The idea that Dou­ble­s­peak per­vades con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal dis­course is not a new one. In Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent: The Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my of the Mass Media, Edward S. Her­man and Noam Chom­sky lay out a num­ber of instances where Dou­ble­s­peak serves polit­i­cal ends: poor, unwor­thy ben­e­fi­cia­ries of gov­ern­ment finan­cial assis­tance receive “wel­fare” and “hand­outs”, yet mil­i­tary spend­ing which effec­tive­ly serves wel­fare pur­pos­es is not sub­ject­ed to the same appel­la­tions, even as the US mil­i­tary itself declares such spend­ing unhelp­ful for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Anoth­er con­tem­po­rary exam­ple of bare­ly dis­guised social wel­fare is farm and dairy sub­si­dies, some­times lead­ing to obscene­ly waste­ful pro­duc­tion. and degra­da­tion of the envi­ron­ment. Dou­ble­s­peak thus serves to dis­tin­guish between those deemed wor­thy of social wel­fare, and those to whom wel­fare must be denied. This Dou­ble­s­peak allows a disin­gen­u­ous affec­ta­tion of prin­ci­pled Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion to social wel­fare, when in fact, wel­fare is indis­pens­able to some of their core con­stituen­cies.

It is cru­cial for us to exam­ine such instances of Orwellian Dou­ble­s­peak in our own soci­ety. The ways in which we dis­cuss polit­i­cal issues are inescapably influ­enced by the words with which we effect such dis­cus­sions, and we can­not allow our­selves to sub­mit to the lin­guis­tic con­tor­tions which serve the polit­i­cal pow­ers that we oppose. George Orwell’s 1984 was no doubt inspired large­ly by the dystopi­an excess­es of the Sovi­et Union, but I would argue that our take­away from the book must not mere­ly be the sim­plis­tic ideas on the evils of Sovi­et-style total­i­tar­i­an­ism. Instead, it should serve to warn us against the very same excess­es and abus­es in our own soci­ety, lest we our­selves suc­cumb to them.

On that note, I present a recent case of Dou­ble­s­peak which the news media employs to endan­ger refugees: the dichoto­my between the words refugee and migrant.

The Case of Refugee vs. Migrant

Accord­ing to Mer­ri­am-Web­ster Dic­tio­nary, a refugee is:

one that flees

espe­cial­ly : a per­son who flees to a for­eign coun­try or pow­er to escape dan­ger or per­se­cu­tion

This accords well with our com­mon under­stand­ing of who con­sti­tutes a refugee. How­ev­er, the def­i­n­i­tion con­tem­po­rary gov­ern­ments give to the word “refugee” has shift­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, news media shift­ed their usage of “refugee” in line with that pre­scribed by these gov­ern­ments. In par­tic­u­lar, the def­i­n­i­tion of “refugee” used by the US gov­ern­ment is based on Unit­ed Nation’s 1951 Con­ven­tion and 1967 Pro­to­cols on the sta­tus of refugees:

Under U.S. law, a “refugee” is a per­son who is unable or unwill­ing to return to his or her home coun­try because of a “well-found­ed fear of per­se­cu­tion” due to race, mem­ber­ship in a par­tic­u­lar social group, polit­i­cal opin­ion, reli­gion, or nation­al ori­gin.

Notice that this def­i­n­i­tion only pro­tects refugees from “per­se­cu­tion”, but does not offer pro­tec­tion from oth­er poten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tions refugees might face in their coun­tries of res­i­dence. Cir­cum­stances such as nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, or intol­er­a­ble grind­ing pover­ty (often life-threat­en­ing if food and essen­tial goods can­not be reli­ably obtained) fall out­side this cat­e­go­ry.

Anoth­er impor­tant corol­lary of this def­i­n­i­tion con­cerns the “well-found­ed fear”. Who defines the “well-found­ed­ness” of this fear? In prac­tice, it is the purview of the State, specif­i­cal­ly the gov­ern­ment agen­cies of the Exec­u­tive Office for Immi­gra­tion Review (which over­sees the immi­gra­tion courts) , USCIS (Unit­ed States Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vices), and ICE (Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment). The result is that it is a pow­er of the State to deter­mine who qual­i­fies as a refugee. Under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, these agen­cies are becom­ing increas­ing dis­in­clined to rec­og­nize the well-found­ed­ness of refugee fears. Con­se­quent­ly, almost no one is a refugee any­more. Instead, we have migrants lan­guish­ing in con­cen­tra­tion camps on the US-Mex­i­co bor­der, whose fears and suf­fer­ing count for noth­ing. Unrec­og­nized as refugees, they are alien­at­ed from pub­lic sym­pa­thies that sur­round the term of “refugees”, as well as legal rights afford­ed them by law, mea­ger though they might be.

