Saturday night, a guest commentator on Sky News sputtered that Donald Trump has ‘normalised white supremacy’. Once the American President has floated off to the horizon after his three-day visit to the UK as an inflatable media punching bag, we will doubtless have been subjected to much further denunciation of this diabolical, fiendish, authoritarian, hate-filled, lying, misogynistic, crass, criminal, moronic, stupid … sorry, that’s a bit too close to ‘moronic’… then, you know, totally crummy leader who is also… also… fat! Sadiq Khan made a brave superlative play in labelling Trump a ‘fascist’. Now, that one’s hard to top — which won’t have stopped fellow detractors from trying.
Welcome to the world of impotent hyperbole. That dig about white supremacy is a good example of contemporary word inflation, in some ways worse than what’s happened to grades. (The fetishistic lefty resort to normalise deserves parsing as well: the verb seems to decode ‘Maybe it’s not strictly illegal yet but we don’t like it, so it should be illegal’.)
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in