Repeating Right-Wing Propaganda Terms Doesn’t Make You Smart

‘What justifies that smugness?’

The centrist Third Way organization just released a “blacklist” of terms that Democrats shouldn’t use. This includes “cisgender,” “birthing person,” and “Latinx” — all of which no mainstream Democratic politician actually says out loud.

However, there are some terms normal Democrats freely use that they should seriously reconsider. Over Labor Day weekend, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro posted on social media, “As long as I’m your Governor, Pennsylvania will never be a right to work state.”

But … “right to work” sounds like a good thing, like “right to health care” or “right to privacy.” Why doesn’t Shapiro want his constituents to have the right to work?

See, a “right-to-work” state is actually one that prohibits union security agreements. In such states, unions can’t negotiate employment contracts that require that all benefitting members contribute to the costs of representation. This leads to what attorney Richard Kahlenberg described as “free riders” who then benefit from collective bargaining without paying for it.

Superficially, this might seem reasonable. Unions still exist, but employees aren’t obligated to join. However, unions can only work if most people participate. (Imagine if every citizen could just sort of “opt out” on taxes. “Nah, I'm good.”) The Right realized this was an effective way to weaken unions.

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Shapiro is a staunch defender of organized labor. During his 2022 campaign, he called out his Republican opponent Doug Mastriano’s support for so-called “right to work” laws.

“We know that this legislature could put a bill on the desk of the next governor to ban unions to make this a right to work state,” Shapiro said. “Here’s what I know to be true. He’ll sign that bill into law. I’ll veto it, and I’ll always protect the union way of life here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

Shapiro wants to defend unions and protect workers’ rights. Good on him. That’s what he should have said instead of “right to work,” a term Dallas Morning News editorial writer William Ruggles came up with in the early 1940s.

Texas businessman Vance Muse led the Christian American Association, an early anti-union group. The CAA desperately wanted to outlaw contracts requiring that employees in union workplaces actually belong to the union. He wanted to replace the previous term “American Plan” after it was associated with the first Red Scare’s anti-union violence. Ruggles suggested “right to work.”

Muse was a racist who used segregationist arguments when advocating for anti-union laws. (Racist bigotry has long proven an effective tool for eroding workers’ rights.) “From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs,” Muse warned, presumably after catching an art house screening of Birth of a Nation. Muse also hated Jews.

“They call me anti-Jew and anti-nigger,” Muse said in 1945. “Listen we like the nigger—in his place … Our [Right-to-Work] amendment helps the nigger; it does not discriminate against him. Good niggers, not those Communist niggers. Jews? Why some of my best friends are Jews. Good Jews.”

Revisiting 'The West Wing' At 25

It would seem obvious that Democrats shouldn’t accept right-wing framing on issues, and they especially shouldn’t parrot right-wing terminology. However, Republicans have benefitted from liberal snottiness. It’s like the scene from The West Wing when President Bartlet’s staff is arguing with his re-election campaign team over whether to keep the word “torpor” in his speech. Bartlet says that if people don’t understand the word, they can “look it up.” If you’re running as the “education president,” he says, you shouldn’t hide the fact that you have an education. (Watch below.)

Of course, truly educated people are able to explain complex matters in a simple, straightforward manner that a majority of people can understand. Some synonyms for “torpor” include “apathy” and “idleness.” I disagree that using a more common term in an address to Americans from all backgrounds is somehow beneath the president’s dignity. If someone with a master’s degree in English wonders whether someone with only a high school diploma will immediately know a word they’re using, that’s not condescending. It’s effective communication.

However, this isn’t even the same issue. “Torpor” actually means what Bartlet wants it to mean. It’s not a deliberately misleading term his political enemies invented that he’s helpfully repeating. When I suggested online that Gov. Shapiro should use “anti-union” instead of “right to work,” several very smart liberals insisted that we not “dumb down” our language for the benefit of people they clearly hold in contempt. One self-described longtime union member responded, “Pandering to, and parsing language for, the lowest common denomination of illiterates and fuckwits is a big reason we’re in this mess to begin with.” (I think he meant “denominator.”)

If we’re in a mess, I dare say it’s because we senselessly accepted right-wing terms of engagement. They aren’t even trying to hide their strategy. When Republicans pushed to repeal the estate tax in the 1990s, consultant Frank Lutz advised them to use the term “death tax” instead. Rich people have “estates,” but everyone — even your broke ass — dies.

Lutz told Republicans that the term “global warming” was too disaster-movie frightening and they should instead refer to “climate change” because it sounds like “a more controllable and less emotional challenge.” By 2008, climate change was the more commonly used term. By 2014, Donald Trump would wrongly claim that environmental “hoaxsters” had dropped “global warming” for “climate change.”

Although Lutz believed that “climate change” was the more politically beneficial term for climate deniers, there is at least a legitimate argument that it’s more accurate than “global warming.” That’s not true for “right to work,” which hides its true intent in the guise of an affirmative right for workers. Yet, way too many people cosplay Jed Bartlet and insist that people can just “look up” the correct meaning.

It’s tough. You have one side that advocates for police reform with “defund the police,” which makes normal people fear The Purge, while the other side advocates for eliminating public education with “school choice.”

If the GOP starts calling Democrats the “Pedophile Party,” we shouldn’t adopt that verbiage and then tell voters we dismiss as “semi-literate” to Google the correct term. If I’m a soda company and my competitor calls my product “Piss Water,” I should probably not repeat that, even if someone could easily look up the actual name of my soda — especially if my sales have tanked since my competitor started calling my product “Piss Water.”

'Star Trek’ Is Both Liberal And Progressive

Union membership has steadily declined over the years. As Paul Waldman wrote this week for

Public Notice

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Today, fewer than 10 percent of American workers belong to a union, but that anemic figure masks a stark public/private divide. Nearly a third of public sector workers — teachers, cops, firefighters, government workers of all kinds at the federal, state, and local level — belong to unions. But only six percent of private sector workers do. That’s despite the fact that unions are extremely popular; in Gallup polls, over two thirds of Americans say they approve of labor unions, near an all-time high.

Meanwhile, Democratic support among union households is eroding, even while Trump guts organized labor. Unfortunately, Vance Muse’s bigoted divide-and-conquer tactics are just as effective as ever. We’re not winning this battle, so like Star Trek’s Q, I find myself asking my liberal friends, “What justifies that smugness?”