Thus the State coöp­ta­tion of the word “refugee” is com­plete. And most refugees are left with the word “migrant”, with the implic­it impli­ca­tion that they have come to the Unit­ed States because wages are high­er here.

The Propaganda Model

Accord­ing to the pre­dic­tion of the Her­man-Chom­sky pro­pa­gan­da mod­el of the US mass media as an organ of pro­pa­gan­da, news report usage of the word “refugee” would be broad­ly in-line with its gov­ern­ment def­i­n­i­tion due to their gov­ern­ment sourc­ing. As we can plain­ly observe, the US media has exceed­ed this expec­ta­tion in spades. The word “migrant” dom­i­nates dis­course, where­as “refugees” are nowhere to be seen. In this arti­cle in The Atlantic, for exam­ple, the word “migrant” occurs 25 times, where­as the word “refugee” does not appear even once, despite the fact that a major­i­ty of the peo­ple in these con­cen­tra­tion camps in ques­tion should qual­i­fy as “refugees” in both the com­mon­ly-held seman­tic def­i­n­i­tion of the word, as well as the legal one. This holds true for oth­er mass media pub­li­ca­tions as well, such as the New York Times and the Wash­ing­ton Post.

Anoth­er pre­dic­tion that might be made with the pro­pa­gan­da mod­el is that the US media would treat peo­ple abused in unfriend­ly states as wor­thy vic­tims, where­as the vic­tims of the Unit­ed States’ own abuse would be por­trayed as unwor­thy. This is also observ­able in com­par­i­son with the US medi­a’s cov­er­age of Turkey’s abus­es of Syr­i­an refugees. In this case, peo­ple flee­ing vio­lence and its atten­dant depri­va­tion are referred to as “refugees” once more.

In effect, any refugee that the US gov­ern­ment abus­es is a “migrant”, and a com­pa­ra­ble refugee to an unfriend­ly state is a “refugee”. The Dou­ble­s­peak here is unmis­tak­able.

Why Does the Media Avoid the Word “Refugee”?

The word “refugee” car­ries with it the con­no­ta­tion of a wor­thy vic­tim, one who should be tak­en in by the Unit­ed States. A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Amer­i­cans would agree that every­one who faces dan­ger and comes to Amer­i­ca’s bor­ders should be afford­ed refuge, and it should not be a func­tion to the State to deter­mine who gets to live or die. To turn a refugee away to poten­tial dan­ger and suf­fer­ing is deeply immoral, and one can nev­er do such a thing with­out incur­ring a degree of oppro­bri­um. How­ev­er, to turn away or detain a “migrant”, which car­ries with it the con­no­ta­tion that they came to the Unit­ed States for bet­ter job oppor­tu­ni­ties, is sim­ply to uphold the coun­try’s immi­gra­tion laws.

As is the case when the rul­ing elite of the coun­try is seri­ous­ly split on an issue, the media reflects this split with its polar­ized opin­ions on the treat­ment of “migrants” in bor­der camps. There is sig­nif­i­cant back­lash over the cru­el treat­ment that “migrants” have to endure in these camps. How­ev­er, this should be under­stood as a dis­agree­ment on gov­er­nance, i.e. the degree of wan­ton cru­el­ty to be inflict­ed on “migrants”. The avoid­ance of the word “refugee” obvi­ates ques­tions over the arbi­trary State pow­er of bor­der enforce­ment, which has the painful­ly real impli­ca­tion of con­fer­ring the State with broad pow­ers to deter­mine which refugees should live as a result of being let in or die as either a con­se­quence of State abus­es, or being turned away, which leads once again to vio­lence, per­se­cu­tion, or inju­ri­ous pri­va­tion.

What Should Be Done?

Open bor­ders. The only way to avoid refugee suf­fer­ing is to abol­ish the arbi­trary state pow­er of hard nation­al bor­ders. Their entire rai­son d’être is to serve cap­i­tal­ist class inter­ests, and they cause real suf­fer­ing to our fel­low human beings. Of course, abo­li­tion of hard bor­ders is not a real­is­tic project for the imme­di­ate future, as that would engen­der social and eco­nom­ic chaos with­in our cur­rent Cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. How­ev­er, these prob­lems are the spe­cif­ic prob­lems of cap­i­tal­ism, and serve more as an indict­ment of the cur­rent sys­tem than a repu­di­a­tion of the idea of open bor­ders. All the more rea­son for us to work on con­struct­ing a bet­ter social and eco­nom­ic sys­tem, free from the fol­ly and capri­cious cru­el­ties of Cap­i­tal­ism.