The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate. So goes the theme of an old book I’ve often cited, The Tyranny of Words. Examples would be if the media routinely called pro-gun-control people “anti-freedom” or pro-abortion individuals “pro-death.”

Mainstream journalists don’t do that, of course — but they do use corresponding language to describe conservatives. Just consider headlines about the recent European parliamentary elections:

• “The far right’s election gains rattle EU’s traditional powers…,” wrote The Associated Press.
• “Far right surges in European Parliament elections but center still holds,” echoed CNN.
• “Battered by far right, France’s Macron bets big…,” The Washington Post chimed in.

Then there was the deviation from the above. “Radical-right political parties have made significant gains in the European Parliament elections,” (emphasis added) ABC.net.au proclaimed in a lede.

“Well, I sure wouldn’t want to be associated with such extremism,” some may say. “I’m not gonna vote that way again.”

This, of course, is precisely the reaction the media intend to catalyze, too.

Noting the lexical legerdemain in a Friday piece titled “‘Far right?’ Yeah, right!” the Washington Examiner states that “European elections this month turbocharged media misuse of the term ‘far right.’”

Parties that merely oppose “pan-European socialism made big gains, triggering alarmed reports about a ‘far right’ threat,” the site continues.

“These came from news outlets always ready to deprecate movements that appeal to voters who wish to protect their national cultures against attack by unlimited ‘progressivism,’” the Examiner adds.

The site then illustrates far-right-label folly, writing that

when U.K. citizens voted in 2016 to quit the European Union … the media depicted “leavers” generally as racist when, in truth, most wanted merely to restore national sovereignty, govern themselves, and stop being lorded over by foreign oligarchs.

In France today, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen … wants to preserve French identity by stanching the flow of immigration, primarily from Muslim countries, that has radically altered the culture for the worse. It rejects multiculturalism and the soothing lie that “diversity,” which means a Balkanized society, is a source of strength. This is plain reason, and ordinary people agree.

National Rally is also for trade protectionism and government intervention, not market economics, and opposes nationalization of public industries. These are broadly socialist policies, not capitalist or far-right.

In contrast, there appears nothing the Left could do — no policy radical enough — to earn it the descriptor “far left.” This is especially striking given that today’s “Left” generally supports open borders that flood Western nations with unassimilable foreigners, abortion on demand, and the idea that children can switch sexes at will and should be given puberty-blocking drugs to facilitate this fancy.

(Note: Even avowedly socialist figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative “Sandy Cortez (D-N.Y.) of Westchester” aren’t called “far left.”)

Immigration, which perhaps drove the “conservatives’” recent European election victories more than any other issue, is especially telling. Consider the following statements:

• Andrew Neather, former advisor to ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, confessed in 2009 that the massive immigration into the United Kingdom over the previous 15 years was designed to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”
• Swedish multiculturalist Mona Sahlin, commenting on the planned Islamization of her land, said in 2001 that “the Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.”
• In 2017, Joe Biden stated approvingly, “An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop. Folks like me, who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America, absolute minority.”
• Advocating the idea of changing the people to change the government, Liberal think tank Center for American Progress wrote in 2013 that “[s]upporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future.”

Are these “moderate” statements?

In contrast, people opposed to the above are not, as a rule, xenophobic; they’re just not “xenophilic.” They wish to preserve their cultures for posterity. In this, they reflect the Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Russians, any native tribe (which, if overrun by outsiders, leftists would defend zealously and indignantly) — and, in fact, most groups on Earth and the historical default. So question:

Which of the above sides is the “radical” or “extreme” one?

Which one deserves a “far ____” descriptor? (How about “far out”?)

The good news is that not everyone is fooled by the media propaganda. Just consider the following MSN comment-section responses:

• “More accurately, the Center surges but the far left still holds,” observed a reader reacting to the earlier-quoted CNN headline.
• “If fighting for sane policy like legal immigration, anti-crime measures, and fiscal accountability is far-right, sign me up,” wrote another commenter.
• “The ‘Far Right’ are just every day, hardworking people that are fed-up with their towns, cities and states being overrun by people that don’t care about those communities,” a like-minded poster added in the same thread.
• And, finally, one respondent summed up with sarcastic pithiness, “Remember, a racist is someone who prefers their own culture to yours.”

In truth, the political senses of the terms “right” and “left” originated with the French Revolution (1789), and the positions the designations represent have changed based on time and place. In our time and place, however, “left” describes radicals so far left that they’ve left sanity and Western Civilization behind.