The Language of Foreclosure: On Slurs, Securitisation, and the Manufacture of Silence
I. The First Move
Every system of control begins with a word. Not a law. Not a weapon. A word that places the speaker outside the boundaries of legitimate discourse, so that the substance of what they said does not need to be engaged.
The word can be clinical. It can be patriotic. It can be a joke. It can be a “conspiracy theorist,” an “anti-vaxxer,” a “woketard,” a “retard,” a “traitor.” What matters is not the word itself. What matters is what the word does. And what it does is foreclose. It ends the conversation before it begins.
This essay examines that mechanism – the many words used to stifle debate and genuine concerns — and asks who creates the language, how it spreads, and what it is for.
II. The Euphemism Treadmill: From Diagnosis to Insult
The word “retard” began as a clinical term. It appeared in paediatric journals in the early twentieth century as a neutral diagnosis for children with intellectual disabilities. It was, in the language of the time, clinical. It was not intended to offend. It was intended to describe.
But language has a way of turning. As the clinical term became common, it became casual. As it became casual, it became cruel. By the late twentieth century, “retard” had migrated from the medical textbook to the schoolyard – a weapon of derision that did the job precisely because it carried the weight of a diagnosis while being deployed as an insult.
This is what linguists call the euphemism treadmill. A word is introduced to describe something difficult. The word becomes associated with the difficulty. The association becomes stigma. The stigma makes the word itself an insult. A new word is introduced. The cycle repeats.
The word “retard” is now widely recognised as ableist. It has been retired from clinical use by public pressure – a rectification of names, in the Confucian sense. But its persistence as an insult is a marker of something else: the willingness to reduce a human being to a category in order to dismiss them.
When someone calls an argument “retarded,” they are not engaging with the argument. They are placing the person who made it into a category that does not require engagement. The word is a shortform of linguistic control. It says: I belong to the side that is correct, and you belong to the side that is defective.
III. The Securitising Move: From Criticism to Existential Threat
The same mechanism operates at a higher level. It is called securitisation.
The Copenhagen School of security studies defines securitisation as the process by which an issue is presented as an existential threat to a valued referent object. Once an issue is securitised, it moves beyond the realm of normal politics and into the realm of security. Debate is foreclosed. Extraordinary measures are justified. The securitising actor becomes the only one competent to judge the threat.
We have documented this pattern across multiple domains. The term “existential threat” did not exist in ordinary speech until recently. It was elevated by philosophers, weaponised by Cold War strategists, and has now become a cliché of political elites. It is used by political leaders, intelligence officials, and media to justify war, surveillance, and emergency powers. It is not used by ordinary citizens describing their daily lives.
The same mechanism is now applied to criticism of the state of Israel. The term “blood libel” — which refers to the medieval false accusation that Jews ritually murdered Christian children, an accusation used for centuries to justify pogroms and massacres — has been deployed against journalists and filmmakers who document Israeli military conduct. The deployment of this term reframes criticism of state violence as an antisemitic attack. It forecloses debate. It positions the critic as an enemy of the Jewish people.
In the Australian context, Senator James Paterson has accused Greens Senator Nick McKim of promoting “dangerous conspiracy theories” for using the phrase “captured by Zionist interests”. Paterson said it is “common knowledge that the word Zionist is often used instead of the word Jew”. The Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler wrote that “Zionist” is “increasingly used as a substitute for Jew” and that “conspiracy theories about Jewish power are repackaged as claims about Zionist influence.”
I have not been able to verify the specific claim, attributed to Senator Paterson, that “anyone critical of the state of Israel would be a traitor to Australia.” What I can verify is that Paterson has said criticism of Israel encourages anti-Semites, that he has accused the Prime Minister of “gaslighting” the Jewish community, and that he has argued that “the act of simply liking a tweet that is supportive of Hamas or that calls for the destruction of Israel is enough for someone to be considered a security threat to Australia.” These statements are documented. They represent the mechanism of securitisation, even if the specific “traitor” claim requires further verification.
