Putin’s War
As every reader of dystopia can attest to, words matter. After all, language structures our thoughts in the same manner that thoughts shared must use language for communication.
George Orwell had “Big Brother” in 1984 as in Big Brother is watching. Being watched sounds sort of creepy, but maybe my big brother is watching over me, and that sounds okay, maybe even reassuring.
Or take Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. If the word “game” weren’t in there, even the citizens of the Capitol might object to children going into an arena to kill each other until there is only one survivor.
My students and I are currently reading Lois Lowry’s The Giver, which starts with a discussion of using “precise language.” The main character, an 11-year-old child named Jonas, is trying to articulate what the emotion is that he feels as he awaits the “Ceremony” on his twelfth birthday that will determine his future career and life. He settles on “apprehensive,” knowing the importance of finding the exact word.
He is later scolded for trying to use the word “love.” His parents laugh, remind him to use precise language, and refuse to say they love him because the term simply isn’t a word one should use.
Instead, the novel uses language as a way to detach characters from emotion and from each other. Babies are “newchildren.” There are no boys and girls but “males” and “females.” Kids’ stuffed animals are called “comfort objects.”
When as a three year old, Jonas’s friend Asher mispronounces snacks and asks for “smacks,” the teacher obliges and hits him with a “discipline rod.” The crowd all shares in a good laugh when the story is later recounted at the Ceremony.
Language limits thoughts and feelings, making for a compliant citizenry as happy to deliver food and pick up the trays later as they are to kill another human as part of the orderly system created to fend off chaos.
Sometimes, though, precise language is the key that allows us to see the real threat.
In the Harry Potter series, only the bravest call He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named — the darkest, deadliest of wizards — by his name: Voldemort. Dumbledore instructs, “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
I am not, therefore, calling the current war against Ukraine a Russian one. Thousands of Russians have attempted to protest, which led to arrests. Russians are lined up at ATMs attempting to pull their money from banks as the Russian ruble’s value dips below an American penny and interest rates are at 20 percent. Russian citizens are suffering.
The Russian people did not decide to invade. Vladimir Putin did, using the language of “nazification” as a justification to bomb and slaughter in order to steal territory that does not belong to him.
NPR interviewed a Ukranian reporter who chose to stay behind rather than flee so confident is she that Ukraine will prevail in this war. Kristina Berdynskykh told the interviewer, “ I just want to repeat my phrase that this war not about, like Putin says, about some part of Ukraine, about Donbas or about humanitarian problem, about genocide. No. It’s just about one old maniac who just wants to destroy our country.”
Indeed, the language matters here. Ukraine is being invaded by an “old maniac” using false language to force others to commit horrific violence in his name.
The Dalai Lama has said of the war against Ukraine, “We need to develop a sense of the oneness of humanity by considering other human beings as brothers and sisters. This is how we will build a more peaceful world.”
A peaceful world means saying this is Putin’s war, the war of an “old maniac,” not the Russians who have little say in the matter. A peaceful world means understanding that the label of nationality is precise but not helpful if we are to be a peaceful world.
A peaceful world means recognizing the Ukranians and the Russians are our brothers and sisters.
Putin is the “old maniac.” As Dumbledore advises, let’s call things by their proper name with precise language. This is Putin’s war.
Let us — as a world of brothers and sisters — stand united against Putin’s War and for Ukraine.
