertisements around the country complaining that the left controls the language. "One of the disadvantages at which conservatives operate is that, facing liberals and Democrats in political battles, they still end up using a vocabulary that places them with the regressive elements" says Horowitz, a prominent Vietnam-era New Left activist who switched sides in the 1980s and now runs the conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles.

Horowitz has devised an exercise in linguistics, called The List, that ranks people and institutions on a spectrum from far-left (racist/ communist) to far-right (racist/fascist). The List, posted on the group's Web site (www.frontpagemag.com) and in ads in opinion journals, contains some controversial judgments. For instance, do GOP former Massachusetts governor William Weld and The Free Press publishing house really share ideology with Bill Clinton?

"Of course, lots of reasonable people are going to disagree with some of what we say," says Horo-witz. "We want to provoke debate and, if we do, then we've accomplished a large part of our mission." Horowitz is working to reframe the political debate. "Newt Gingrich is called right-wing and some tried to implicate him in the Oklahoma City bombing for that. If you look at the facts, [House Minority Whip] David Bonior is much closer to the communists than Gingrich is to militia members."

Jennifer Pozner, of the left-wing media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting complains as loudly as Horowitz, but contends that it is the right that controls the language. "Today we are seeing the right trying to take over a lot of touchy-feely language from the left," she says. As an example, Pozner cites the antiaffirmative-action Proposition 209, California Civil Rights Initiative, which, she says, took important civil-rights protections away from women and minorities. "The right used to say they were anti-integration and segregationist; now they say it is they who are pro-civil rights -- and that's just ridiculous."

In a sense, the Horowitz group has begun to subscribe to the ideas that French philosopher Michel Foucault long has advocated. Founder of a critical movement called neohistoricism, Foucault contends that language and meaning are social constructs defined by whomever happens to hold power.

"I agree with Foucault that control of the language is important but, unlike Foucault, I don't believe that everything is relative," says Horowitz. Richard Ellis, a self-described man of the left who teaches at Willamette University in Oregon and wrote The Dark Side of the Left, says Horowitz's contentions are like those made by people on the left. "This is exactly what I see from the left wing on campus -- this perception that the right has this hegemonic discourse and controls the left. [What Horowitz is doing] is just Foucault, but it's Foucault of the right."

Anthony Mora, who runs a public-relations firm in Southern California and has written a book about the use of language in the media, says that he believes most political descriptions have been corrupted beyond recognition. "Control of the language is very important -- but today, in the popular media, I think we are seeing a lot of terms become meaningless as the media use them more" he says.

RELATED ARTICLE: Labeling the Political Spectrum

LEFT

Far Left

Noam Chomsky Jane Fonda Hayden (1980%) Kwame Ture Catherine MacKinnon Pacifica Radio Homer's Mother Campus Organizing Comm. Verso Queer Studies Order of Che Louis Farrakhan

Left Liberal

Al Gore Eleanor Cliff Sen. Ted Kennedy Donna Shalala CNN Mayor Quimby Ford Foundation 99% of Book Publishers Political Science Pulitzer Prize Spike Lee

Left

Hillary Clinton Jane Fonda Turner (1990's) Sen. Paul Wellstone Patricia Ireland National Public Radio Lisa Simpson MacArthur Genius Awards Most University Presses English Literature National Book Award Toni Morrison

Moderate Liberal

Bill Clinton Jane Fonda Vadim (1960's) Sen. Tom Daschle Geraldine Ferraro ABC, CBS, NBC Marge Simpson Carnegie Endowment The Free Press Languages Humanitas Awards William Raspberry

RIGHT

Right

Pat Buchanan G. Gordon Liddy Gary Bauer Phyllis Schlafly Most Talk Radio Ned Flanders Von Mises Institute Spence Football Edmund Burke Award Reggie White

Moderate Conservative

Bob Dole Jane Fonda (1950's) President George Bush Elizabeth Dote Fox Homer Simpson Nixon Library Yale University Press Business 4H Club Badge Shelby Steele

Far Right

David Duke Jared Taylor Lou Sheldon Marge Schott Radio Free Idaho Sideshow Bob Liberty Lobby Barricade Books Eugenics Burning Cross Louis Farrakhan

Conservative

Ronald Reagan Bill Bennett Newt Gingrich Lynne Cheney Firing Line Bart Simpson Bradley Foundation Regnery Physics Templeton Prize Ward Connerly