Ammon News - By Nermeen Murad

In propaganda science, propagandists would appropriate the terminology and vocabulary of the “other”, assign different connotations to those words and disable their use by the opposition, effectively denying them their political vocabulary and, with it, their voice.

An article published in The New York Times in June, titled “The Ways of Silencing” and circulated quietly on different social media outlets, provides philosophical insight into the art of silencing the opposition through propaganda tricks.

“We might wish politicians and pundits from opposing parties to engage in reasoned debate about the truth, but as we know, this is not the reality of our political discourse. Instead we often encounter bizarre and improbable claims about public figures. Words are misappropriated and meanings twisted. I believe that these tactics are not really about making substantive claims, but rather playing the role of silencing. They are, if you will, linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others,” argues Jason Stanley, a contemporary philosopher.

He used an example of what he claims is a less discussed tool of silencing, which he describes as “silencing people by denying them access to the vocabulary to express their claims”.

How does this work?

He proposes an example from the Third Reich of Germany which appropriated key words like “freedom” and “heroic” to describe the military action of the Reich when these words clearly more aptly describe the action of the resistance movement. By utilising these key words to build the propaganda narrative of the Third Reich, the German propaganda machine effectively denied the resistance the use of this narrative and thereby stole its voice.

Before I invite criticism with my ensuing analysis, I want to categorically state that we, in Jordan, are in no way comparable to Nazi Germany. But it would not be a huge stretch of the analysis to compare this philosophical approach and discuss the surprising political destiny of the recent divisive political narrative in Jordan that builds upon words like “walaa” and “intemaa” - key Arabic words describing national “allegiance” and “belonging” - and makes them synonymous with anti-reformist jargon, instead of being rightfully owned by the Jordanians who believe that fighting corruption and institutionalisation of reform are the ultimate manifestations of allegiance and belonging to their country.

I think if I see another “walaa and intemaa” march in Jordan I will be sick.

Who is debating our allegiance and belonging, who has been assigned the task of measuring it? Where in our Constitution or law is belonging to Jordan based on any other criterion than the legal citizenship narrative that we all know and observe?

And who says that if you are an Islamist, you lose allegiance to the country or concern for the security of Jordan? What if you are a leftist? Or a right-wing nationalist? What if you are a Baathist, communist, Arab nationalist, a self-serving individualist, a Christian or an atheist?

Are these allowed ideologies or religious views and beliefs that somehow still contain sufficient elements of walaa and intemaa? And what criteria of walaa and intemaa should we use when judging ethnic origins of Jordanians: economic preferences (capitalist, socialist or don’t care-ist); social leanings (conservative, liberal, depending on the situation)?

I don’t want to become sarcastic but I certainly want to drive the point home. It is really time we stopped labelling those who think, act, believe or behave differently and we certainly should stop stealing their voices and branding them with the non-nationalists stigma.

We are all Jordanians. We differ, we speak with different regional accents, we think differently, we pray differently or we don’t pray at all, we wear veils or miniskirts, long thoubs or shorts, love winter or summer, like Marouf Bakhit or hate him, want an Islamic system of governance or a capitalist one, or a socialist one, or even a corrupt one, but we are all Jordanians who belong to this country and want its continued stability.

The subject should be closed and the propaganda tactics should be stopped at this critical time when we need to accept, respect and embrace our differences and plurality maturely for the sake of our country.

NermeenMurad@gmail.com