Apparently it wasn’t terrorism that put this girl in hospital

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/censorship-banning-words-is-offensive

Version 0 of 1.

Wanted: a synonym for the word for when assassins organise to murder innocent civilians, their purpose being to intimidate countless more civilians, to the extent that this brings about some desired political and/or behavioural capitulation. A general surrender of free expression, in response to the slaughter of cartoonists, for instance. True, the word terrorism still has some life in it. Even allowing for the abhorrent leadership of some countries where terrorists operate, and for the existence of officially virtuous, reformed terrorists, and for the recorded difficulties of the UN in defining terrorism, the word is still sufficiently unproblematic for the secretary general of that organisation, Ban Ki-moon, to utter it repeatedly.

“Terrorism,” he said , shortly after the massacres in Paris, “is a common challenge for humanity.”

But Ban Ki-moon’s most memorable use of the word was in his 2014 tribute to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl and, now, author, when she was awarded the Nobel peace prize. “With her courage and determination,” he said – in what must have seemed to his target the ultimate insult – “Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book.”

The BBC, as newly confirmed, prefers “a more precise description if possible”. Such as, to observe its editorial guidelines, “Malala has shown what attackers fear most”, or alternatively, what “militants” or “extremists” fear most. Even if none of those designations quite conveyed, as “terrorists” does, the intention of Malala’s homicidal assailants to frighten all Pakistani girls, not just her, out of getting an education.

Alternatively, Mr Ban might at least have done a waggly thing with his fingers and put “terrorists” in inverted commas, as a kind of hat-tip to nuance, an ironic acknowledgment that he’s just talking down, out of necessity, to people still crude enough to use the t-word as if it weren’t, always, relative. Elaborating on its guidelines, Tarik Kafala, head of BBC Arabic, last week explained that the term was too “loaded” and “value-laden” – how unlike the simple “murderer” – to describe those who rampaged through Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish supermarket.

And, given his particular remit, one imagines that Mr Kafala might well, if he used anything but neutral language when civilians are murdered for ideological reasons, be targeted by numberless emails from Disgusteds of Raqqa, and their sympathisers, demanding to know what is wrong with slaughtering unbelievers who knew perfectly well the rules on depiction of the prophet, or whose alleged co-religionists have carried out atrocities in Palestine. And as the BBC carefully points out: “What we do is seen, heard or read everywhere.”

So consider the sensitivities of Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab (“which much of the world labels a terrorist group”), or of a President Assad (when his terrorists are designated freedom fighters), before risking a value judgment. Much easier to do as Mr Kafala does and call the terrorists something more respectful. Unless, within the terrorist community, it is as offensive to be demoted to mere insurgent as it might for a senior hospital consultant to be addressed as “Dr” or for say, Lord Prescott, to be called plain “John”.

Perhaps the best of the current arguments for abandoning the word terrorist is that it frustrates terrorists in their mass intimidation and thus averts the knee-jerk erosion of civil liberties, much in the way intended by Mr Vladimir, in Conrad’s The Secret Agent. To respond with the word terrorist, according to this critique of the word, is to do the terrorists’ work for them. Imagine the deterrent effect, assuming it truly has such power, if Mr Ban had identified the common challenge to humanity as disagreeable neighbours.

Maybe if a fearful public were, indeed, to be consoled by more harmless-sounding terms – albeit they currently include the BBC’s favoured “act of terror” – and were not irrationally threatened when a few people are randomly decapitated, blown up and murdered by apparently law-abiding fellow citizens, there would be a convincing case for euphemism as the frontline defence against a repressive state reaction. Maybe such horrors should barely be reported at all. Or, at least, only when accompanied by a reminder of how many more people are killed on the roads. Sleep tight!

Even outside the BBC, where there might be less understandable anxiety about using one sometimes controversial word, when there are so many, there is, to judge by the support for Mr Kafala, growing dislike for the word terrorist, and equally, for those people who use it. In places where other loaded words – reforming, democratic, Islamist – routinely get past, and demi-offensive fatuities such as “little old lady”, “career woman”, “big beast” and “single mother” go everyday unremarked, discussion of this word has elicited a surge of value-laden condemnation.

It is “toxic”. It is Manichaean. Practically up there with Benedict Cumberbatch’s misspeak. Much worse than alternatives such as “barbarian”, “Islamist” and “psychopath”. It is a “stupid” word that is only used by “ignorant” people who can’t understand that either all war is terrorism or there’s no such thing. To add guilt to the idiocy of its users, its repetition does not only support terrorism,by spreading fear, but the slander of innocents, because of that fear. Whether or not that analysis convinces, this is evidently becoming an expression that, if not actually ripe for self-censorship, needs to be quote-marked, semi-apologised for, or defended, pre-utterance, as, you know, not being an endorsement of drones or Israel.

That it requires any such rigmarole instantly consigns terrorist to the shudder-inducing category that already contains illegitimate, coloured, ethnic and anything else that might emitted by the kind of person who says: “But gay was such a lovely word.”

Why bother? The terrorism will happen regardless. All we would lose is a noun that still – to judge by the times it creeps into BBC reports, as well as into Ban Ki-moon’s speeches – has no equal for describing a certain type of savagery against civilians.

Days after Mr Kafala reminded colleagues to drop it, the t-word somehow resurfaced in a BBC report about the extradition of a Charlie Hebdo suspect, “said to be connected to the gunmen behind a deadly terrorist attack in Paris”.

So it’s not that it doesn’t believe in it. And where possible, of course, the corporation will happily repeat official value judgments issued by a state that is continually reaffirming the threat from terrorism. Thus, the sequel to the BBC’s My Brother the Islamist, became, after the Islamist was convicted, My Brother the Terrorist.

As the BBC stresses, impartiality “lies at the heart of public service”. The terrorist sympathiser is clearly entitled to consideration, according to the editorial guidelines, no less than the snooker fan or nudity/language puritan: “Different words cause different degrees of offence in different communities.” Context, apparently, is key.

In my corner of my community, it turns out, we are grievously offended by the BBC’s attempted extinction of a word, from every conceivable editorial context, because it’s just not worth it