Controlling the language of debate is indeed the issue for the example of the barrier in Israel, but, to my mind, does not really explain how somebody like Charles Taylor takes control of an entire country. His well known slogan in one of the elections he ran was “He killed my pa. He killed my ma. I’ll vote for him.” I’m still struggling to figure out how that worked. It seems incomprehensible in any rational society. So it seems that Liberia was not a rational society, and, since it once was, it seems that men like Charles Taylor were able to make it irrational. How can we describe that process? For that matter, a similar one took place in Nazi Germany.

Re. names, taking control of the language of debate is a basic technique of manipulation, practiced by political ideologues as much as sundry advertising brainwashers. They take plainly meaningful words, and adopt them as brands and slogans, turn them into a Proper Noun, imbue them with an emotional charge. I wonder what will happen eventually, when, as with domain names, “all the best ones are taken”.