Bloodless Coup

Language and Meaning

First, a site note that is actually about language. Initially, we at Bloodless Coup thought that there would be a fairly equal amount of discussion in all of our issue areas and that our comments on politics would likely stick to the international variety. Despite Armand's best efforts to get us thinking about culture, we are still much overloaded on posts to the "politics" category, and we've done a lot of blurring of the lines between international and domestic politics at that. This is not a bad thing in itself, but as the (sort of) editor of this bunch I've created a new category: International Affairs. There will still be overlap, and the category is deliberately somewhat vague so as not to mean "only foreign policy," but hopefully this will help us sort out our election-year extravaganza from more internationally focused posts.

Second, on both language and international affairs (and I suppose, as a welcome to Stalin), I wanted to post about the hostage crisis at the school in North Ossetia, Russia. A school has been seized, with as many or more than (depending on the news source) 100 children and adults held and a demand made for the release of Chechen prisoners and the removal of all Russian forces from Chechnya. I read several stories and engaged in a few conversations about the situation today, and something that struck me was the lack of agreement on the words used to described the hostage-takers. The Russian government has been pretty consistent in describing Chechens involved in similar events as "terrorists" and the plane bombings a few days ago were no exception. However, in reading accounts of the hostage crisis, I have seen the words insurgents, attackers, hostage-takers and even guerrillas, the last of which struck me a quite a departure from other recent reports.

I know that the Russian government has sought to paint the Chechen crisis as another part of the "war on terror" in order to get external support for its policies, and to cast the Chechen insurgents/guerrillas/etc. in the least attractive way possible. The Russian Defense Minister called these recent attacks a "declaration of war" and said it was a "different kind of war, where you cannot see your enemy and where there is no front line, but nonetheless this is an entirely real threat." But he also called it a "terrorist act." The NY Times refers to an interview with Turkish journalists in which "Putin said Russia would never negotiate with terrorists or separatists in Chechnya." Terrorists or separatists. It sounds like the hard line of language is breaking down...or is this just something that seems in sharper relief today?