The War on the English Language

Not to bang on about the same point for however many times I've talked about it on here, but you'd think that when someone, especially a major political figure in America, is shot and killed brutally in front of his wife and children, there would be attempts from all sides of the political spectrum to dampen-down the rhetoric. But take a wild guess as to whether they have, or haven't...

This is now anyone's game. "Honey! He's callin' me a fascist again! Whatcha 'think's a good response? Racist? Bigot? Transphobe? Islamophobe? Anythingthat'llgetyashot-a-phobe?" Not to say that these labels are necessarily conducive to political violence; but in an age where seemingly everything's online, and echo-chambers are as easy to fall into as black-holes in Britain's finances are, it's unsettling how normalised extreme labels have become among the political class.

Really only since the Second World War has America been littered with major assassinations and violence. In the '60s, there were four major successful politically-charged murders: JFK, RFK, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Within two years, we've seen two attempts on the current U.S president's life and one successful attempt on a major political ally of his. The question isn't what's next, but rather-who's next?

As for the sly and rotten monikers being bandied about, it does far more damage to the language the words are being spoken in than the people they're being thrown at. That is until they get someone killed. Alas, I ask, what do half of the above mentioned terms mean anymore? How are we gonna tell the difference between a "moderate" and an "extremist" if both are called "Nazis", or whatever else? Not only is it puerile politics; it's straight-up lazy. If the best you've got for a guy who won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, is "dictator" and "autocrat", then it's no wonder you lost last November.

~Across the Atlantic, a slightly different kind of war on the English language is happening:

"UK population increased by more than 750,000 in 12 months - mostly due to migration"

You don't say! Britain is losing its grip rapidly on the demographics of its own people. According to the Office for National Statistics, the population increased by 755,254, from 68.5 million to 69.3 million; Of this, an estimated 738,718 were people immigrating - equivalent to 98% of the increase. You read that correctly: 98% of the population's increase came from foreign people moving here. Currently, the UK's fertility rate sits at 1.56; and since 2020, almost all of the growth in the population has come from net migration, according to The Migration Observatory at Oxford University. Remember what the top name for newborns was in England in 2024? Mohammed.

Prepare for English to be a second language in its country of origin. Soon, migrants "assimilating" into "English culture" won't need to learn the language, because within the next forty years, give or take, i.e from Thatcher to now, White British people will be a minority. Though that estimate seems slightly aspirational, given:

"Official figures projected that the UK’s population would grow from 68 million in 2022 to 77 million in 2046...deaths were projected to outnumber births from 2030."

It's particularly aspirational given that foreign-born migrants aren't just coming here in swathes, but they're also having more children. By 2030, the UK will have caught up with Japan, in that, they'll both have populations decreasing.

On Japan for a moment, they're possibly the only "Western" country clinging on to the final remnants of its civil society. Japan's working population has been falling off a cliff over the past few decades and yet, unlike the awful "Diversity is our Strength" Europeans, they didn't go hell-for-leather on immigration, which is pretty remarkable. From 1997 to now, Japan's population of foreign residents has increased from just 1.3% to 3% - in the same time, the UK did 6.6% to 17%. Japan won't die by cultural suicide, but just slowly and sotto voce, with a culture at least still in tact. They'll have at least that to point to when Gold is doing $100,000 dollars an ounce and the UK is some long-gone memory that Great-Grandmas and Grandads will recount to their eight Grandchildren called Mohammed.

Diversity will be the death of us. As it will prove to be the death of our language.

©2025 Tom Large