As an historian, I found it fascinating to watch the Left try to impose new language to describe people in the country illegally.
The Left has gradually pushed accepted language away from “illegal aliens” (the term in law), to “illegal immigrants” (the most common term), to “undocumented immigrants” (the Left’s current favorite term), and now to “newcomers” (the Joe Biden White House’s latest experiment in gaining language dominance).
It all reminds me of Vladimir Lenin’s great language coup of 1903.
The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party met secretly in Brussels. (The czar’s secret police made it impossible to meet openly in Russia.) At the meeting there was a split between Lenin’s hard-line revolutionary faction and a more moderate democratic wing.
Lenin’s faction was the smaller group, but they claimed the title Bolshevik (which means “greater faction” or majority). Group with the most votes were foolish enough to accept the title Lenin gave them, which was Menshevik, meaning minority. That language dominance and branding gave Lenin an enormous advantage in the following two-decade struggle to overthrow the czar and create Soviet Russia.
At least as far back as the French Revolution, the Left has had a passion for labeling things and ideas to gain language dominance. This process as applied to illegal immigration began at least 25 years ago for me.
That’s when I first........