Why Terminology Matters

Words do not simply describe reality. They create it. The language used to define people and policies can either humanize or erase, warn or deceive. Terms like classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, and extermination are not neutral. They erode moral boundaries slowly, deliberately, and by design. They prepare the ground for what would otherwise be unthinkable.

Take classification. It's easy to overlook because we live with categories every day — race, religion, citizenship status, political affiliation, and more. But when classification becomes a term of division rather than description, it marks a turning point. It turns people into labels. “Us” and “them” stops being shorthand and becomes policy. What follows is not an accident.

Symbolization is where identity is no longer personal — it is assigned, announced, and often weaponized. Identification cards. Religious attire. Skin color. Accent. When these things become mandatory markers rather than voluntary expressions, language has already played its role in the project of separation. At this stage, people aren’t seen as individuals. They’re symbols of a group — and that group is often being prepared for punishment.

Discrimination feels like a word we have grown numb to, often flattened into the abstract language of laws and court cases. But in reality, discrimination is the first point at which exclusion becomes active. It determines who gets healthcare, who gets housing, who can vote, who can speak. It is the slow administrative throttling of participation in society. And like all of these terms, it is often justified through the soft edges of legal language — “security,” “efficiency,” “public interest.”

Then comes dehumanization. This is where language becomes a weapon in itself. When people are compared to insects, diseases, criminals, or invaders, a psychological shift takes place. Harm stops being tragic. It becomes necessary. Terms like “infestation” do not just distort. They invite action, and that action always moves in one direction: toward erasure.

Organization may sound like logistics. But this is where words truly conceal intention. Special units. Task forces. Border patrol. Camps. None of these sound violent on their own. But what they organize, and what they make possible, is targeted force. Precision. Efficiency. And eventually, mass compliance.

Polarization is a word we often misuse, as though it just means having strong opinions. But in this context, it means something far more dangerous: the turning of an entire public against a chosen group. It is the project of manipulation, flooding discourse with fear, lies, moral panic. Once a society is polarized, it becomes easier to justify what comes next.

Preparation is a word that could mean anything—that is why it is so dangerous. What does it mean to “relocate” a population? What do we call it when families are removed, en masse, and locked away? Or when political figures talk openly about mass deportation “plans”? Euphemism thrives here. “Removal.” “Containment.” “Processing.” The words sound procedural. But they are describing something else entirely.

And then, there is persecution. The moment things get louder. Homes raided. Businesses seized. Children taken. People arrested not for what they have done, but for who they are. By the time persecution is happening, the groundwork has already been laid. Quietly, legally, and under the cover of language.

Extermination is what happens when society has been so effectively desensitized that murder no longer looks like murder. It is called “cleansing.” It is called “stabilization.” But people are dying, and the language has prepared everyone to look the other way. The lie is that this violence is about ‘safety.’ It’s not. It’s about erasure.

The final term is denial. And here, language does something chilling. It rewrites the past even as bodies are still being buried. It rebrands atrocities as accidents. It reduces genocides to “conflict.” Survivors are silenced. Documents are destroyed. And worst of all, those who name what happened are told they are exaggerating. “It wasn’t that bad.” “It was taken out of context.” “That’s not what we meant.”

All of these words — classification, symbolization, dehumanization, preparation, denial — are terms of power. They are tools. They are shields. They are warnings.

When we use them honestly, they reveal the machinery of oppression before the worst happens. When we ignore them, soften them, or let others redefine them, they lose their power, and people lose their lives.

That is why terminology matters. Because the words we use, and the ones we silence, decide who we see as human. And who we let vanish.