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Intro Cansados de que llamen "daños colaterales" a lo que no son sino inocentes víctimas civiles, de que a secuestrar y asesinar no nacionalistas le llamen "el problema vasco", de que 120 toneladas diarias de fuel que escapan por las grietas de un petrolero hundido sean "unos hilillos", de que ser despedido ilegalmente sea un "reajuste de plantilla" y de que, en general, se utilice el lenguaje para distorsionar, manipular y esconder realidades siempre atroces para los que las sufren, hemos decidido abrir este observatorio de vigilancia lingüística para recoger y denunciar el uso espúreo del lenguaje como "weapon of mass deception", especialmente a cargo de gobiernos, grandes multinacionales y, en muchos casos, medios de (des-)información.
Adoptamos
como editorial los dos textos recogidos más abajo:, el primero, The First
Casualty, de William Lutz (editor de "Quaterley Review of
Doublespeak") describe lo que le pasa a la verdad - y al lenguaje - cuando
estalla la guerra. Escrito originalmente en el año 1991a propósito de la
primera guerra contra Irak, vuelve a tener hoy una trágica actualidad. El
segundo texto, Mentiras, de nuestro querido poeta Luis García
Montero, describe con la precisión poética que caracteriza a su autor el
sentimiento que nos ha llevado a abrir esta trinchera de defensa virtual
contra el engaño masivo.
NO A LA GUERRA.
The doublespeak of war consists, as Orwell wrote of all such language,
"of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness." It is,
fundamentally, the language of insincerity, where there is a gap
between the speaker's real and declared aims. It is language as an
instrument for concealing and preventing thought, not for expressing
or extending thought. Such language silences dialogue and blocks
communication.
During the Vietnam "conflict" we learned that mercenaries paid by the
U.S. government were "civilian irregular defense soldier," refugees
fleeing the war were "ambient non-combatant personnel," and enemy
troops who survived bombing attacks were "interdictional nonsuccumbers."
In Vietnam, American warplanes conducted "limited duration protective
reaction strikes", during which they achieved an "effective delivery
of ordnance." So it went too in the Persian Gulf.
Just as officially there was no war in Korea or Vietnam, officially
there was no war in the Persian Gulf. After all, Congress didn't
declare war, it declared an authorization of the "use of force", a
poer clearly delegated to Congress in Article I, Section 8, of the
Constitution, which now reads: "Congress shall have the power to
authorize the use of force." So now we have not war but Operation
Desert Storm, or "ecercising the military option," or, according to
President Bush, an "armed situation".
During this "armed situation", massive bombing attacks became "efforts."
Thousands of warplanes didn't drop tons of boms, "wapons systems" or "force
packages" "visited a site". These "weapons systems" didn't drop their
tons of bombs on buildings and human beings, they "hit" "hard" and "soft
targets". During their "visits", these "weapons systems" "degraded," "neutralized,"
"attrited," "supressed," eliminated," "cleansed," "sanitized," "impacted,"
"decapitated," or "took out" targets; they didn't blow up bridges,
roads, factories and other buildings, and the people who happened to
be there. A "healthy day bombing" was achieved when more enemy "assets"
were destroyed than expected.
If the "weapons systems" didn't achieve "effective results" (blow up
their targets) during their first "visit" (bombing attack) as
determined by a "damage assessment study" (figuring out if everything
was completely destroyed), the "weapons systems" "revisited the site"
(bombed it again). Women, children, and other civilians killed or
wounded during these "visits", and any schools, hospitals, museums,
houses, or other "non-military" targets that were blown up, were "collateral
damage" - the undesired damage or casualties produced by the effects
from "incontinent ordnance" or "accidental delivery of ordnance
equipment" - meaning the bombs and rockets missed their original
targets.
In order to function as it should and as we expect it to, language
must be an accurate refection of that which it represents. The
doublespeak of war is an instance of thought corrupting language and
language corrupting thought.
Such language is needed only if, as George Orwell, wrote, "one wants
to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." Thus the
phrase , "traumatic amputation" produces no mental pictures of
soldiers with arms or legs blown off. The terms, "light" or "moderate"
losses invoke no mental pictures of pilots burned beyond recognition
in the twisted wreckage of their planes, of hundreds of soldiers lying
dead on a battlefield or screaming in pain in field hospitals. Killing
the enemy becomes the innocuous "serving the target," which invokes no
mental picture of shooting, stabbing, or blowin another human being to
small, bloody pieces. Clean-sounding phrases such as "effective
delivery of ordnance," "precision bombing," and "surgical air strikes"
evoke no mental pictures of thousands of tons of bombs fallin on
electric power plants, communication centers, ralroad lines, and
factories, or women, children, and old people huddling in the ruins of
their homes and neighborhoods.
