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A lexicon of larceny and lies
From from ‘astroturf’ to ‘centrism,’ SOLOMON HUGHES shares his newly created ‘dictionary of contemporary political language’
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POLITICS generates its own word meanings and phrasing, so as a service to understanding, here are some of my notes towards a dictionary of contemporary political language. Let’s start unpicking the jargon, both old and new, at “A” and work on.
Astroturf
A campaign that seems like something from the grassroots. But look closer and it is totally artificial.
Groups that have a lot of money, some grand titles but few actual members — like, say, the Taxpayers’ Alliance — are always worth inspecting to see if they are astroturf, fake campaigns designed to covertly push their funders’ interests by pretending to be “popular” spontaneous “from-below” campaigns.
More from this author
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