Rulers can make odious things acceptable simply by renaming them

Evidence

And from there Le Bon, as a true new Machiavelli, gives a piece of advice to politicians: ‘One of the most essential functions of statesmen consists, then, in baptising with popular or, at any rate, indifferent words things the crowd cannot endure under their old names. The power of words is so great that it suffices to designate in well-chosen terms the most odious things to make them acceptable to the crowds’. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 74

Categorization

• CANDY: Delightfully cynical one-liner about renaming as political technology, quotable in casual conversation.
• XREF: Echoes the modern notion of political framing and euphemism, e.g. renaming policies to neutralize opposition — connects to rhetoric of the culture industry chapter. — connects to: Le Bon identified affirmation, repetition, and contagion as crowd persuasion devices — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 77; Repeated assertions eventually become believed because their authorship is forgotten — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 77; Renaming a substance can free it from regulations — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1718 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Political administrations rename damaging policies with positive-sounding labels to obscure their real effects #exemplifies (0.95) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2686
• Renaming a substance can free it from regulations #exemplifies (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1718
• Counter-hegemony works by reattaching emptied signifiers to their original meanings. #complicates (0.80) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 367
• Political reclamation rearticulates a stigmatized term rather than replacing it #complicates (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 233
• Totalitarian rule deliberately maintains a gap between official words and actual deeds #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 930