by TChris

Right wing commentators have been fond of the epithet "islamofascist" for some time, but the term broke into mainstream use when the president recently uttered a variant, "Islamic fascist." The term sweeps too broadly, and in any event, associating an entire religion with the doctrine of fascism is gratuitously offensive. The term is useful only as propaganda, and in that respect, it's disturbing to see conventional journalists adopting it, apparently without giving much thought to its accuracy or value.

But the "fascism" analogy has holes in it large enough to drive an Abrams tank through, and so its spawn, "Islamofascism," is also imprecise. Any political PR offensive relies on the airwaves and printed pages of the MSM for its dissemination. By reporting "just the facts" and on news-pegged events -- in this case the various speeches by the president and his cabinet members -- the press, whether or not it thinks the term "Islamofascism" apt, is helping to disseminate propaganda. ...

If editors had some boilerplate language to insert when appropriate that would give readers at least some sense of why the term is misleading, it could help repair some of the damage done by this type of propaganda.