Some new thoughts about the pervasive, destabilising, discomfiting Language of Lying in public life
In 2015 Conservative politician Grant Shapps was forced to admit that he had ‘over-firmly denied’ having a second job under a pseudonym, selling a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme while sitting as an MP.
In 2008 Hillary Clinton admitted that she had ‘misspoken’ when she claimed to have come under sniper fire during a 1996 visit to Bosnia.
A slang phrase, borrowed from US street and hiphop parlance into so-called MLE, ‘multicultural London English’, and often used by teenagers in London today, is ‘no cap!’ an exclamation which is the modern equivalent of the adult ‘no word of a lie!’ when swearing that you can be trusted, are being sincere, are telling the truth.
Orwell famously exposed the doublespeak of totalitarianism and I wrote some years ago about politicians’ evasive and duplicitous ‘weasel-words’ (a version of the article is on this site). In the late 90s I presented a series for the BBC World Service in which we looked at the politics of ‘spin’ and the work of the spin-doctors employed first by Bill Clinton and later by Tony Blair to massage their messages and to take ownership of the media narratives of the moment. The half-truths and untruths perpetrated today are more frequent, more widespread, some are more flagrant, and all are helped in their trajectories by multiple new platforms and outlets and far more sophisticated mainstream and social media capabilities.
I have collected examples of the toxic terminology and ‘skunked’ terms employed by demagogues and charlatans and echoed by compliant journalists and commentators (my glossary is on this site). In the media maelstrom we are presently living through, untruths, half-truths and fake news, too, have featured prominently and repeatedly in the national conversations of the US and the UK. With this in mind the Open University has produced a two-part mini-documentary on the Language of Lying in which I was privileged to take part. We talk about the concepts of truth and falsehood and about their incarnations in the current context of populism, Trumpism and Brexit.
Part One of the documentary is here:
I’m very grateful to Dr Philip Seargeant of the OU for initiating this project and asking me to take part, grateful too to Hamlett Films for producing the programme.
Here is the second part:
And here are links to two more recent commentaries on lying:
and in December Richard Sambrook reflected on the way that traditional norms of political and media behaviour had been abandoned in the 2019 election campaign:
But in summer 2021 Tory MP Rory Stewart published a ‘j’accuse‘ aimed in a different direction:
A happy footnote: the OU documentary in which I took part won the Medea Award, announced in October 2020:
By way of an update, in May 2021 Conservative MP Rory Stewart delivered this assessment of Prime Minister Boris Johnson:
Then, in June…
In August 2021 the UK government deployed a comms strategy that commentators referred to variously as ‘spin’, ‘stretching the truth’, ‘newspeak’… and ‘institutional lying’…
I have been collecting new and controversial languagegenerated by the rise of conservative populism in the US and the UK, by pro- and anti-Trump sentiment in the US and by the divisions resulting from the UK’s Brexit vote. This is a work in progress: the preliminary list of terms as it stands is below. Soon I plan to offer detailed definitions and comments (for example, the second word in the list is my own invention, intended to describe a statement, act or policy showing effrontery, and itself a deliberate affront to a section of the population) and a ‘lexical’ categorisation (into ‘jargon’, ‘slang, ‘catchphrase’, cliché, for instance).
***Please do contact me with new examples, with comments and with criticism, which will be gratefully acknowledged and credited.***
Accelerationist
Affrontery
Airfix patriotism
Alpha
Alt-centre
Alt-right
Anglosphere
Annexationist
Antifa
Anywheres
Astroturfing
Attitudinarian
Australia-style deal
Autohagiography
Backstop
Bad actors
Based
Bed-wetting
Beta
Beyond satire
Birtherism
Bitterites
Black ops
The Blob
Blowback
Bot
Both-sidesism
Breadcrumbs
Brectum
Bregressive
Bregret(s)
Bremain
Brengland
Brexiles
Brexit dividend
Brexiteer
Brexit means Brexit
Brexit ultras
Brexmageddon
Brexmas
Brexodus
Brexpats
Brexshit
Brextension
BRINO
Britain deserves better
Bubble
Butthurt
Cakeism
Calling out
Canada plus plus plus
Cancel culture
Canzuk union
Centrist dad
Cherry-picking
Chumocracy
Civics
Civility
Classist
Cliff-edge
Clown car
Clown country/state
Clusterbùrach
Cognitive warfare
Collective narcissism
Compassion deficit
Consequence culture
