As a German speaker, I was surprised and delighted to see that the American English word “shitstorm” has been adapted to German. The new German word shitstorm is a vernacular for, well, a shitstorm.
Of course, while the word is an FCC violation in the US, the English word “shit” itself has no meaning in German (the word Scheißgewitter would be both vulgar and a little meaningless in German). So, unlike in English, the term “shitstorm” can be used in polite company…
…because the loaded, offensive term loses its meaning outside its native language.
The moral of the story: words that are adopted into foreign languages don’t necessarily bring with them their native baggage.
Or to put it more concisely? Context matters.
After a decade and a half of illiterately hinting, tittering and referring to conservatives of all stripes as one variety of “Nazi” or another, the left and its PR flaks in the mainstream media are shocked, shocked I tell you, that someone is…pre-literately invoking a Nazi reference:
When a video of two Donald Trump supporters shouting “Lügenpresse” (lying press) started to circulate Sunday, viewers from Germany soon noted its explosive nature. The defamatory word was most frequently used in Nazi Germany. Today, it is a common slogan among those branded as representing the “ugly Germany”: members of xenophobic, right-wing groups.
Its use across the Atlantic Ocean at a Trump rally has worried Germans who know about its origins all too well. Both the Nazi regime and the East German government made use of it, turning it into an anti-democracy slogan.
And if you’re German, commenting about German politics, that’s certainly rife with portent.
And if you think that the bobbleheads who used the term at the rally knew all that history, and knowingly thought that was the subtext, by all means, provide some evidence of it.
Because what the term literaly means is “Lying Press”. Stripped of any historical context, that is all it means.
And while the Washington Post in the article above calls the term “defamatory”, truth negates a charge of defamation. Our press does have bias, does lie about it, and is in the tank for Hillary Clinton.
What sort of Scheißgewitter is it going to take for our lapdog media to confront this?
The frequent use of Nazi by Democrats has made the term meaningless. Like Yankee or Queer, Nazi just means a group of people vehemently hated by another group of people. The actual term has lost meaning. Sometimes the hated groups even embrace derogatory terms as there own words. Sometime they even use it in music.
“Are you voting for X?”
“Yep. He’s been called a Nazi repeatedly – like that time he disagreed with the plan to distribute condoms to every pre-schooler in the country – so I know where he stands on taxes, illegal immigration, welfare, and defense policy.”
To answer the question: Never. Being a liberal means you are always right, even when by any objective reality you are absolutely and undeniably wrong. And you can always just deny it.
Both the Nazi regime and the East German government made use of it, turning it into an anti-democracy slogan.
I would like to see Nick Roack justify that statement. East Germany’s name for itself was “Deutsche Demokratische Republik”, which means what it sounds like it means. The idea that the American press represents the American people is laughable. The people who make up the press and the leadership and the ownership of the mass media in the United States are non-representative of the American people in terms of economic and social class, education level, and ethnic and racial mix.
Journalists and newspaper owners are not supposed to represent the public.You want someone who represents your interests, get a lawyer.