A Phrase for Untruthful Language
Linguistic Bad Faith • noun • (ling-guiss-tick bad fayth)
Definition: Using bad faith language to sustain ethnocide.
Origin: The Sustainable Culture Lab
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Bad faith, or "mauvaise foi" in French, is a key concept for understanding the dynamics of an ethnocidal society.
When a society is built upon the destruction of the culture of the other it becomes impossible to forge good faith relationships. If someone knows that the person they are interacting with desires to destroy their culture, it is logical that they would not want to cultivate a relationship with that person. Therefore, in order for ethnocide to thrive, deception and bad faith must become foundational elements of relationships in ethnocidal societies. That is, the ethnocider must present the facade of a good faith relationship in order to create the bad faith relationship with the ethnocidee that ethnocide requires.
In an earlier weekly Word post about mauvaise foi, we spoke about two manifestations of bad faith that we need to be aware of, namely: existential and conventional bad faith.
With conventional bad faith, the person creating the bad faith relationship knows that they are deceiving the other person. They are aware of their bad faith, and if the deception is discovered, it would be easy to label this person as a liar.
In the case of existential bad faith — a term coined by the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre — the instigator of the bad faith is unaware of their deception because they tragically believe that the lies they express are the truth. The individual has been so comprehensively deceived that they propagate lies while being totally convinced that they are speaking the truth.
Due to the United States’ ethnocidal foundations, a key task for our society as we work towards Eǔtopia is to unlearn many of the lies that we have been taught are the truth. These American lies can even include “truths” that have long been considered foundational pillars of our entire society.
Additionally, the corrupting influence of bad faith does not just include the narratives that we tell ourselves and one another, but also extends to the very words we use. When truth becomes an impediment to a narrative built upon deception, it is inevitable that the meaning of words themselves will become corrupted. A word’s denotation will quickly become a secondary concern and a deceptive connotation that sustains the bad faith of ethnocide will quickly become the word’s new primary meaning. This is linguistic bad faith.
American Conservatism & Linguistic Bad Faith
Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency the prevalence of linguistic bad faith in American politics, and by extension American life, has been unmistakable. The most obvious example would be “fake news.”
Fake news does not actually mean that the news or information has been deemed fake or untruthful. All it means is that according to Donald Trump and his supporters, they have decided that they either do not believe the information to be truthful or that they acknowledge that the truth would be detrimental to their narrative therefore it would be more convenient to label the truth as a lie in order to delegitimize the truth.
In the first iteration, the person has deceived themselves to such a degree that they genuinely believe the truth to be a lie, so that would be a manifestation of existential bad faith. In the latter, they know the truth to be the truth and intentionally work to mislead the public, and that is conventional bad faith.
“Fake news” is a phrase devoid of a true meaning and it only exists to make the truth meaningless. A similar phrase within America’s conservative circles would be “Blue Lives Matter.” This phrase is not a defense of law enforcement because as the Capitol attacks on January 6 showed the world, when law enforcement stands in the way of ethnocidal terrorism law enforcement quickly becomes the enemy. The phrase exists for the sole purpose of delegitimizing “Black Lives Matter.”
“Fake news,” “Blue Lives Matter,” and many other phrases are devoid of meaning and they exist to destroy the meaning of other phrases, yet these words only have power if enough people can be conned into believing that they do have a true meaning. This is how linguistic bad faith works. The words exist solely as deceptions.
While Donald Trump may be a svengali of linguistic bad faith to the extent he is even capable of gaslighting himself, or knowingly creating a lie and then convincing himself that it is true, we must not forget that American conservatism has been built upon linguistic bad faith.
From the end of the Civil War, racist Americans began creating racist policies devoid of racist language. Being overtly racist in our laws and policies had become illegal, so these Americans had to hide and make their racism deceptive.
For example, “separate but equal” has nothing to do with equality and it actually means apartheid. The phrase exists to mean the opposite of what it says, and this linguistic bad faith formed the foundation of Jim Crow.
Linguistic bad faith has shaped the lives of all Americans since colonization, and today it is hard to determine which Americans know the lies to be false and which believe them to be true. These lies have shaped our society, and there are still millions of Americans who feel the need to believe in these lies because lies are all they have ever known. The truth is a reality they care not to confront.
American Progressives & Linguistic Bad Faith
Linguistic bad faith manifests in a completely different manner for progressives than for conservatives, but since our society is built upon a language steeped in deception, no one is immune to the impact of bad faith.
Of course, progressives will believe some of the bad faith that has been expressed as fact in America, but by and large progressives have a greater desire to emancipate themselves from bad faith language and culture. There is a desire to form good faith relationships, but America’s bad faith roots create a constant impediment.
A core component of good faith relationships is the capacity to find common ground, but America’s ethnocidal foundation, steeped in bad faith, exists to both prevent common ground while also cultivating a narrative professing the ever-presence of common ground. This narrative projects deceptive Americans driven by bad faith as honest people that other Americans must work with in order to find a healthy compromise. This lie exists to sustain bad faith because rule number one of forming good faith relationships is to not associate with bad faith individuals.
Far too often, progressives seek to find common ground with bad faith Americans, and progressives have struggled to cultivate the necessary language to both articulate why they refuse to engage with bad faith operatives and to potentially convince bad faith individuals to convert to good faith.
This language is very complicated to craft, and may not even exist right now, but the prevalence of linguistic bad faith in America has resulted in an absence of uncorrupted, good faith language.
Another aspect of linguistic bad faith is the corrupted use of a word’s meaning or denotations in order to impose demonizing, dehumanizing connotations upon the other.
For example, a neutral word such as “angry” will take on a completely different meaning when applied to Black women. The phrase “angry Black woman” carries a stigma implying that the anger is not justified, and that the woman and her race are both inherently problematic.
Due to this corrupted language, it has now become incredibly difficult to articulate the justified anger than many Black women rightfully feel in this country. This dilemma creates a profound problem for American progressives because they have to fill a linguistic void due to the fact that our words have both been stripped of their meaning and have become tools for demonization.
The erosion of language impedes our capacity to articulate our experiences in the world, and the anticipation of bad faith as we attempt to form good faith relationships makes it very hard to trust people if they misspeak.
Progressives often struggle to find the requisite words to form good faith relationships. This inclines progressives to demonize other progressives and undermines their capacity to cultivate the progress they aspire to create.
SCL aspires to help cultivate linguistic good faith, and we are well aware of the risks that come with this arduous and complex journey.
