Word Play: The “ism” addiction

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NICK EICHER, HOST: And finally today, we end the week with our monthly feature: Word Play. George Grant has been thinking a lot recently of the many “isms” that have found their way into our daily vocabulary.

GEORGE GRANT: Politics tends to be a jargon factory. Shorthand labels, often pejorative, sometimes defensive, and only rarely descriptive are invented and deployed as a kind of vocabulary artillery. As you might expect though, all too often this war of words becomes a war on words. Political fractiousness becomes frightfully more divisive when our vocabulary loses definition, and our words are weaponized.

During the Cold War a host of ideological “isms” passed into our common parlance: Communism and Socialism were pitted against Capitalism and Mercantilism. Liberalism squared off against Conservatism. The West was derided for its Imperialism, Consumerism, Individualism, and Materialism. The East was derided for its Despotism, Absolutism, Authoritarianism, and Totalitarianism.

Some ideologies have splinted into rival camps: Bolshevism against Menshevism, Stalinism against Trotskyism, Economic Marxism against Cultural Marxism. Then there is International Socialism against National Socialism against Democratic Socialism against Fabian Socialism against Baathist Socialism.

We are buffeted today by the competing claims of Populism, Progressivism, and Scientism opposing Classicism, Traditionalism, and Moralism. Environmentalism and Feminism stand in contradistinction to Industrialism and Patriarchalism.

There are of course plenty of “isms” that are not at all ideological. Instead, they describe movements or philosophies, or theologies: Antinomianism, Deism, Universalism, Gnosticism, Mysticism, and Unitarianism or Presbyterianism, Dispensationalism, Preterism, Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, and Covenantalism. Some “isms” merely describe a mood, an affection, or a frame of mind: Pragmatism, Rationalism, Absurdism, and Syncretism or Sentimentalism, Idealism, Catastrophism, and Hedonism.

A few recently coined “isms” have burst forth from the blogosphere into our common slang parlance including Mamdanimalism and MAGAism, Broligarchism and Six-Sevenism, Deluluism and Skibidism.

Admittedly, these “isms” remind us that shorthand labels can serve as useful descriptors, categorizers, and identifiers—but only if they are applied accurately. All too often, disconnected from original meanings and historical contexts some of these “isms” are used as mere epithets. The result is that they now profligately pepper our social media posts, podcasts, and stump speeches: Fascism and Wokism, Nazism and Christian Nationalism, Colonialism and Corporatism.

Sometimes our misuse of “isms” is just verbal or intellectual sloppiness. As Ernest Yeboah has said, “We choose to say the wrong words because we fail to think of the right words.” But sometimes, he asserted, our misuse of “isms” is more malicious, “We fail to say the right words because we choose the wrong words.”

Either way, Mark Twain’s observation is a helpful corrective, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ‘Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

I’m George Grant.

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