Copaganda
Cosmopolitan
Corbynista
Corporatocracy
Coup
Courtier journalists
Crash out
Cronyvirus
Crowdstrike
Crybaby
Cuck
Culturalism
Cultural marxist
Culture warrior
Dark forces
Datagrab
Dead cat strategy
Death cult
Deepfake
Deep state
Defund
Delegitimizer
Deplorables
DEXEU
Disaster capitalism
Disinformation
Divorce bill
Do-gooder
Dogpile
Dog-whistle
Double down
Doxxing
Drain the swamp
DREAMer
Dumpster fire
Echo-chamber
Economic nationalism
Economically inactive
Elite
Empty chair
Enablers
Enemies of the people
English exceptionalism
Ergo decedo
Establishment
Ethnics
Ethnonationalist
Ethno-state
Factuality
Fake news
Fall off a cliff
False flag operation
Fash-adjacent
Fashy
FBPE
Feminazi
Finger-sniffer
Firehosing
Flextension
Flooding the zone
Fractionate
Fratriarchy
Frictionless
Frit
FUD
Gammon
Gammonista
Gangster state
Get it done
Girly swot
Global Britain
Globalist
GNU
Guardianista
Hard Brexit
Hate goblin
Hatriot
Henry VIII powers
High-vis nazis
Hobbit
Homonationalism
Hopepunk
Hose it down
Hybrid threats
Identitarian
Idiocracy
Illuminati
Incel
Indicative vote
Individual-1
Jambon jaunes
Jexodus
Kayfabe
Kicking the can down the road
King baby
Kipper
Kipper moment
Kompromat
Leave means leave
Leftwaffe
Lentil-weaving
Level up
Lexit
Libertarian
Libtard
Limp-wristed
Little Englander
Londonistan
Long coup
Low-energy
MAGA
Magic Grandpa
Magic money tree
Majoritarian
Man-baby
Mangina
Manosphere
Masculinist
Matrixed
Maybot
Meaningful vote
Mediaeval methods
Melt
Meninist
Metropolitan
Microaggression
Militarised nostalgia
Milkshake(d)
Momtifa
Moral emptiness
Moral grandstanding
MSM
Nanny state
Nativist
Necrocapitalism
Neglexit
Neon nazis
Neutrollization
No-deal
No-platforming
Normie
Nudgism
Offence archaeology
Optics
Ostentatious meekness
Oven-ready
Overly purist
Overton window
Palaeoconservative
Pearl-clutching
People’s vote
Performative allyship
Pile on
Political correctness
Post-liberal
Postmodern
Post-truth
Project Fear
Prozac leadership
Pushback
Put/stick that on the side of a bus
QAnon
Quitlings
Rabble
Race to the bottom
Red lines
Red pill
Red wall
Regrexit
Rejoiner
Re-leaver
Remainiacs
Remain plus
Remoanathon
Remoaner
Replacement theory
Reply deboosting
Resistance
Restorative nostalgia
Retconning
Revoker
Roll back
Rootless
Row back
Russian asset
Saboteur
Sadopopulism
Safe space
#ScumMedia
Sealioning
Shadow blocking
Shallowfake
Shill
Shire
Shitposting
Shitshow
Singapore-on-Thames
SJW social justice warrior
Skilling up
Skunked term**
Slave populace
Sleaze
Snowflake
Sockpuppet
Soft border
Soft Brexit
Somewheres
Sovereignty
Soy-boy
Spartan phalanx
Spiv
Star Chamber
Sunlit uplands
Svengali
SWERF
Taking back control
Tankie
Targeted individual
Techno-feudalism
Tender-age shelter
Terf
Terminability
Throw under the bus
#tfg, ‘the former guy’
Tick tock
Tigger
Tofu-eating
Tone deaf
Tone policing
Toxic positivity
Trexit
Tribal(ism)
Trickle-down pathology
Troll farm/factory
Truth-squadding
Tufton Street
Tu quoque
Unicorns
Unspin
Urban
Values voter
Vassal state
Verbal incontinence
Vigilante journalism
Village idiot
Virtue-signalling
Walk back
War cabinet
Watch-list
Weaponised*
Wedge strategy
Whataboutery
White supremacist
Will of the people
Wokescold
Woketard
Woke warriors
Woke-washing
Workington man
Yoghurt-knitting
Zealot
I’m grateful especially to the many contacts on Twitterwho have already contributed to this modest project, particularly Duncan Reynolds @duncanr2, and will credit them all by name/handle when a final version is published.
I’m also very grateful to Rob Booth and the Guardian who, in October 2019, wrote about the glossary and its topicality in increasingly conflicted times:
In November 2018 The Guardian published a useful ‘jargon-buster’ guide to the terms being used at this late stage of (or impasse in, if you prefer) UK-EU negotiations:
I have only just come across this perceptive essay from 2017, by Otto English on his Pinprick blog, in which he coins the terms Ladybird libertarian and Ronseal academic:
**’Skunked terms’ are words or expressions undergoing a controversial change in meaning. Examples are ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ which have transitioned from referring to leftist, progressive or centrist positions to denote neo-conservative or alt-right affiliations. Nearly two years on from my original post the useful designation ‘anglosphere’, describing English-speaking nations with shared cultural features, has been co-opted by far-right nativists in the UK to promote a supremacist ideology.
As a further footnote, this from Twitter in November 2020 (thanks to Alan Pulverness), a reminder that weaponised words may also be frivolous – even puerile:
And finally, from 2016, a prescient tweet by Gary Kasparov:
