A History of Weaponized Language

During their conquest of the Indus civilization, the avant-garde of the invading Aryan army included priests tasked with reciting, with ultimate fidelity, the "magic words" of the Vedic texts. These incantations, or mantras, if pronounced with slavish precision, were believed to aid in the victory of the advancing forces. While the effectiveness of the magic words is certainly open to debate, the victory of the Aryans, who would go on to rule the Indus valley, is not.*

This may well be the first instance of weaponized language. It is perhaps not accidental, then, that the Germans, who were on their own Aryan quest, would re-discover the malevolent wonders of magic words. The propaganda of the Nazis was rife with both appropriations (from biology, evolutionary theory, pathology) and clever neologisms, carefully crafted to become killing memes. Besides the well-known focus on the demonization of the Jews, the new Nazi vocabulary included terms such as "worthless eaters" and "life unworthy of life." The descriptive language of disease was reapplied to various groups of humans, identifying them as the vectors for biological contamination. These appellations served to not only to identify the "threats of infection," but also to isolate and localize them. The fear of being "infected" moved through the German population like a mass shiver of disgust. Words became actions, and when the proto-typical gas chambers were built in the basements of the asylums and orphanages, the clouds of smoke rising from the Action T4 "euthanasia centers" were probably met with a deep-seated feeling of relief. Otherness, demonized, had been exorcised.

This weaponization of language was not created in some especially German vacuum, however. In fact, while Germany was still mired in the chaos of the crushing debt imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, American scientists had been hard at work developing their own language of destruction.

The schoolyard (or internet message forum) taunts of "moron" "imbecile" or "idiot" are inextricably linked to their bloody birth in the American eugenic think tanks. Material and intellectual support were provided by the top universities, science journals, and thinkers of the first part of the 20th century -- and was substantially bankrolled by the fortunes of corporate philanthropists including Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Harriman. Obsessed with the creation of a purified race, eugenics sought to create a better man through breeding the "best" and reducing the rest -- through any means necessary. As the Germans were licking their war-wounds, America was waging a full-frontal assault on all those believed to be biologically inferior. The methodology was wrapped in all the trappings of science. The Apollonian quest to root out the chaos was focused on the perceived biological founts of disorder - be they racial, cultural, or transgressive - which were attacked as vectors of biological decay or "race suicide." So -- the epileptic, the criminal, the promiscuous, and the Catholic immigrant were grouped together as threats to the hegemony of the Protestant ruling class, which was itself inflamed by the new Social Gospel (more on this in a later post.) All others were to be eliminated - either through contraception, sterilization, immigration reform, or segregation.

This quest for purification, based as it was in the pretense of science, required tools -- specifically, classification and categorization methods to identify the "carriers" of biological inferiority. One of the prime tools devised was the IQ test. Rooted in the intelligence tests of France's Alfred Binet (who pointedly warned about the misuse of his tests and rejected the idea that intelligence was fixed) the Eugenic Establishment developed and refined the test into a weapon of classification. The new "IQ" points were devised as a method of classifying and grouping those who were to be systematically eliminated. The range of intelligences fell across a scale, with new words invented or appropriated to describe the ranges. 100 was set as the mean. Those scoring below 20 were classified as "idiots." Those between 20-49 were "imbeciles." 50-69 were "morons." 70-80 were "on the borderline." 80-90 were merely "dull."

The new intelligence tests were beta-tested at Ellis Island, and mass-tested on WWI soldiers (where, famously, any idea of requiring high IQ for Army entrance was summarily abandoned.) IQ was a number, an empirical classification, which could now be used as a metric to identify the outsider. Of course, those who scored low on the IQ tests conveniently mirrored the groups who were most feared as being agents of biological terrorism and infiltration, and the penalties were not limited to anxious academic analysis. Being classified a "moron" was a prescription for elimination. Some 60,000 Americans, mostly women, were sterilized following the dictates of eugenic classification of undesirability. The "feebleminded" confined to what were essentially internment camps were allowed to die from TB- tainted milk. Suspect newborns were allowed to bleed-out from unsutured umbilical cords. The language of eugenics, the use of "intelligence classification" as not only a pejorative, but literally as a criteria to judge who should live or die -- lead to the death or deprivation of the basic standards of life, liberty, and happiness for untold thousands in America -- and millions abroad.

What of legacy? Did the violent effects of eugenically-charged language die with the discrediting of the eugenics movement, or do they continue, protected by the shroud of historical forgetfulness? There are hints. In our own super-heated political climate, common political epithets include "wingnut" and "libtard." Both are offensive strategies to delegitmize, disenfranchise, and dehumanize "others" by invoking the specter of mental illness or disability -- as if either were a priori condition for disenfranchisement or silencing. The weaponization of eugenic language was meant to discourage debate and deflate empathy for otherness, and to reinforce the status quo. By applying scientific-sounding terms to problems best understood and rectified through the compassionate language of the human heart, eugenics attempted a scientific solution that was skewed by the prejudices of the testers. Eugenics invented a new language of hate, the legacy of which is still with us today.

The ancient Aryans believed that words had power. Modern linguistics has done much to deny the notion that words possesses any intrinsic meaning, yet the question remains: what of words especially designed to kill, to maim, to segregate, and to destroy?

Is it possible to extract a word from its history, especially if that history, if the birth of the word, was first written in blood?

* Or is it? Some claim that the commonly accepted history of the Aryan Invasion itself is biased toward a divide and conquer strategy that bolstered the aims of British colonialism in India -appropriately enough through a misuse of linguistics.

Justin Strawhand is a writer, director, and producer. His most recent documentary film War Against the Weak details the rise and fall of the American eugenics movement and its direct impact on the Holocaust.

 

Comments

[Jack Jones78]

03:35 PM on 03/29/2012

Several recent studies have found South Asia to have the highest level of diversity of Y-STR haplotype variation within R1a1a. On this basis, while several studies have concluded that the data is consistent with South Asia as the likely original point of dispersal (for example, Kivisild et al. (2003), Mirabal et al. (2009) and Underhill et al. (2009)) a few have actively argued for this scenario, Sengupta et al. (2005), Sahoo et al. (2006), Sharma et al. (2009), and Thangaraj et al. (2010).

A survey study as of December 2009, including a collation of retested Y-DNA from previous studies, concluded that a South Asian R1a1a origin was the most likely proposal amongst the various uncertain possibilities. More recently a new 2012 study on Central Indian tribal population led by Sharma et al. have again suggested the clade to be present there since before Neolithic.

Brahmins from West Bengal showed the highest frequency (72.22%) of Y-haplogroups R1a1* hinting that it may have been a founder lineage for this caste group. The authors found it significant that the Saharia tribe of Madhya Pradesh had not only 28.07% R1a1, but also 22.8% R1a*, out of 57 people, with such a high percentage of R1a* never having been found before. Based on STR variance the estimated age of R1a* in India was 18,478 years, and for R1a1 it was 13,768 years.

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[Jack Jones78]

03:34 PM on 03/29/2012

No trace of “demographic disruption” in the North-West of the subcontinent between 4500 and 800 BCE; this negates the possibility of any massive intrusion, by so-called Indo-Aryans or other populations, during that period.
- U.S. anthropologists Kenneth Kennedy,

M17(r1a) is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe.”
-Stephen Oppenheimer

Recent studies have found South Asia to have the highest level of diversity of Y-STR haplotype variation within R1a1a. On this basis, while several studies have concluded that the data is consistent with South Asia as the likely original point of dispersal (for example, Kivisild et al. (2003), Mirabal et al. (2009) and Underhill et al. (2009)) a few have actively argued for this scenario, Sengupta et al. (2005), So et al. (2006),

Except for Africans, all humans have ancestors in the North-West Indian peninsula. In particular, one migration started around 50,000 BP towards the Middle East and Western Europe: “indeed, nearly all Europeans — and by extension, many Americans — can trace their ancestors to only four mtDNA lines, which appeared between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago and originated from India.”
-Lluís Quintana-Murci,Vincent Macaulay

[Jack Jones78]

03:33 PM on 03/29/2012

As i am of Indian decent from the INDUS valley, i think its only right that a person from dharmic indian arya culture speaks for HIS ROOTS. Aryan theory was first created by White europeans in the 18th century, to support their own religous view that from Noahs three sons came the rest of mankind. The first two sons being white europeans and arabs, the third son being, Ham, known as the curse of Ham, because of his dark skin. So when Europeans, Arabs, from the white Caucasion sect invaded india, they imposed their own racist religous beleifs onto Indian civilisation which predates their own abrahamic origins, so Indian history starts in line with christianity even though it older by 3000years. So the only way to destroy the Abrahamic Aryan theory, is to show facts. First of all Aryan theory is racist abrahamic ideology that is still around..........

[ernesto daza]

12:41 AM on 03/28/2012

What we have here is a well-wrought intellectual exploration of a topic that has genuine significance today, and one wishes that Strawhand had been given more leeway to write at greater length. The discerning reader could see how determined the writer is to examine the rawboned arm of humanity and seek out its pulse--if his writing continues to cut with the same scalpel precision, he will hit the blood-mark of the zeitgeist soon enough.

[John Preston Gomez]

01:20 PM on 03/27/2012

What a fantastic read!