Back before The Simpsons conquered television, Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comic strip would publish a yearly “List of Forbidden Words” strip to start the year. Now Democratic think tank Third Way, realizing that their brand is less popular than Akbar & Jeff’s Cryogenics Hut, have produced their own list of words Democrats should forbid themselves from saying if they ever want to win back the normies.
Privilege Violence (as in “environmental violence”) Dialoguing Othering Triggering Microaggression/assault/invalidation Progressive stack Centering Safe space Holding space Body shaming Subverting norms Systems of oppression Critical theory Cultural appropriation Postmodernism Overton Window Heuristic Existential threat to [climate, the planet, democracy, the economy] Radical transparency Small ‘d’ democracy Barriers to participation Stakeholders The unhoused Food insecurity Housing insecurity Person who immigrated Birthing person/inseminated person Pregnant people Chest feeding Cisgender Deadnaming Heteronormative Patriarchy LGBTQIA+ Latinx BIPOC Allyship Intersectionality Minoritized communities Justice-involved Carceration Incarcerated people Involuntary confinement
Not a bad list, though a few of those (Overton window, heuristic, existential threat in reference to enormous objects like dinosaur-killing asteroids or the U.S. national debt) are still useful in other contexts. But there are a whole lot of additions needed:
See, the problem with the modern woke mind-virus, social justice-infected Democrat Party doesn’t begin, or end, with their obfuscating academic jargon. Their need to Orwellize the language is a result of the deeply unpopular, racist, bigoted, anti-borders, anti-reality policies social justice democrats have been promulgating. Their language is bad because their ideas are bad.
Their ideas of discrimination on the basis of race, misandry, open borders, radical transsexism and pro-crime policies will remain deeply unpopular no matter how many times they try changing the names.
Tags: Border Controls, Crime, Democrats, George Orwell, jargon, Social Justice Warriors
“Land Acknowledgement”, both the term and practice, really grates many Americans
I see that “intersex people” did not make the proscribed list and “bitter clingers” and “basket of deplorables” evidently remain in vogue.
The war of words has been tempered somewhat but the underlying attack on bourgeois culture has not been abandoned. It will return with renewed vigor once the political Left determines a new vector of attack.
Two more words to add to the list: fascist & Hitler.
If they keep saying stuff like:
Net Zero
Guest Worker
Migrant
Without evidence
Scientific consensus
Social Justice
Then they are still going to be lost in the wilderness.
It’s not the words.
It’s the thinking that they represent.
Also “deadnaming”, “two-souls”, and “gender-affirming care”.
Ye gods, those people are crazy.
Problematic
Unsafe
Uncomfortable
“This is the euphemism treadmill. When one term wears out — when the public begins to hear the fact beneath the phrase — a new one is minted. The old word is declared harsh; the new word is declared humane. Yet within a few years, the cycle repeats, because the reality has not changed. What wears out is not the word but the illusion.”
https://pjmedia.com/jamie-wilson/2025/08/25/the-war-on-words-how-manufactured-euphemism-corrupts-our-common-language-n4943009
Like bright colors on venomous animals.
Notice that it’s always the left trying to redefine the language. I don’t know how they will possibly be able to communicate speaking like normal humans.
I prefer, “Orwellianate”.
And my favorite “BCE and ACE” instead of BC and AD. But what event defines the “Common Era?”
“experiencing” and “access to” are particularly odious.
… and they keep adding new words they’re excited to use when they shouldn’t use ’em at all:
“mankeeping” (the latest, should go on the pile with)
mansplaining
manspreading
[…] Be forewarned that the entire article is infected with the usual lefty social justice jargon. […]