It is probably too late by now, but reading the agonised outpourings over the Manchester atrocity on your letters page (24 May) made me think how inappropriate is the language we have fallen into using to frame these events.
We talk of “radicalisation”. This word has a long and noble history in progressive thinking, but has now been hijacked to describe allegiance to an ideology of brutal totalitarianism. Perhaps “fanaticisation” might be a better term. “Isis” perhaps could be could be replaced by “Socis” (So-Called Islamic State), to allow the Oxford river, the Egyptian mythological deity, and countless small businesses to reclaim their name. I’m afraid “cowardly” also does not for me describe the character of someone prepared to blow himself to pieces in an act of mass murder in pursuit of some speculated fictitious paradise either.
These are but a few examples, and this may seem trivial, but the way we use language to describe this hideous phenomenon is vital, and to devalue it is to cede something to those who hold human life in contempt.
John Keane
London