The new doublespeak of war flowed smoothly as military spokesmen
coolly discussed "assets" (everything from men and women soldiers to
aircraft carries and satellites), the "suppresion of assets" (bomging
everything from enemy soldiers to sewage plants), "airbone sanitation"
(jamming enemy radar and radio, blowing up anti-aircraft gun and
missiles, and shooting down enemy airplanes, "disruption" (bombing), "operations"
(bombing), "area denial weapons" (cluster bombs, previously called
anti-personnel bombs), "damage" (death and destruction, or the results
of bombing), "attrition" (destruction, or the results of bombing).
The massive bombing campaing (which included concentrated bombing by
massed B-52s dropping thousands of tons of bombs in just one attack)
directed against the Republican gard units of the Iraqi army were
considered highly successful by General Norman Schwartzkopf, who based
hiss assessment on "the delivery methods and volume that we've been
able to put on them." Returning from a bombing attack, an American
pilot said he had "sanitized the area". A Marine general told
reporters, "We're prosecuting any target that's out there". And an
artillery captain said, "I prefer not to say we are killing other
people, I prefer to say we are servicing a target." Even with all this
doublespeak, news of the "armed effort" was subject to "security
review", not censorship. When language is so corrupted, what becomes
of truth?.
The use of technical, impersonal, bureaucratic, euphemistic language
to describe war separates the act of killing from the idea of killing;
it separates the word from that which it is supposed to symbolize.
Such language is a linguistic cover-up designed to hide an unpleasant
reality. It is language that lies by keeping us as far as possible
from the reality it pretends to represent. With such language we
create a psychological detachment from the horror that is war, and we
become numb to the human suffering that is the inevitable result of
war. With the doublespeak of war we are not responsible for the
results of our actions. And war becomes a "viable" solution to our
problems. (Reprinted
from Quarterly Review of Doublespeak, vol. XVII, nº 4, Jul 1991)
Llega un momento en el que no se puede más. Se trata ya de una
reacción física, de un nudo en los pulmones, de un agobio que te
invade el cuerpo, que te revuelve la sangre, de un frío caliente que
no te deja respirar. La mentira es un mal vino, esa copa que no
emborracha, pero da dolor de cabeza y hunde a su víctima en un mar de
crispación. No, ya no entra ni un bocado más del pastel seco, de la
galleta rancia, ya no admite el corazón otra calada del cigarro
empachado, ya no resisten los oídos más palabras de la boca que no se
calla, y habla, habla, habla, hasta convertirnos las sienes en un
cemento líquido. Lo peor de esta guerra, para los que no
tenemos encima el ojo inteligente de las bombas norteamericanas, son
las mentiras, el ejercicio descarado de la mentira, la forma impúdica,
desvergonzada, cínica, despectiva, prepotente, cardenalicia, infernal,
demagógica, con la que los políticos del Partido Popular mienten una y
otra vez, transformando el aire del Parlamento en mentira, los
periódicos en mentiras, las radios y las televisiones en mentiras. Ya
no puedo escucharlos, me resulta imposible sostenerles la mirada sin
sentir un agobio sanguíneo, una crispación carnal, una reacción
física. Cada vez que hablan de la paz, cada vez que se presentan como
defensores del orden internacional, cada vez que pregonan sus
esfuerzos en la ayuda humanitaria, cada vez que dicen una cosa y hacen
otra, como si fuéramos tontos por tierra, mar y aire, me sube el mal
vino desde la humillación hasta la cólera. No puedo más, son
superiores a mis fuerzas. Pensaba yo que lo
peor de esta guerra iban a ser las catástrofes, los edificios
bombardeados, las escenas crueles, los cadáveres, los niños corriendo,
las banderitas de los vencedores. Pero confieso que las mentiras están
resultando más canallas. Porque las mentiras no son interpretaciones
diferentes de la ley, ni opciones políticas distintas, ni
electoralismo (¡benditas elecciones!), ni propaganda. Son mentiras,
mentiras podridas en la boca del mentiroso, palabras bombardeadas,
verbos con los cimientos rotos, sustantivos en el fango, instituciones
humanas destruidas. Nos quitan la paz y las
palabras. El termómetro de la mentira ha subido en la política
española más allá de lo admisible. La fiebre pasa a delirio y el
delirio a colapso térmico en las intervenciones de estos pacifistas
que imponen la guerra, de estos demócratas que traicionan a su país,
de estos defensores del orden internacional que parten por la mitad a
Europa y envenenan las aguas enfermizas de la ONU, de estos militantes
de la solidaridad que hunden a un pueblo hundido, y no sólo me refiero
a Irak, porque muchos ciudadanos españoles nos hundimos también al
comprobar que nuestras democracias se quedan sin palabras y pueden ser
tan crueles como las dictaduras, tan mentirosas como los altavoces del
totalitarismo. Los jóvenes comprenderán el desamparo que supuso el
franquismo si imaginan 40 años de mentiras de Aznar, de mentiras
podridas, insoportables como un pastel seco, frías como la espina del
cinismo. Más que las bombas, lo peor es este agobio que corta la
respiración y revuelve la sangre cada vez que hablan los mentirosos.
(El
País, 22/3/03) |
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