The mechanism is clear: criticism of state policy is reframed as a threat to the community. The critic is placed outside the boundaries of legitimate discourse. The substance of the criticism — the deaths, the displacement, the documented conduct of the military — does not need to be addressed, because the critic has been designated as an enemy.
IV. The Case Study: Hasbara and the Manufacture of Narrative
The Israeli propaganda apparatus, known as Hasbara, provides the most documented contemporary example of the securitisation mechanism at scale.
Hasbara is a mixture of propaganda and diplomacy that operates mostly through digital media. It is not primarily about making counterarguments or demonstrating alternative facts. It is about casting doubt on what is actually happening. One of its familiar tactics is to claim that news of dead or injured Palestinians is fake, that the scenes shown in images and videos are staged – a tactic termed “Pallywood.”
The scale is significant. The Israeli Government Advertising Agency (Lapam) sponsored over 2,000 ads on Google in 2024, and more than 4,000 in the first nine months of 2025. Fifty per cent of the 2025 ads were targeted at international audiences. The campaigns included paid-for ads showing “bustling Gaza markets” to counter reports of famine, ads labelling the UN Special Rapporteur as an “anti-Semite,” and advertisements accusing UNRWA of being a “front for Hamas.”
The “Esther Project” paid social media influencers an estimated $6,100 to $7,300 per post to promote pro-Israel content. The campaign was funded by the Israeli foreign ministry and managed through a contractor called Bridges Partners. The influencers were not told to make arguments. They were paid to post content – to create the appearance of organic support.
The mechanism here is important. The propaganda does not need to convince people of a specific claim. It needs to create enough doubt and confusion that the truth becomes contestable. As the Hasbara literature puts it, the goal is “casting doubt on what is actually happening.”
V. Organic or Targeted? The Seeding Question
The question of whether propaganda grows organically or is fed with targeted ideas is central to understanding how the mechanism works. The evidence suggests that the answer is: both, in sequence.
First, the seed. The securitising actor introduces a narrative – “Zionist influence,” “Pallywood,” “existential threat,” “conspiracy theorist.” This narrative is designed to be sticky. It uses language that is emotionally charged, identity-threatening, and easy to repeat.
Second, the amplification. The seed is amplified through paid influencers, bot networks, and targeted advertising. A 2026 Times of Israel report found that “about half of the politically active accounts on Israeli social media are not real people but rather bots.” Bot and troll networks “amplify their output, with campaign messaging constantly updated based on audience analysis.”
Third, the organic spread. Once the seed has been planted and amplified, it begins to spread organically. Unsuspecting social media users share posts on their personal newsfeeds, often without reading beyond the headlines. The narrative becomes “common knowledge” – not because it is true, but because it has been repeated enough times to feel true.
The key insight is that the organic spread is not spontaneous. It is engineered. The seed is planted with a specific target in mind. The amplification is calibrated to reach that target. The organic spread is the intended outcome – the point at which the narrative becomes self-sustaining.
VI. The Tribe and the Pseudo-Tribe
The language of securitisation depends on the existence of tribes – groups that define themselves by who they are against.
An individual belongs to many tribes. There is the personal tribe: family, friends, community. There is the professional tribe: colleagues, industry, profession. There is the political tribe: party, ideology, cause.
But there is also the pseudo-tribe. The pseudo-tribe is not a community. It is a construct. It is a group that is defined not by genuine relationship, but by a shared enemy. The pseudo-tribe of “the West” against “Islam.” The pseudo-tribe of “Zionists” against “anti-Semites.” The pseudo-tribe of “the woke” against “the based.” The pseudo-tribe of “the people” against “the elites.”
The pseudo-tribe is the target of the influencer. The influencer does not build community. The influencer manufactures it. They identify a grievance, amplify it, and offer the pseudo-tribe as a solution. The pseudo-tribe provides belonging without relationship, identity without community, meaning without the work of building anything.
VII. What the Language Is For
The language of foreclose is not a failure of communication. It is successful communication – communication that achieves the speaker’s purpose by preventing the listener from achieving theirs.
