When authoritarians speak, pay close attention.
Words, beyond their basic function of communication, signal intent and outline ways of thinking. But in an age of “alternative facts,” we know too well that words can obscure as much as they clarify. Words can also be weapons. As the sociologist Celine-Marie Pascale puts it, “Authoritarian governments weaponize language to amplify resentments, target scapegoats, and to legitimize injustice.”
In Hong Kong, as large-scale protests erupted in 2019, followed by this year’s severe crackdown spearheaded by a national security law imposed by Beijing, the government increasingly adopted the authoritarian language of the Chinese Communist Party. Previously staid pronouncements peppered with anachronisms products of its technocratic governance with roots in 150 years of British colonial rule became much more brash in tone, loudly assertive in projecting power, and snide in their rebuttal of public criticism.