Nazi evil operated through linguistic misnaming rather than word avoidance.

Evidence

LTI, Lingua Tertii Imperii, as Victor Klemperer has called it, is the “artificial” language that made up an essential part of the Nazi machinery. It functioned not so much by avoiding words as by using words, “improper” words, to describe and deny, to reveal and conceal at the same time. “The key to the entire operation,” Raul Hillberg has said, “was never to utter the words that would be appropriate to the action. Say nothing; do these things; do not describe them. ” The language of the camps is one well-known instance, though one perhaps less studied. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 671

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii), the Nazi regime’s euphemistic ‘artificial language’ that works by improper word usage.
• SEED: An essay angle: how institutional atrocity is linguistically enabled — the mechanics of euphemism in totalitarian systems versus honest description.

Related

• Nazi genocide worked through an artificial language of improper, concealing words (similarity 0.91)
• Nazi language’s distinctiveness was already analyzed at Yad Vashem in 1957. (similarity 0.81)
• Nazi euphemistic language worked through concealment while drawing on long-standing German words (similarity 0.81)
• Language was both victim and causal agent of the Nazi genocide (similarity 0.78)