On Slurs, Securitisation, and the Manufacture of Silence

By Andrew Klein

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.

This essay 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.