Concern about a placename’s associations with slavery – unlike cosying up to oligarchs – doesn’t put anyone on Russia’s side
Beware the journalistic use of the word “we”. It’s a slippery pronoun that can slide from meaning “we, the whole of humanity” to “we, the author and some like-minded friends” to “we, an ill-defined mass who uphold an imaginary consensus that the author wishes bravely to oppose”.
It’s out in force in the persistent and evidence-free claims that “woke wars”, as the Daily Telegraph’s Sherelle Jacobs put it last week, have gravely undermined “our” ability to confront the evils of Vladimir Putin. In the cold war, she claims, conflict with the Soviet Union was “confidently framed” as one between “the enlightened forces of liberty and the darkness of communism”. Now, “we” are tearing ourselves apart with “squabbles over statues and gender pronouns”.
