The responsible use of language

“Giving things the wrong name makes the world a poorer place” (“mal nommer les choses c’est ajouter au malheur du monde”) wrote the French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus. Conference interpreters and translators, professions of which I have been a proud member for over forty years, go to more trouble than most to find the right words as the quality of their work depends on it. Perhaps that is why I am particularly sensitive to the way that language can - and often is - twisted to meet particular ends.

Contrary to conference interpreters and translators, politicians and trade unionists can of course be excused for exaggerating – it’s their stock in trade, a time-honoured way of oversimplifying complex messages to make an impact on their voters or members. This tendency did not start with populist politicians, but their rise has certainly accentuated it. The erstwhile leader of the French communist party, Georges Marchais, for instance, was known for his pithy and colourful expressions and particularly his habit of blaming everything that was wrong with France on capitalist barons (“le grand capital”) regardless of the fact that his party, as part of France’s immediate post-war government, had helped lay the foundations of its very generous welfare state. Today’s communist party and its soul mates in the CGT union lose no opportunity to denounce “the deliberate destruction of the (French) social model (“la casse de notre modèle social”) after the recent loosening of labour market regulations, the end to a particularly protective labour contract for railway workers or the probable future reduction of unemployment benefits.  As if universal health care, family allowances and 5 weeks paid holiday were about to be ditched at the instigation of globalized capitalist lobbies (“les lobbys mondialisés”) advocating a policy of unbridled liberalism (“le libéralisme sauvage”). At the other end of the political spectrum, the supposed consequences of “being submerged by immigrants” (“ la submersion migratoire de la France” ) are regularly denounced by the parties of the extreme right  for whom l’identité française, seen only as white and Christian, is under threat (“menace sur l’identité chrétienne (de la France)”) and held up as an ideal that cannot possibly, against all historical evidence, accommodate people who have different histories, religions or skin colours.

Most of us, who hear such phrases every day, quickly shrug them off as crass exaggeration and tend to consider them as unimportant as everyone can see where these speakers are coming from. Maybe. But repeated over and over again, do they not gradually erode the possibility of engaging in balanced discourse and civilized debate? And encourage people who should know better to actually indulge in unbalanced discourse and appear to believe what they are saying?

Take for example the case of the novelist Eric Vuillard, the author of an interesting novel entitled “The Order of the Day (“L’Ordre du Jour”) about the willing complicity of German industrial barons in Hitler’s rise to power, that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2017. During a recent conversation at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, he is reported* to have described the French government’s response to the gilets jaunes protest movement as “authoritarian” and asserted that restrictions on press freedom in France were in preparation. It is unclear whether he was really trying to suggest sinister parallels between today’s France and Hitler’s Germany. The article suggests that he was.  Be that as it may, the idea that the six week “Great Debate “, together with subsidies, tax breaks and extra allowances worth €11bn. can be considered as an “authoritarian” response is little more than a gross distortion of the facts.  Even if he was referring to the legitimate controversy over the tactics of the French riot  police during the gilets jaunes’ regular Saturday demonstrations, the inference that the police behaved with deliberate  brutality akin to that  of Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs is entirely unwarranted and unworthy of an intellectual figure, especially someone talking to a foreign audience that is probably not familiar with what actually happened and has only seen dramatic TV pictures and YouTube videos.

A really scandalous distortion of the facts however must be laid at the door of the gilets jaunes themselves. In a demonstration against police tactics last weekend, they called themselves “the mutilated as an example to others” (“les mutilés pour l’exemple”) This time, the reference is crystal clear: during the First World War a  number of French footsoldiers were executed by firing squads made up of their comrades  and on the orders of their superiors “as an example to others” (“ les fusillés pour l’exemple”), largely on trumped-up charges of desertion or cowardice in the face of the enemy. Only recently, almost 100 years after the events, have their reputations been restored by the official recognition that the vast majority of the “fusillés pour l’exemple” were terrified and traumatised young men who, at the critical moment, were unable to bring themselves to face almost certain death when ordered by officers to charge enemy trenches.

The gilets jaunes who formed the association of mutilés pour l’exemple comprise a few who were indeed unfortunate enough to lose a hand or an eye as a result of being hit by a police grenade. While there seems little justification for using such dangerous weapons (the most dangerous have since been banned for policing demonstrations) and a number of policemen are under investigation for being too trigger happy, considering themselves “mutilated as an example to others” seems a totally unacceptable abuse of language. Were the demonstrators ordered to demonstrate and, in the course of those demonstrations, to throw stones and rocks at the police and set fire to or overturn their vehicles? Of course not!  Were the police under orders to fire their grenades indiscriminately with the aim of injuring and maiming as many demonstrators as possible? At a time when the 30-year anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre is a stark reminder of what really happens when security forces open fire on a crowd with live bullets, precisely as an example to others, the suggestion is preposterous. Were any demonstrators actually killed as a result of police action? No. The only fatalities that did occur during the gilets jaunes protests were caused by traffic accidents for which the protestors themselves were indirectly responsible during their occupation of roundabouts. And although losing a hand or an eye is certainly a serious injury, the small number of those who were injured in this way received prompt and effective medical attention.

By assimilating their fate to that of the “fusillés pour l’exemple”, these gilets jaunes have simply thrown discredit on their movement and clearly shown that shrill exaggeration can only obscure a balanced assessment of what caused their movement in the first place.

One can only hope that both the novelist and the shadowy gilets jaunes leaders will think twice before identifying their words or deeds again with far more dramatic and far-reaching historical events. Legitimate criticism or protest does not make the world a poorer place; self-serving and self-pitying justification for it certainly does.

*In an article in the Financial Times of May 30, 2019: “Lessons for the present from French historical fiction” by Frederick Studemann.