Citations Needed is a podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.

Episode 71: Laundering Imperial Violence Through Anodyne Foreign Policy-Speak (Part II)

April 03, 2019 53:17 63.92 MB Downloads: 0

Kinetic strikes. Limited military coercion. Robust sanctions. No fly zones. Military muscle. Modernization. All options are on the table.

So much of how we discuss U.S. militarism and imperialism is laundered through seemingly anodyne phrases, rhetorical thingamajigs that vaguely gesture towards an idea without conjuring the unseemly images of what’s really being called for.

In Part II of our two-part episode on “foreign policy-speak," we examine five more ubiquitous euphemisms and discuss what’s really being said (and what’s always left out) when the media uses banal phrases meant to mask military violence.

Our guest is FAIR's Janine Jackson.