As an historian, I found it fascinating to watch the Left try to impose new language to describe people in the country illegally.
The Left has gradually pushed accepted language away from “illegal aliens” (the term in law), to “illegal immigrants” (the most common term), to “undocumented immigrants” (the Left’s current favorite term), and now to “newcomers” (the Joe Biden White House’s latest experiment in gaining language dominance).
It all reminds me of Vladimir Lenin’s great language coup of 1903.
The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party met secretly in Brussels. (The czar’s secret police made it impossible to meet openly in Russia.) At the meeting there was a split between Lenin’s hard-line revolutionary faction and a more moderate democratic wing.
Lenin’s faction was the smaller group, but they claimed the title Bolshevik (which…
