Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA08697 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 25 Sep 2001 20:20:41 +0100 Subject: Re: state of memes Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 15:11:36 -0400 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "memetics list" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <20010925191220.AAA7163@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 09/25/01 10:58, Philip Jonkers said this-
>Due to the terrorist bombing of two weeks ago memetic
>evolution is likely to see some drastic changes and boosts indeed.
William Safire from the New York Times-
September 23, 2001
Words of the War on Terror
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The first draft of President Franklin Roosevelt¹s request to Congress for
a declaration of war began, ŒŒYesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which
will live in world history.¹¹ In his second draft, he crossed out ŒŒworld
history¹¹ and substituted a condemnatory word that was far more
memorable: infamy.
Though its adjective, infamous, was frequently used, the noun infamy was
less familiar. It means ŒŒevil fame, shameful repute, notorious
disgrace¹¹ and befitted the nation¹s shock at the bloody destruction at
Pearl Harbor, a successful surprise blow that was instantly characterized
by the victim nation as a ŒŒsneak attack.¹¹
The word, with its connotation of wartime shock and horror, was chosen by
headline writers to label the terrorist attack on New York and Washington
that demolished the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a portion
of the Pentagon. In newspapers and on television, the historical day of
infamy was the label chosen, along with the more general ŒŒattack on
America.¹¹
The killers were hijackers. This Americanism, origin unknown, was first
cited in 1912 as to kick up high jack, which Dialect Notes defined as
ŒŒto cause a disturbance¹¹; 10 years later, a book about hobos noted
ŒŒhi-jacking, or robbing men at night when sleeping in the jungles.¹¹ In
the 1960¹s, as terrorists began seizing control of airliners, the verb
skyjack was coined but has since fallen into disuse.
The suicidal hijackers were able to slip a new weapon through the metal
detectors: a box cutter, defined in the on-top-of-the-news New Oxford
American Dictionary (to be published next month) as ŒŒa thin, inexpensive
razor-blade knife designed to open cardboard boxes.¹¹ Barbara Olson, a
passenger aboard the airliner doomed to be crashed into the Pentagon, was
able to telephone her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson; she told him
that the hijackers were armed with knives and what she called a cardboard
cutter.
These terrorists were suicide bombers, a phrase used in a 1981 Associated
Press dispatch by Tom Baldwin in Lebanon about the driving of an
explosives-laden car into the Iraqi Embassy. In 1983, Newsweek reported
that ŒŒthe winds of fanaticism have blown up a merciless throng of
killers: the assassins, thugs, kamikazes ‹ and now the suicide bombers.¹¹
Kamikaze is Japanese for ŒŒdivine wind,¹¹ a reference to a storm in the
13th century that blew away a fleet of invading Mongols. In World War II,
the word described suicidal pilots who dived their planes into enemy
ships. English has now absorbed the word: Al Hunt of The Wall Street
Journal wrote last week that airline policy ŒŒwas turned upside down by
these kamikaze fanatics.¹¹
Hunt, like President Bush and many others, called these acts of
murder-suicide cowardly. That is not a modifier I would use, nor would I
employ its synonym dastardly (though F.D.R. did), which also means
ŒŒshrinking from danger.¹¹ If anything, the suicide bomber or suicide
hijacker is maniacally fearless, the normal human survival instinct
overwhelmed by hatred or brainwashed fervor. Senseless and mindless are
other mistaken modifiers of these killings: the sense, or evil purpose,
of modern barbaric murder is to carry out a blindly worshiped leader¹s
desire to shock, horrify and ultimately intimidate the target¹s civilized
compatriots.
Another word that deserves a second look is justice. Both Senator John
McCain and the Bush adviser Karen Hughes called for ŒŒswift justice ¹¹ to
be meted out to the perpetrators, ordinarily a sentiment widely shared.
But the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote: ŒŒThere should be no talk of
bringing these people to Œswift justice.¹ . . . An open act of war
demands a military response, not a judicial one.¹¹
The leading suspect at the center of the terror campaign is Osama bin
Laden. The bin, meaning ŒŒson of,¹¹ is not capped; Westerners have chosen
not to capitalize the Arabic just as they have often chosen to capitalize
the Hebrew Ben, which has the same meaning. This has nothing to do with
correctness; it is strictly idiosyncratic convention, varying among
regions and stylists. (When starting a sentence with bin Laden¹s name,
Times style calls for capitalizing it, which then looks like a mistake.)
Bin Laden has been given a shorthand, bogus title, much like vice
overlord, fugitive financier and drug kingpin: his is terrorist
mastermind.
The name of his organization, al-Qaeda, means ŒŒthe base,¹¹ in looser
modern Arabic, ŒŒthe military headquarters.¹¹ His host in Afghanistan is
the Taliban, a religio-political group whose name means ŒŒthose who
seek.¹¹ The Arab word talib, ŒŒstudent,¹¹ has been given a Persian
suffix, an, which is an unusual amalgam or was a mistake.
The Taliban (proper noun construed as plural) harbor bin Laden and the
base of his organization. That is now becoming a political verb with a
vengeance.
ŒŒWe will make no distinction,¹¹ President Bush said, ŒŒbetween the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.¹¹ A key
sense of the verb to harbor is ŒŒto give shelter and concealment to
wrongdoers.¹¹ The next day, Bush used the noun form creatively: ŒŒThis is
an enemy that thinks its harbors are safe, but they won¹t be safe
forever.¹¹ That was an extension of the noun¹s present meaning of ŒŒplace
of shelter, haven, port¹¹ to ŒŒplace where evildoers think they are out
of reach of punishment.¹¹
Finally, the word terrorist. It is rooted in the Latin terrere, ŒŒto
frighten,¹¹ and the -ist was coined in France to castigate the
perpetrators of the Reign of Terror. Edmund Burke in 1795 defined the
word in English: ŒŒThose hell-hounds called terrorists . . . are let
loose on the people.¹¹
The sternly judgmental word should not be avoided or euphemized. Nobody
can accurately call those who plotted, financed and carried out the
infamous mass slaughter of Sept. 11 militants, resistance fighters,
gunmen, partisans or guerrillas. The most precise word to describe a
person or group who murders even one innocent civilian to send a
political message is terrorist.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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