Its purposes are:
- To silence. If the critic is a “conspiracy theorist,” a “retard,” a “traitor,” an “anti-Semite,” they do not need to be answered. They need to be dismissed.
- To mobilise. The pseudo-tribe needs an enemy. The language provides one.
- To justify. Extraordinary measures require extraordinary threats. The language creates the threat that justifies the measure.
- To obscure. The real causes – the extraction model, the arms trade, the wealth transfer, the political caste – remain hidden behind the noise.
VIII. The Rectification of Names
The Confucian discipline of zhengming – the rectification of names – holds that the first task of governance is to ensure that language matches reality. When names are corrupted, language does not accord with truth. When language does not accord with truth, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.
The same discipline applies to us. The first act of resistance is to name things accurately.
- “Retard” is not a description. It is a slur.
- “Conspiracy theorist” is not a diagnosis. It is a dismissal.
- “Blood libel” is not an argument. It is a securitising move.
- “Pallywood” is not a finding. It is a propaganda tactic.
- “Traitor” is not a legal category. It is an identity claim.
The words are load-bearing. They hold up the narratives that justify harm. When we rectify the names, the narratives become visible. And a narrative that is visible can be challenged.
IX. A Question for the Reader
What does it say about a person that their first response to an argument is a slur? What does it say about a system that its first response to criticism is a threat?
The language of foreclose is not a bug in democratic discourse. It is a feature of the extraction model. A population that cannot engage with criticism cannot hold power accountable. A population that cannot name the enemy cannot resist it.
The first act of resistance is to name things accurately. The second is to refuse the labels. The third is to keep the record – the record of what was said, by whom, and for what purpose.
The desert is real. It has boundaries. And the boundaries are guarded by words.
Note: This article is offered as intelligence, not evidence. It is designed to inform public understanding, not to prove a case. Where specific individuals and events are referenced, they are presented as reported, not as established fact. The reader is encouraged to check the sources, test the argument, and reach their own conclusion. – Andrew Klein
A note on sources: This essay draws on publicly available journalism, academic research, and the author’s own work on automated decision-making and political language. The Hasbara material is drawn from peer-reviewed research, open-source investigations, and reporting by the Eurovision News Spotlight, Middle East Eye, and the Times of Israel. The securitisation framework is drawn from the Copenhagen School of security studies. The reference to Senator James Paterson’s statements is drawn from his official website and Australian media reporting. The claim that he described critics of Israel as “traitors” could not be independently verified and is not asserted as fact.
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Do you sometimes get the impression that the Reserve Bank of Australia is out to gut the economy, slow down growth, cripple productivity and generally stifle productive economic activity and in the process consign the Albanese government to history.
We are told that, following this weeks’ increase in interest rates, Australian interest rates are among the highest globally, second only to Iceland among advanced economies. Following the fourth Reserve Bank hike Australia’s official cash rate was raised by 0.25 percentage points to 4.60%. Among the 41 advanced nations defined by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iceland holds the highest rate at 8.00%, leaving Australia in second place.
The RBA are telling us that there is too much demand in the Australian economy, that we are spending too much, borrowing too much, building houses, constructing data centres and the RBA want to put the brakes on this growth.
In a speech on 22 September 2026 at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) event, RBA Governor Michele Bullock explicitly stated that an unemployment rate between 4.5% and 5% would likely be necessary to take enough “heat” out of the labour market to ease inflationary pressures. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) expects and insists that the unemployment rate will need to rise towards 5% to properly cool down the economy and bring stubborn inflation back to its 2% to 3% target band.
The opposition have, as expected, pointed to federal government spending as being the major economic problem facing us [they refuse to accept that the Middle East war is forcing petroleum and diesel costs up and that alone is impacting every aspect of our economy] but interviews with Tim Wilson and Angus Taylor and specific questions as to where they would cut costs have failed to come up with any alternatives beyond some vague references to reeling in the NDIS.
