Stephen Vincent gives insight into right-wing "framing" in this article [View All]

[Cats Against Frist]

I thought it was interesting, since, you know -- "history's actors" have already stolen and destroyed and rendered meaningless, or attatched false binaries to several terms and phrases in our language, such as, "support the troops," and "freedom." Here is a whine-fest from an NRO shill about how "insurgents" isn't working for the fighters in Iraq. The ironies of all ironies is that, one of the names he floats, to replace "insurgents" is "fascists."

Somebody stop my head from exploding.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vincent200412170843.asp

How, then, should we describe this war? What words and concepts define the situation more accurately? Since Iraq is now liberated, we might replace "occupation" with a word taken from the post-Civil War era: "reconstruction," as in, "the Coalition is reconstructing Iraq." We might then exchange the term "guerrilla fighters" for the more precise term "paramilitaries." Rather than noble warriors fighting to liberate their people, "paramilitaries" evoke images of anonymous right-wing killers terrorizing a populace in the name of a repressive regime — which is exactly what the fedayeen and jihadists are doing. Or we could simply dust off the venerable term "fascists." It was a good enough for the anti-Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. Why shouldn't we use it to describe similar enemies of freedom in Iraq?

I repeat — words matter. Terms like "paramilitaries," "death squads," and "fascists" clarify the nature of our enemy and underscore a fundamental point that the American media has inexcusably ignored: it is the Iraqi people who are under attack. They are the victims, their future is threatened, they are bleeding from wounds inflicted by pan-Arab Baathists and pan-Islamic jihadists. By calling these neo-fascists the "Resistance" the media reverses the relationship of assailant and defender and renders a terrible disservice to the millions of Iraqis who oppose, in ways large and small, these totalitarian forces. Hadeel gave her life resisting fascism. Yet to the Ted Ralls and Michael Moores of this world, she was a Quisling who deserved to die.