I would like to talk about the word “radical”. You know, that one word pundits and politicians are so fond of using to stigmatize opponents and discredit opposing ideas and priorities. The rhetoric pooper scooper that gets employed every time one needs to toss a stand over the hedge and into the fringe. With increasing frequency the word is deployed, and I would like to take a little look at it, if you don’t mind, to see if it holds up to industry standards.
Let’s get the boring bullshit out of the way first. Because we have to, otherwise there’re bound to be a few eyeglass-pushing motherfuckers creaking out a chorus of well-actuallies from out the woodwork. According to Oxford Languages, the word radical as an adjective relates to the change of the fundamental nature of something. According to Merriam-Webster, aside from a few gardening, chemical, and mathematical applications, the word radical relates to the fundamentals of a thing, or refers to the different to the usual or traditional.
There. Boring stuff’s done. Definitions all very fine and dandy and useful. But not terribly interesting in and of themselves. Instead, what is interesting, is how the term radical has been twisted and used to describe an opinion or change that is a fundamental threat to your way of life.
We saw this practise come into full swing during the Trump-era. In a climate of change and division, the word was turned into a condemnation. “The Radical Left” was out to destroy the American Way of Life, and so on and so forth. Like it was a bigger threat to some hypothesized ideal than even bin Laden or corn syrup ever was. Anything and anyone that didn’t serve Trump’s interests were branded as “radicals” so they could easily be dismissed. And that rhetoric stuck around, even after the Orange Hydra slipped out of office with his tail between his legs. Employed by the GOP as well as the Dems.
And it isn’t just on the American side of things where “radical” has become an adjective for the unhinged. So too does the European Union struggle with the stamp of the (he)radical. As an example from little Sweden, this summer saw an escalation of a decades old struggle between environmental conservationists and a national network of some of the most influential (and most pollutive) industries in the nation. And now, the government seems poised to bulldoze the decision of the Environmental Court just to keep the lime quarries of the island Gotland running. To make a long and infected story short, the government is going to extra-judicial lengths to justify the continuation of environmentally destructive efforts for the sake of jobs and economic growth. And naturally, those who oppose the expansion and wish to protect the groundwater and the unique natural reserves around the quarry at the cost of hundreds, thousands of jobs at mills or plants or quarries nation-wide, are dismissed as environmental radicals. Woodland crazies and disconnected city folk who don’t understand what it means to support a family or pay a mortgage.
In a way, radical is an en vouge way to describe a fundamentalist. A dangerous erratic element whose opinion isn’t grounded in the reality that we live in. Be it the abolishment of governments like what the anarchists of old believed. Or the institution of an absolute government, like what the communist argued. Or the preservation of an environment at the cost of contemporary privileges, like what the green movement believes in. The term radical has been and is being used by the status quo to dismiss fundamentally alternative values to those that the status quo promotes.
So if we look at the word as it’s used today; a dismissal of points of views for ideological reasons, and look to apply it to current circumstances… what do we get then? What exactly is the radical perspective? Is it radical, as the capitalist conservatives in the US would like to claim, to invest billions of US tax dollars into infrastructure, healthcare, and green initiatives instead of wars? Or like the industrial socialist government of Sweden like to think, that it is radical to put thousands of people out of unsustainable work because their employers couldn’t be arsed to find sustainable alternatives to their destructive business models just to save ground water reserves?
Fundamentally, the question of what is radical and what is not is a matter of a schism of perspective. For someone stuck in a post-war fantasy, where the future looks bright and rosy-cheeked, it is understandable that some defeatist prophecy of coming doomsdays seem taken out of fiction. Likewise for those who grew up underneath the rotting pizza of privilege, those doomsdays are already here and those post-colonial privileges are mere houses of cards putting on their best Wile E. Coyote-impressions. To either, the opposite position looks radical. But it is the distance, the division, that really feeds the notion of radicalism. Not the positions themselves.
We live in a polarized society. People have never been so rich as they are today. There has also never been as many people suffering from extreme poverty as there are today. Humanity has never been more powerful than we are today. Humanity has also never been as seemingly powerless to change our trajectory. And what is radical to one person is an absolutely fundamental truth to another. So whenever a politician or a pundit or a journalist uses the word “radical”, that person isn’t really saying that the “radical” position isn’t founded in reality. They’re saying that the “radical” position isn’t rooted in their reality. That they cannot conceive a world where that radical position or perspective or ideology is relevant. The west cannot conceive of a world where humanism bows to the word of God; so the likes of Jihadists and Hindu nationalists or the Taliban are radicals. The conservative capitalists of the western world cannot conceive of a world where its resources don’t just sprout from the ground at their beck and call, how it would be possible to not be able to afford exclusive access to clean water, so obviously the habitat can’t be dying and the resources can’t be running out and the Green movement are just radical alarmists. And a person who’s never had the opportunity to have a career to invest in or a family to support or a mortgage to pay can’t fathom how a job at the mill or plant can be more important than clean water and breathable air for future generations. And that’s where the “radical” comes in. A lazy dismissal of what we do not understand, and what we don’t want to try to.
In the end, it might behove us to limit the use of “radical” as a dismissive slur. Because in our current state of affairs, it doesn’t really designate what is based in reality and what is not. It isn’t used as Oxford and Merriam-Webster would like to argue as a word to denote a fundamental change of the nature of things. It only nominates what the speaker can’t understand their subject’s position.
Or, astronomically worse yet, that they don’t want you listening to try to understand. Because why should you labour to understand something that doesn’t share a reality with you?
It’s a dangerous assertion. Even in arguments where there’s a clear right and a most distinct wrong. Because with the world being as it is, we can’t really afford to lazily dismiss opposing forces as simple mad-cap bastards not worthy of your consideration or respect.
Even when – maybe especially when – we think they’re demonstrably wrong.
/Sebastian Lindberg 28/9-2021
WastedWords 