I repeat the question “Do you sometimes get the impression that the Reserve Bank of Australia is out to gut the economy” and defeat efforts by the government to grow the economy ?
If the RBA’s wishes are granted you can say goodbye to a future ALP government being re-elected and you can roll out the red carpet for Pauline, Barnaby (and Angus ?).
Good luck with that!
Terry:
The RBA is supposed to be independent and apolitical. Their actions, and particularly the timing thereof, makes a compelling case that they are not.
Thanks for writing this Andrew and contributing to vital public discourse.
The RBA, acting alone, independent, doing “duty”, is brainlessly divisive, negative, antisocial and hurting a mass of people. Profiteers and controllers are going well, as, whether they row hard or slow or pause, they always control the rowing to suit financial settings in their interests only. Government must intervene, change, modify this interest rate bashing. Careful, broadbased, applied actions are needed.
Leefe, independent or ineffective ?
The biggest hit, when the RBA increases interest rates (and they are instantly passed on by the banks) is to existing homeowners with mortgages which, inevitably in Australia, are on variable rates.
By contrast, if you lived in the USA, Denmark, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Singapore or the Netherlands you would probably be on a full-term fixed-rate (typically 20 to 30 years) mortgage so central bank fluctuations wouldn’t be an issue for you.
Interestingly, Japan is an outlier with borrowers preferring variable interest rate mortgages due mainly to intense bank competition (something absent in Australia) which means actual applied variable rates are normally sitting between 0.4% and 1.1%.
Fixed rate owner occupier loans are available in Japan under a government-backed program that guarantees the same interest rate for up to 35 years. Fixed Rates generally range between 2.0% and 3.5%.
So, my point is that we have a Reserve bank with only one tool to fight inflation and that is an interest rate hammer with which to play whack- a-mole with existing mortgage holders.
There is something wrong with our system which effectively discourages banks from competing with one another (rather, they operate as a cartel) and allows them to restrict fixed term interest rates to two or three years only.
Thank you for a vert thought provoking essay.
Too quickly serious discussion is shut down by attacking the person, and not engaging in a discussion.
Political discourse has been going that way, attacking politicians instead of the proposals they make.
So again, Thank you.
Terry Mills,
you say: ““Do you sometimes get the impression that the Reserve Bank of Australia is out to gut the economy” and defeat efforts by the government to grow the economy ?”
Whilst I agree with the first contention in that question, the second – that the RBA is setting out to defeat the government to grow the economy – is not that straight forward.
Didn’t Labor get its reform of the RBA passed through parliament in late ’24? Aren’t we looking at Labor’s reformed RBA in action?
Wasn’t it Jim Chalmers who wanted to have government’s legal ability to override an RBA decision removed from the statutes? Even the Coalition wouldn’t come at that.
Didn’t part of that reform involve Labor appointing 3 board members to replace outgoing board members?
It would seem this is not the RBA undermining Labor, but the RBA acting according to Labor’s design.
Is it just, that its best not to let the unsuspecting public know that’s its Labor’s design?
This particular decision of the RBA aside, as the effects of Labor’s and Israel’s and the USA’s war against Iran are having, no doubt, an effect on inflation that is difficult to combat directly, is a government steadfastedly refusing to overrule the RBA, as Labor appears to be doing, in the social best interest?
I said “supposed to be independent and apolitical”; I do not for a moment suggest that they actually are so.
And I agree with everything you’ve said.
Some rational comments here…The reserve bank governors get their incomes and the policians think they have a ready made scapegoat for the worst aspects of economic management.
@ Terry Mills:; I have come to think that the while ”RBA Rate Rises Ritual” is a strategy to keep the floating point interest rate for residential housing rising, thus generating more profit for the large foreign owned corporate shareholding of the major banks.
Naturally, this cost is borne by the borrowers, squeezed by rising house prices as residential property investors exploit the very favourable Howard Negative Gearing & CGT benefits. Once again we see that poorly thought out COALition policy rarely considers the policy impact on workers.
