Opinion: When language gives permission |
I first read George Alec Effinger’s science-fiction short story “All the Last Wars at Once” in high school. At the time, I found it far-fetched—exaggerated in ways that made it feel safely distant from reality. Years later, during my graduate studies, I returned to it. This time, I didn’t see a satire; I saw a mirror.
The story opens with a routine broadcast. Two men announce the first international racial war, but they don’t use the language of panic. They use the language of order. When asked if they are planning to “eradicate” people, they object to the word. Eradicating sounds too harsh. They choose a ‘cleaner’ term: expunge.
This is the unsettling theme of the story. Violence does not begin with shouting; it begins with language that feels clean enough to accept. Soon, declarations arrive daily, dividing people by gender, religion, and age. Each new division is presented as necessary and overdue. People stop looking for facts and start looking for signals: who to fear, who to blame, and........