By now, everybody with a brain knows that leftists speak in jargon, redefine the meanings of words, and often base their arguments on academic theories that make little sense.
What makes those tactics effective is attaching ideas that people find naturally appealing, like "fairness" and "justice," to ideas that are basically nonsensical. Emotionally powerful words lend a sheen of credibility to ideas that otherwise offend common sense.
Because gender activists make demonstrably false claims about biology, they've had to invent a whole new framework to justify persisting in delusion.
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) July 14, 2026
Trans people aren't making false claims, they're simply "communicating alternative knowledge claims."
Critics of gender ideology… pic.twitter.com/yL9l55siNa
Because gender activists make demonstrably false claims about biology, they've had to invent a whole new framework to justify persisting in delusion.
Trans people aren't making false claims, they're simply "communicating alternative knowledge claims."
Critics of gender ideology aren't simply disputing factual claims made by trans people, they're "perpetuating epistemic violence."
If someone ever claims something you said is false, just accuse them of committing epistemic violence against you. Win every argument.
That's how you get from a simple statement of fact: that we are born male or female, and that human beings are defined by an immutable sex binary, to trans activists screaming "violence" and genocide. Leftists believe that existence itself is a construct of the mind, so challenging an "oppressed" person's image of reality is an act of violence and "erasing" their existence.
Seizing control of vocabularies and redefining emotionally-laden concepts like justice is an extraordinarily powerful move. If you can unmoor people from common sense and common definitions, you can capture the underlying emotional resonance attached to those words—who is against "justice" or "fairness," after all?—and turn it to your advantage.
I can't believe this is real.
— Jenn Pellegrino 🇺🇸 (@JennPellegrino) July 14, 2026
The Chancellor of UC San Francisco testified under oath that a "vast majority of pregnancies are in women." Implying some pregnancies occur in men.
When asked directly whether a non-biological woman has ever had a baby, he refused to answer. This… pic.twitter.com/mNk8f1eCDa
This tactic, though, only works on certain people, and the irony is that those people are the ones who put unusual stock in the importance of words: intellectuals, who also are primed to be least attached to "common sense." That's why you find that leftism, and leftist language, is the province of the "educated" classes, and is hardly appealing to working-class people, who are inclined to trust their common sense much more than a finely crafted argument filled with gobbledygook.
If the cultural elite is most susceptible to this rhetorical strategy, academics are by far the most susceptible. Gobbledygook turns out to be catnip to people who style themselves intellectuals, because it ushers them into a club where normal people won't go. It serves as a kind of secret knowledge.
For the same reason, the language play is repulsive to what we can loosely describe as the "working class," for whom hard-won experience and "common sense" are more reliable guides than the fancy but often misleading assertions that come from the academics' secret knowledge.
Net-Favourables:
— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) July 14, 2026
Free Market: +41%
Capitalism: +20%
MAHA: +6%
Social Democracy: +5%
Democratic Party: -9%
JD Vance: -14%
Free Palestine Movement: -14%
Republican Party: -16%
Democratic Socialists Of America: -21%
Trump: -23%
MAGA: -25%
Socialism: -29%
Communism: -73%
Echelon /…
That's why the new crop of DSA candidates' worst reception is with those whom they claim to represent: the working class and minority voters.
Stevens' strengths in the poll are with Black voters (67% to El-Sayed's 21%), non-college-educated voters (56% to El-Sayed's 34%), voters over age 55, Metro Detroit voters and traditional Democrats. https://t.co/peFJyO4UZc
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 14, 2026
El Sayed claims to speak for the downtrodden; he really speaks to the privileged and overeducated, because he speaks their language.
The left relies on divorcing words' meanings from reality, appropriating concepts that everybody tends to agree are "good" and pouring new concepts into the old words.
That's not possible when the referents the words are supposed to describe are rooted in reality. If "man" means "person with penis," all the dancing in the world doesn't turn a guy into a girl. Only intellectuals can go there, because they believe they have transcended common sense.