The Chalmers Shorten investment reforms have cut this exploitation off at the roots for now. When will all bank loans for principal residential housing become a fixed interest, fixed term loan so that the borrowers know their financial commitments well in advance??
Consider the current muddling over ”inflation” being controlled by the very crude interest rates handle.
Say, for example, fossil fuel price doubles for whatever reason. Naturally the worker has to spend more on fossil fuels, but the RBA penalises the worker by jacking up interest rates because his expenses to go to work have doubled. Where is the equity in that strategy??
The bosses have limited wage increases to annual events while prices are free to fluctuate willy-nilly at the manufacturers and margin seeking distributers, especially supermarkets.
Then the previous investment residential housing policy made better total investment returns for the highly inflating executive pay packages.
Our problem is that bosses have deliberately failed to invest in new, more efficient processes for manufacturing products or providing services.
Another problem is foreign owned multinational corporations such as AI Data Centre proponents dump huge amounts of money into the Australian economy. However, over 90% of this funding is exported out of Australia to purchase American computer hardware to fit out the Centres.
Leefe,
you say that you agree with all that Terry said, that would include that the RBA seems to be acting so as to undermine Labor’s efforts to grow the economy. You added to that ‘supposed’ to be independent and apolitical, with bold type no less.
Would it be safe to say that you suspect that the RBA has been deliberately acting against Labor’s interests for political reasons?
If so, I find that hard to believe.
Labor’s 5% deposit scheme for new home buyers will have people taking out massive loans, for which they will be paying enormous amounts in interest over the next 30 years or so. The banks would love that.
If there is any betrayal of the people, it would be far more likely, imo, that the banker-corporate-types in the RBA would think that Labor and its 5% scheme are the best thing since sliced bread.
The RBA trying to unseat Labor? Nah, no windfall taxes, corporate profits protected at any cost to the populace, gas give-aways to corporations for free, house prices driven up for 4 years, massive mortgages, demonstrations suppressed with state violence, superannuation concessions barely touched, legislation for suppressing union strikes maintained, no divestiture legislation, no taxing billionaires – that would make Labor manna from heaven, if anything, to banker-corporate types.
But, that supposes that RBA members are unscrupulous. I think that they are just plain deluded with notions of liberalism being the best thing, and the primacy of corporate profits over social good.
What I’d love to know is, how many of the RBA members play golf at Marrickville golf club?
@ Thommo: A brief ABC RN news note (031026) that a credible, local INDEPENDENT candidate is gathering considerable support among disenchanted LABOR voters in preference to the PHONeys.
With Alb-Appeasie planning retirement to the NSW Central Coast this may happen sooner than he wishes.
INDEPENDENTS GET THINGS DONE FOR THEIR COMMUNITIES.
What do NOtional$, PHONeys or LIARBRAL$ do??
NEC,
thanks for the headsup, however, I still have limited access (for the moment， won’t be for much longer though) to media sites, one of which is the ABC.
Who is the Independent candidate?
Labor’s election-rigging alterations to the electoral funding is an egregious attack on our democracy. I’d be only too happy to discuss the Independent’s platform to, if only to thwart Labor’s sly attempt at stealing future elections, provide a platform for greater recognition.
Thommo
A perceptive article on the RBA interest rate increase, the RBA’s move amounts to an act of pointless aggression against the majority of Australians. Some of the points that I have been making,
Your thoughts ?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/04/yanis-varoufakis-australia-interest-rate-rise
Andrew Klein points out in the article that “A population that cannot name the enemy cannot resist it.”
When full-blown liberal economic theory of the Hayek type gained global acceptance in the 1970s, and began to infiltrate ALP thinking here in Oz, the term “economic rationalism” was first deployed to commend the
‘economic rationality’ of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government.
But the term came to increasing prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s to disparage market-oriented economic policies, economics and economists
Although economic rationalist thought and policy were part of a
broader international trend, the term itself represents a particularly Australian contribution to political rhetoric.
