2022: The year the English language reclaimed "refugee"

The "refugee" mania that so gripped Europe since 2015, when organised international mass crime became a virtue to so many in the West, while the safeguarding of citizens and the protection of their society was deprecated, is no longer quite the madness that it was.

2022: The year the English language reclaimed "refugee"
Ukrainian refugees

From 2015 through to early 2022, it has been almost impossible to talk about refugees without fear of being misunderstood, or to read or hear reference to refugees without the possibility of misunderstanding. On one level, the word refugee, like so many perfectly-understood English words and terms, had been requisitioned by Newspeak (political correctness, i.e., thought-control) and pressed into service as yet another weapon in the postmodern onslaught on our culture and civilisation, this time to dress up violent, barbaric invaders as innocents. "They are not dangerous. They are in danger," assured the placards.

The corruption of the word refugee might well have started with the assigning of that word to the diaspora descendants of those Arabs who had left their homes in Israel at the start of the 1948 War of Independence, who live under conditions that would confer refugee status on no one else.[1]

Of course, in the context of contemporary Europe, strictly speaking, "the refugees" covered more than just the Muslims on hijra, the religious compulsion to invade infidel lands and take them over, since Allah has bequeathed the whole world to Muslims. But it is the Muslim component of the refugees that operationalises the corruption of refugee from "someone seeking refuge from a place where there is a threat to life" to "anyone who wants to enter your country illegally."

And so it came that by the time Turkey deliberately released a flood of "refugees" into the EU, turning living human beings into diplomatic weapons, he was enabling nothing more than that which Islam commands. The word refugee, though, remained safe in Newspeak hands, as all blame for that border crisis was laid on Turkey, and not the "refugees" themselves, who were still axiomatically taken to be "in danger."

When Belarus later copied Turkey by laying on a string of cheap flights from the Middle East to Minsk so as to procure masses of Muslims for throwing at its common border with the EU, the thousands who jumped at the chance were still called "refugees," despite their not even vaguely meeting any single criterion for refugee status. By then, though, "the refugees" had become hardwired into the Western mind.  They were Muslims, so they were refugees. Any Muslim who attempted to enter a country, no matter how or why, was automatically in danger and deserving of welcome. Any suggestion of vetting of any kind was immediately decried as racist, "far-Right", bigoted, etc., and since it was only really about "the Muslim refugees," impeding their passage in any way for any reason was, of course, "Islamophobic."

So self-evident (and doctrinal) had the identification of refugee with Muslim become that a journalist on Turkish propaganda mouthpiece TRT World even had the gall to challenge the Polish MP Dominik Tarczynski for his country's outrageous policy of admitting Ukrainian refugees while refusing Muslims. Despite the journalist's provocation, Tarczynski makes the very simple point that Poland has legal points of entry and legal procedures for entry. Tarczynski offered the following:

It has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with “Islamophobia.” It's all about safety… Everyone is allowed to apply. Everyone is allowed to submit the documents, ask for permission, ask for a visa, and then our Interior Minister will decide if he's needed for our society. The difference between immigration and refugee is a legal difference. You are mixing up words. It's very important because the difference is is quite big. First of all, refugee is the person who flees to the first safe country, by the International Law. Immigrant, especially illegal immigrant, is not welcome in Poland. This is what we promised and these words will be kept. Basically we are not talking about people who are in need. We are not talking about Muslims. We are talking about a law, International Law, and Polish law. We don't want any illegal migration in Poland. This is what we promised. This is why our government was elected and not even one Muslim illegal migrant will come to Poland ever.[2]

Unable or unwilling to address the substance, TRT World's journalist then played the "Islamophobia" card: "What do you mean by “safety”? Why is safety connected to Muslim? Explain that to me." If Western dhimmi politicians should even make it this far, this would be the point at which they squirm, whither and shrivel up. Not so Dominik Tarczynski, who would have none of the Muslim "journalist's" attempted sophistry, no matter which card he played. But those Hellbent on clearing the way for the Muslim invasion of Europe were far from giving up.

Samaa Khullar, wrote about the European "double-standards" when it comes to Ukrainian refugees versus "Black, Brown, and Roma people" on the "progressive" platform Salon, deceptively quoting from the sloppy website of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a credible-sounding source, rather than the original, equally sloppy source, Foreign Policy in Focus, a postmodern activist-driven blog, where we read:

"On February 24, [2022] Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski stated, “Anyone fleeing from bombs, from Russian rifles, can count on the support of the Polish state.”
However, less than a month ago, in January 2022, the same administration was willing to spend 353 million euros to build a wall to keep out refugees from Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Afghanistan.

The same holds true for Hungary, which has welcomed over 255,000 Ukrainians. This is the same country that built an electric razor-wire fence to keep refugees out of their country."[3]

None of these people seem to have noticed that the Ukrainian refugees, desperately escaping war in the very country from which they seek entry into Poland, in other words, not from a safe country, nonetheless: 1. make their way to a legal border crossing point; 2. wait in an orderly line; and 3. lodge a proper application for asylum. They do not demand anything, are embarrassed to impose on other, and are exceedingly grateful for everything they receive. According to the English language and International Law, these are refugees.

The Muslims who sought entry to Poland across that same eastern border last winter, 1. did so from Belarus, a country at peace; 2. stormed and tried to breech the Polish border fence; and 3. physically attacked the Polish border guards. They always demand, often violently, consider themselves entitled to everything, and see no reason for gratitude. According to the English language and International Law, these are illegal migrants.

Ukrainians, by demonstrating what a refugee is, have blown it for "refugees from Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Afghanistan" and their hijra. To suggest, as some have half-heartedly tried to do, that Ukrainians are helped because the are white and Christian, know that it is disingenuous to play that card. It is a charge that was short-lived.

The "refugee" mania that so gripped Europe since 2015, when organised international mass crime, and the aiding and abetting of it, became a virtue to so many in the West, while the maintenance of law and order, the safeguarding of citizens and the protection of their society, values and culture were deprecated, is no longer quite the madness that it was. Perversely, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has interrupted the headlong abandoning of freedom and thought that so plagued the West for so many years. It will be brief.

One should guard against reading too much into the restoration of refugee to its proper meaning. It is but one word and this was only a hiccup. Still to be restored to the English language are: minority, represent, colonise, de-colonise, critical, racism, extremism, privilege, violence, unsafe, diversity, equity, community, oppression, inclusion, and so on and on... their corruption embodying nothing less than the death of a civilisation. George Orwell well understood that:

The decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.[4]

We have merely seen a hint of the idea of a counter-attack, but one word is back where it belongs. Let us draw strength from that.


Notes:

  1. How they came to abandon their homes is not at issue here. My views on that are here.
  2. "Here’s why Poland takes in millions of migrants... just not Muslim ones," The Newsmakers, YouTube, 2 Apr 2019 https://youtu.be/TYSX2vI7oPk
  3. Abdoulie Njai, Micaela Torres, Margareta Matache, "Ukraine: The refugee double standard," Foreign Policy in Focus, 15 March 2022. https://fpif.org/ukraine-the-refugee-double-standard/ This source complains of racism, but writes "...Black and Brown people," (capital b), but "white lives", "white Europeans" and "white Ukrainians," (lower case w).
  4. George Orwell, "Politics and the english Language," 1946, The Orwell Foundation, https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/