The Alt-Right Playbook: The Death of a Euphemism

Say, for the sake of argument, you're a liberal journalist in the year of 2016 of the common era.

Your beat is covering the Republican Primaries.

A lot of people are vying for the presidential nomination,

And so it falls to you to attend and write up their debates.

Part of your job is deciphering "conservative euphemisms."

When the subject of "illegal immigration" comes up, for instance,

You'll have to explain to your audience that, the idea of "protecting American jobs from undocumented workers,"

is Republican Doubletalk for "hating mexicans."

No one is tightening security at the US-Canada border,

No one is pulling over white Europeans to check their visas.

And undocumented workers contribute a massive amount to the economy,

while tax-payers don't have to cover social security, unemployment, or Medicare for them.

"protecting jobs" has always been used to paper over racism.

So you're sitting there watching the debate, these factoids at the ready,

when one of the candidates says he wants to tighten the borders, because...

"Mexico is sending us rapists and thieves."

I'm sorry. What?

What just happened? That is not a thing Republicans are supposed to say out loud! It's...

...against the rules!

You can't just cop to believing Mexicans are degenerates after decades of calling border security a "jobs issue".

Also, immigrants, legal or otherwise, aren't soldiers. Since when are they sent by anyone?

By the time you pull yourself out of that thought spiral the debate has shifted. Now they're talking about the war on terror.

So you somewhat warily prepare to contextualise another set of euphemisms.

This is a subject almost always used to mask Islamophobia.

Whenever an act of domestic terror is committed by someone of Palestinian descent,

politicians try to link it to ISIS or Al-Qaeda.

Where if the bomber or shooter is a white Christian,

the terrorist is referred to as a "lone wolf", not part of any pattern,

despite there being significantly more white Christian "lone wolves" than Palestinian terrorists.

This "war on terror" never seems to expand beyond regions with oil deposits.

But then that same candidate pipes up and says, if elected, for the sake of security, he wants to create a Muslim registry,

and what the hell is going on?!

Politicians just don't talk like this!

Conventional wisdom is that this kind of language will flare up the extremists in your party while alienating your base.

And appealing to both at the same time is why we invented euphemisms.

And sure enough, in the following months, you have far-right pundits talking about a Muslim ban on national television,

waxing nostalgic about the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s like they weren't a national disgrace.

You've got that same candidate casting aspersions on the judge investigating him for fraud

because the judge is Mexican-American.