Economic rationalism of the Labor variety generally supported a strong welfare state and did not promote an unduly conservative social agenda. Nonetheless, observers of the Hawke government pointed out how during that period social security policies moved away from the principles of universalism and towards those of targeting and selectivity, as well as encouraging the privatisation of certain kinds of welfare provision. (Stokes, The Rise and Fall of Economic Rationalism.)
But this begs the question– why did Oz create its own label for free market economics?
Well, it was Labor that first began the transformation of the economy to a liberal structure, and clearly they could not call it liberalism for obvious reasons — the party that had dominated the Oz political scene for decades was the Liberal Party.
So a term was created to disguise the move from an economy that serves the people, to people serving the economy.
But as is clear now, and was abundantly clear at the time, you cannot have a liberal economy with a strong social welfare component.
So the failure of Labor to resist the lies of liberal theory, the failure to “name the enemy” as Andrew put it, sees a party of clowns on the rise here, at a time when Oz should be a shining light on the world stage instead of, increasingly, a pariah.
It’s been encouraging to see here (as for example in Bert’s article Profits over People) and more broadly, the term ‘liberal’ being correctly applied to anti-social policies.
The enemy is finally being named.
But will we pay for taking our eye off the ball, with a period of clown control?
Terry Mills,
thanks for the link, but I can’t access The Guardian either, not for a few more weeks anyway. I can access Greg Jericho on the Australia Institute website, if that helps. Or if you wouldn’t mind quoting from the article, I’d appreciate that muchly.
Thommo, this is the nub of the argument Varoufakis is presenting :
“An overheating economy is not the cause of the recent inflation spike. Its cause is a war of choice in the Gulf. Since US and Israeli bombs began falling on Iran, the strait of Hormuz has turned into a toll booth, shipping insurers have tripled their premiums, and tankers have been diverted around the Horn of Africa. In Australia, a tiny minority connected to the energy oligopoly raked in exorbitant profits while the vast majority felt the pain. The interest rate hike deepens the majority’s pain without delivering much gain.”
“There are two species of inflation, and central bankers have spent 40 years pretending there is only one. Demand-pull inflation occurs when households and firms spend more than the economy can produce: raise the price of money and you cool their ardour. Cost-push inflation is what happens when the price of an essential input is yanked upward by forces that have nothing to do with domestic demand: a war closing a shipping lane, a drought, a pandemic snarling supply chains. The price spiral now rattling through the Australian economy, courtesy of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran, is cost-push to its marrow.”
“No plausible rise in the cash rate will open up the strait of Hormuz, or convince Gulf insurers to lower their premiums, or compel a barrel of Brent crude priced in a global market to come down because a Melbourne mortgage holder is stressed. What it will do is suppress Australians’ spending, wages, their ability to keep a roof over their heads, ultimately their economy’s capacity to invest and to produce. It is a little like treating a broken leg by amputating the healthy one.”
Terry, it’s certainly a great article.
It brings out the reason for the existence of Central banks the world over — to give the dodgy recommendations of liberal economic theory endless opportunities to eventually come true.
Terry Mills,
thanks, I appreciate it.
My thoughts? I find Yanis’s arguments compelling – the RBA’s decision totally unjustified, on the basis of that argument, and not consistent with acting in the social good.
Do I think they are doing it to gut the economy? no, the blame for that would at least in part be laid at their doorstep.
Do I think they are doing it to sabotage Labor’s efforts to grow the economy? not likely, my guess is that they are doing it to protect corporate profits and raise unemployment, as high levels of unemployment gives corporations the whiphand in wage negotiations – keeping wages suppressed.
I’m certainly not going to label Andrew Hauser, Marnie Baker, Melinda Cilento, Renee Fry-McGibbin, Carolyn Hewson, Bruce Preston, Iain Ross, Jenny Wilkinson or even Michelle Bullock as traitors trying to bring down the government. Well, not yet anyway.
Well, I happen to think that the RBA is totally incomptent and does not live in the real world….
https://michaelwest.com.au/a-blunt-tool-rbas-incompetence-is-making-the-rich-richer/