Politically Loaded

Any terminology or idea that is normally described by people in terms revealing their own PoliticalBeliefs? rather than any objectively decidable characteristic. One person may lambast any given such idea as reactionary while another promotes the same as useful or FundamentallyTrue?.

For such conflicting judgements, the question "Who is right?" is really a mis-statement of "Who do you agree with most?". I find PoliticallyLoaded better than the mealy-mouthed journalistic NonPartisan term "controversial" because it adds the suggestion that people often smuggle in implicit political attitudes with their choice of common current phrases, consciously or not.

This form of HiddenBias? is often hidden from the user as well, but their repeated use of it may well compromise the fairness of their judgements without being aware of it.

This is the opening exploited by the propaganda technique that Orwell (and as the war-time Minister of Propaganda, he knew a thing or two about it) satirized as Newspeak in 1984. Turning this exploit into a propaganda coup is when a government manages to replace a commonly accepted term with a new term that is both PoliticallyLoaded to its advantage while being subtle enough that most people aren't even fully aware of the change, still less its implications as a deliberate shift in the terms of public debate. Some of us in the UK would argue that the current Labour government's underhand substitution of the term "refugee" with "asylum-seeker" is such a manoeuvre. And a sinister one at that...

PoliticallyLoaded is a recursive term in that saying that it is "better than" the media's "controversial" is of course a PoliticallyLoaded statement. I cannot conceive of any use of it where its choice wouldn't also be PoliticallyLoaded in itself. I think the not uncommon belief that it is really possible to make statements about current events or society that are not PoliticallyLoaded in some way, is profoundly naive. Naive as in having a weakened resistance to being politically manipulated, rather than a euphemism for culpable stupidity. Which would explain why nearly all professional politicians and their associated lackeys publicly support said belief is supporting rather than countering evidence. Not that I'm trying to be manipulative here, of course.